The Cork Evening Echo was on the streets of Cardiff with a full match report within an hour of Munster winning the European Heineken Cup.

Western Mail & Echo also printed 15,000 copies of the 40-page Irish Examiner for Saturday morning, which also included 10,000 foam-rubber hands in the distribution from Thomson House, right next door to the stadium.

But the real challenge was producing 10,400 copies of the Cork-based Evening Echo - which were printed on the Cardiff Bay press and distributed as close to the end of the game as possible.

As soon as the game was over and the celebrations began, Echo staff at the game filed stories and pictures and transmitted them back to Cork.

Here, sub-editors and page builders built pages and transmitted them back to Cardiff to the Western Mail & Echo, where 10,000 copies of the special 40-page newspaper were printed with a full match report.

The front page was delivered to pre-press at 5.20pm with the press starting five minutes later. And by 5.50pm, copies of the paper were in the city centre while fans still poured on to the streets.

The special edition was distributed free to Munster fans in the area around the Millennium Stadium. This was the second time that the Cork Evening Echo did this – the previous time was the 2002 Heineken Cup Final when Munster lost to Leicester Tigers.

Evening Echo Editor, Maurice Gubbins, said that bringing the newspaper to the fans was "our way of supporting the team and the huge army of loyal fans, as well as showing the breaking news ability of the Evening Echo".

He said: "Sport is very important to our newspaper and rather than waiting until Monday afternoon for our readers to read our match report we were able to have it on the street within an hour of the final whistle.

"With 60,000 Munster fans present we were delighted to be the first newspaper anywhere to give the fans a full match report and a very special memento of a very special day".

The Evening Echo has a daily circulation of 26,496 copies and 117,000 readers each evening. It is part of the Thomas Crosbie Holdings Group.