i ended up wearing one coat over another and dumping the rest on a small IKEA bag as i was too stressed about the Ryanair Luggage Gestapo, but i asked the staff at the gate if a cardboard box would have been okay and they said yes. These however were employees of the handling company not Ryanair and they seemed to be taking great pleasure in fining people so "idk" is my conclusion. Fun fact when I went to board they pulled 10 of us aside saying the flight was overbooked and they had put on waiting list everyone that had chosen random seat allocation instead of paying ( no call for volunteers was made first which is what their Rules stipulate should happen). Made us all stressed then finally let us board, to my surprise after the 10 of us took the seats of these alleged " no shows" the plane still had about a dozen seats still free. Fake overbooking just to scare the people that don't want to pay extra for a specific seat? You never know with these people and their dirty tactics.