The experiment that worked and continues to work. A squally night in Dublin and people are given the choice of going to the boozer after work or standing to watch two teams play a European Cup match in the rain.

As many as the ground at Donnybrook can hold chose to take on the weather. Next week, Network Two will screen Leinster against Newcastle and the ground will be full again.

At the same time BBC 2 will televise London Wasps' visit to Ravenhill Road and Ulster's headquarters will be bubbling over. Cheap television for the networks, but successful.

This week's protagonists in the Heineken Cup drama were Leinster and Toulouse.

"The might of Toulouse with some 13 international players from eight countries," said Jim Sherwin in an effort to place the action in a theatre of biblical proportions. David and Goliath in Dublin 4.

"Toulouse this season ... French champions. Also won this cup in '95-96 and three semi-final appearances in the last five years," he added. Leinster, however, "in past seasons have not been able to emerge from the Pool stages". So the scene was set for Leinster to pull themselves out of their European stupor, and for several players who wore the green shirt last week in Edinburgh to salvage the remnants of their reputations in a blue shirt.

From early in the game it was clear why this competition has won over the hearts and minds of rugby's fraternity.

Almost all of the players on the pitch had played at international level before, thus promising a level that was pleasing to the eye.

After seven minutes Leinster did just that, illustrating their ability with a five-phase offensive that looked like ending in a try until a Toulouse player injudiciously grabbed the ball on the ground.

The feel of the match was one of intimacy due, probably, to the proximity of the cameras to the action.

Donnybrook is a small ground and the cameras are almost overlooking the pitch from the sidelines. The effect was to bring you into the game, place you on the pitch and allow you to cock an ear and listen to what the referee was saying to the players.

You could watch international French prop Franck Tournaire sheepishly accept a tongue-lashing or second row Fabien Pelous shrink to a child-sized player as the referee wagged a finger in his face for some indiscretion.

Victor Costello, the Leinster back row who grinds out more hard yards than any other player in the country, becomes a schoolboy who has been caught with his hand in the cookie jar as the referee broadcasts his outrageous infringement for all to hear - a knock on, an offside, playing the ball on the ground. Here rugby opens up and becomes a more comprehensible game.

"If you don't stop giving away penalties by diving over the top and not staying on your feet I may have to go to cards," says Steve Lander to Pelous. The big man turns his hands skywards.

Of course he doesn't know what Lander is talking about. You could hear the jibes from the crowd, even listen to the French commentary of the broadcaster, who is presumably sitting up in the crow's nest at Donnybrook sharing a bench with Tony Ward and Jim Sherwin.

There is a rawness and an eagerness about the rugby coverage on Friday nights. Big Tom McGuirk, rain-splattered and shouting above the wind to George Hook and Brent Pope may, to the professional eye, indicate a certain lack of production finesse, but for these games it works. It is in there, in the thick of things, not removed or isolated, and that's the way it should stay .

On Eurosport, the sharp contrast was cycling's Tour of Spain where the commentary team appeared to be speaking from a hermetically sealed orbiting booth. Cycling is fighting a difficult PR battle and is losing it in this Dublin household, but unless you tuned into Eurosport you would not know that one of the biggest events of the season, the Tour of Spain, was on this week.

The event coincided with revelations that over one-third of the cyclists in this year's Tour de France tested positive for prohibited substances, and it was also the week that FIFA boss Sepp Blatter announced that clubs were illicitly feeding drugs to their players without their knowledge or approval.

Declarations like these from top administrators are frightening and when you watch the peloton meandering across Spain on a lazy day and the breaking "escapados" moving further and further ahead, you wonder where the dope taking begins and where it ends.

The theatre of war has always been in the athletes' bodies and in the laboratories. It may now be shifting, more sinisterly, to the medical teams and administrators who supervise and run the clubs and teams.

Who won the Tour of Spain? Who cares? For light relief TV3 is where it's at. Now some people may think this is having a go at the network but when you tune into the Champions League match in Athens between Panathanaikos and Arsenal you don't really expect to hear the 25th minute goal from Karagounis described as "a finish as delicious as the local kebabs".

Of course we've been here before in other parts of the world. In Wales, "they'll be singing in the valleys tonight", and in Ireland perhaps, "Dublin will be awash with Guinness".

Maybe commentating is more difficult than we think, that is, even if we acknowledge it is difficult in the first place. The kebabs we can do without, much like David Seaman's superbly glossy ponytail for that matter.