As the Pit janitor sprinkles sawdust on the pools of blood splattered around the arena and the last fan heads out into the pouring rain to wait for stand-in car park attendant Jimmy Magee to remember where he parked their vehicle, we are privileged to report that this year's final was a cracker.

There is no love lost between these two combatants. They represent opposing philosophies of footballing punditry. Where Hamilton sees his role as being the voice of the common man, a pivotal figure whose job is to reflect the view of the man in the street (and occasionally to nudge it along in the right direction), Dunphy seeks at every opportunity to oppose the received wisdom on any given subject.

So it was recently that Dunphy came to blows on live TV with sports anchor Bill O'Herlihy, who had the temerity to suggest in the wake of Liverpool's UEFA Cup victory that Liverpool were, in fact, quite a good side.

Hamilton had no such warm-up to the Commentator Wars Grand Final. He was preoccupied with the task of commentating on Saturday afternoon's World Cup qualifier between the Rep of Eire and Portugal. Later that evening he arrived at the Pit cold. Dunphy, in contrast, was raring to go.

Hamilton came out of his corner swinging his trusty lute, but before the round was out, a dancing, ducking Dunphy had pierced it fatally with his industrially sharpened poison pencil.

Hamilton emerged for the second round a changed man. By now, he only had his mastery of the English language to protect him. He attempted to throw Dunphy off his stride by commentating on Dunphy's every move. "It matters not a whit," he declared as the Poison Pencil pierced his renal artery. "The red blood spurting from Hamilton's abdomen may only serve to make the wily Northerner see red."

But it was not to be. As the blood drained from Hamilton's body, Dunphy began to wax lyrical himself: "Yesss... this opponent has been shown up for what he is... not fit for top-level no-holds-barred brawling. Perhaps he would look the part on a Saturday morning in the Phoenix Park, but this competition always sorts the men from the boys."

Hamilton collapsed to the floor in delirium, and Dunphy was carried away on the shoulders of his many fans, a true people's champion.

Which prompted Dunphy the next day to pen an article for the Examiner slamming himself as "a shameless seeker of publicity, more interested in soaking up the adulation of teenage female admirers than showing any true passion for the world's greatest sport."