outside of man utd, liverpool, arsenal, chelsea and celtic i would imagine that sunderland would be the biggest draw for a friendly in ireland (obviously i'm only counting teams based in the UK here). ipswich and coventry (no offence) enjoy nowhere near the same profile even though they have a fair amount of 'middling' (for want of a better word) irish players. sunderland have the former irish top scorer as their chairman, roy keane (love him or loath him) is manager and they are full to the brim of current / former irish internationals**.
i will guarantee that the game will be the most talked about for ages in the city and hopefully will attract some fans up the dyke who when seeing the new stand and tasting the atmosphere decide they may come back up for a league game or two!
btw lads can ye give over with the moaning about having to pay into the game - stump up or shut up, if ya don't wanna pay then don't go. i will gladly pay (assuming season ticket holders get first refusal on tickets!!!). and sure won't any profit go to the club anyway! fair enough sunderland may be charging a high fee (in relation to our budget) but top UK teams even charge a fee for games against their underage teams. AFAIK celtic u15's were paid a hefty fee to appear in the umbro cup by salthill devon a couple of years ago and were subsequently not invited for last years tournament!!
it will do our lads no harm playing against players of a high calibre even if it is in a friendly. and i won't be at all surprised if the TV rights get sold for a few bob too. are you reading TG4 (or setanta, or TV3 or RTE)???
** PS - No i am not on the sunderland bandwagon!