The instruction was simple. "Be sure to watch Cork City and St Pat's on Saturday," said the Sports Department's gauleiter

"Ah Jeez, do I have to?" was apparently not the required response, but five minutes later, after a purely theoretical display of the varied uses of a pair of pliers and a sharp pencil, your columnist was wittering happily about the prospect.

Indeed there was a lot of wittering going on about the top-of-the-table League of Ireland clash.

"They've proved themselves the two best teams in the country. There's only one point between them. They don't come much bigger than this," grinned George Hamilton before kick-off. Then someone released the St Pat's supremo, Pat Dolan.

"I dream of days like these," said Pat before warming to his task. Considering that even in moments of relative tranquillity Pat sounds as cool as a man with his behind hanging over the lip of an erupting volcano, he was never likely to underplay his hand.

"This is Irish football at its best," he thundered. "This proves Irish football can work, is working so let's get behind it!"

The entire RTE team at Turners Cross were happy to join the love-in. It was all shoulders to the wheel time in the cause of Irish football.

"An enthralling first half. You can't get much better than that," said George at half-time. "A vibrant occasion, Irish soccer at its best," he trilled at full-time.

Vibrant it certainly was. The players rolled their sleeves up and went at it the way Marlon Brando goes at a steak. So did RTE. Ger "Cliche King" Canning was in full cry - "It's the referee's 13th league game of the season so let's hope it's lucky 13" - and Eoin Hand was impressive in his analysis.

But, and this is the intractable but against which all the in-your-face enthusiasm of RTE and the League of Ireland struggles, how can the honest meat and two veg fare of the domestic league possibly hope to compete with the haute cuisine of the many other football avenues open to an already-bloated TV football audience.

Of course in football terms it's not comparing like with like, but in TV terms it's Ruud Gullit sexy versus Miley Byrne sexy.

For instance, try as one might it was impossible to ignore the "Ah for f**k's sakes" that rang around the Turners Cross crowd and via microphones into our sitting-rooms. Or the goal-mouth that looked like it had been used during practice for the National Ploughing Championships. Or the relatively modest football pedigrees of the players: "He joined Cork in 1998 from Dover Athletic."

Admirable grassroots stuff for the genuinely committed fan and those involved in the game, but hardly the sort of compulsive viewing that could justify RTE's rather hysterical pitch of "it doesn't get better than this." Sorry boys it does.

No, for sexy you need tennis and specifically Anna Kournikova who was the central character in the most addictive viewing of the week.

So pretty she makes you want to shout out loud, Anna couldn't stop double-faulting against an opponent whose normal chance of beating Kournikova would be rated between slim and none.

"You can't give away points like this. Say there's four points in a game, that's five games she has thrown away. It's horrific," said Bob Hewitt on Eurosport. At that point Anna's double fault tally was 20. It went up to 31 by the time she finally won 10-8 in the last set. You do the maths.

It was appalling yet riveting to watch a world class athlete disintegrate in front of our eyes, but it did prove that whatever convoluted graphics and gimmicks TV throws at us, there is still no more powerful tool than the spoken word.

Eurosport's commentators are usually pretty dreadful, except in tennis where the old doubles partnership of Hewitt and Frew McMillan are superb. Obviously knowledgeable about the game, they also have the priceless television gift of knowing when to keep quiet. But when they do speak, it's invariably to the point.

As Anna agonised, Hewitt analysed. "She's coming around on the ball and with the loop, the ball is too far behind her," he said. Greek to the uninitiated but at least Hewitt had the courtesy not to talk down to us.

While all this was going on, it seemed half the male population of Australia were wearing fake blonde ponytails and hammering on the advertising hoardings of the stadium in their support for the 17-year-old Russian beauty. Even when a serve went metres out, the crowd bawled "call it good!"

Bob didn't approve of that but when Anna finally won and achingly smiled through her exquisite tears, he spoke for millions when saying: "I think I'm developing an ulcer after that."

Against such lengthy mass theatre, BBC's brief highlights programme from Melbourne every evening could hardly compete. So the Beeb went fringe. So fringe that hours were devoted to indoor bowls. Now there's sexy.

One man actually donned a bandanna to cover his bald pate as he carefully threw a large black ball down 30 metres of carpet to a small yellow ball. This was considered worthy of much comment. "Noel Kennedy, the bandanna man," breathed the commentator.

It was enough to make Turners Cross seem sexy.