Belgians join the Barmy Army

Hilde Vilters on a ticket search with a Scotland fan in Ireland.

Belgians are not noted for their love of rugby, but at least two of them will be among the thousands of Barmy Army fans making the 18,000km trip from Europe for the Lions tour.

A travel firm handling arrangements for the New Zealand Rugby Union expects many visitors from places other than Britain or Ireland, but says most of these will be ex-pats - putting Mario van Rompaey and Hilde Vilters in a league of their own.

Mario, 35, has been a rugby fan for 20 years since discovering the sport while watching BBC TV. He said: "I didn't quite understand the rules, but the atmosphere and sportsmanship immediately grabbed me by the throat so I started following it more and more."

His first international was a Six Nations clash in Dublin and the couple have now been to several tests. He bought a DVD of the Lions tour to Australia and vowed then that he would be on the plane the next time they headed to the southern hemisphere.

"We started saving up and luckily enough I've got a lovely wife who supported me all the way because she had also been with me to the other games and was very impressed by it all," Mario said.

Hilde, 41, a graphic designer, has decorated their house in a town 40km from Brussels with the All Blacks fern.

She said: "A lot of Belgian people think we are a little bit crazy about the rugby, but they don't know what they're missing."

The only thing they are now short of is a ticket to one of the games on the tour.

Ross Jamieson, director of Williment Travel Group in Wellington, which is arranging travel for the teams and many of the fans coming to New Zealand, said that as well as interest in Britain and Ireland, packages have been sold in Asia, Europe, the US and Australia.

These were largely ex-pat British and Irish fans, including several hundred working in financial markets in Hong Kong, China and other parts of Asia.

Mr Jamieson warned that with 120,000 British students on gap years in New South Wales alone, a dramatic finale to the test series could lead to thousands of fans arriving in New Zealand towards the end of the tour. Some fans flew from the UK to Australia at the last minute when England reached the final of the World Cup in 2003.

"These are people who don't care about having a bed or a ticket," he said.