IT was a bit like buying a ticket for Liverpool versus Manchester United and then finding yourself at a reserve match.
No disrespect to either Kevin Feeney or Paul O'Higgins, good "pros" both, and strictly first-team material, but a majority in the attendance at Court No 4 yesterday were looking forward to one last spat between the acknowledged heavyweights of the Bar.
In the event, both Patrick MacEntee and Adrian Hardiman remained rooted to the bench, while their assistants summarised the respective cases. The two player-managers were content keep their experience and flair in reserve and concentrate instead on tactical adjustments to the game plan.
The summaries were a curious affair, with both sides apparently agreed that the goal posts had been moved since the start of the case. Mr Feeney indicated that the manner of Mr Dunphy's cross-examination meant a number of issues had not needed pursuing by the defence. Mr O'Higgins for his part acknowledged that "a great deal of what was at issue is not at issue now".
Both sides agreed the plaintiff had no role in or knowledge of criminal activity; they differed only on whether this was the meaning of the contested article.
With the exception of Eamon Dunphy's stand in the witness box, this has not been a case for the tricoteuses, though if you listened hard at times you could almost hear Mr De Rossa knitting his eyebrows.
Especially when listening to defence evidence, the Minister's eyebrows took on the shape of arrows, pointed at the witness box. Yesterday they were pointing at Mr Feeney as he claimed that only a "tiny, shrinking or non-existent" category of readers could have understood the Dunphy article as contended by the plaintiff.
These were people who had read the Moscow letter in The Irish Times in October 1992, missed the interview with Mr De Rossa six weeks later, and then read the Sunday Independent article in the light of the letter and not the interview.
Like his opposite number, Mr O'Higgins rehearsed the questions the jury must address. Did the Dunphy article imply tolerance of criminal activities? Did it mean Mr De Rossa supported the repressive policies of the old Soviet government? Did Mr Dunphy sincerely believe what he was writing? And should Mr De Rossa receive damages?
But he also asked them to remember another question, the rhetorical "Where's the writ?" from Mr Dunphy concerning his row with Fintan O'Toole and quoted in the Hot Press interview.
If he had not taken his action against the Sunday Independent article, counsel asked, how long would it have taken before the same question was levelled as proof of Mr De Rossa's guilt. Unless the jury awarded very large damages, he said, the Sunday Independent would be "sniggering" after the case ended and would regard the experience as a worthwhile, financial investment.
On what was a relentlessly low-key day, Mr O'Higgins once threatened to introduce some colour into the proceedings, with a line characterising Independent Newspapers as a cross between "Mighty Mouse" and "Church Mouse." No sooner had the grateful journalists taken up their pens, however, than the mouse, metaphor disappeared into a hole.
At another point, counsel scoffed at Mr Dunphy's explanation that the Moscow letter was only "spiritually" present in his 1992 article. "Mr Dunphy may be very spiritual man but I'm afraid I haven't got that level of perception," he said. Mr Dunphy may have been spiritually present in court yesterday but the physical part of him did not appear.
