Neither Ruair∅ Quinn nor Gerry Adams won, in the sense that nobody delivered a knockout punch. But both won, in that each performed well in a 40-minute prime time television slot.
And The Late Late Show won, in that it managed to stage the most lively and spontaneous debate between politicians seen on television for a long time. For over 15 minutes at the start of the contest, the Labour Party leader and the Sinn FΘin leader debated without any mediation or interruption from presenter Pat Kenny.
The debate remained sharp and quick. Each made a short opening statement and although neither read from a script, both appeared to have learned their lines. However they quickly got into unscripted exchanges.
Mr Adams' game plan was to associate Labour with the current ills of the State. He listed the inadequacies of the health service, the gap between rich and poor and made a general remark about corruption, suggesting Labour was implicated in all these things by virtue of having been in power for, he said, 14 of the last 30 years.
Mr Quinn in turn set out to associate Sinn FΘin with the IRA ("two sides of the same coin") and criticised them for refusing to accept the new Police Service of Northern Ireland.
But Mr Quinn did well not on scoring points off Mr Adams but on putting himself across as a man of conviction. In set piece Dβil confrontations on the Order of Business he often comes across as stilted and posed - last night he was more spontaneous, appearing to speak his mind based on strongly held views.
Mr Adams seized the opportunity to make a pitch for the disillusioned vote, his best moment coming in relation to the Nice Treaty. Mr Quinn, he said, had condemned the treaty as a bad deal as soon it was negotiated, yet then called on people to vote for it. His side had lost. Sinn FΘin, by implication, was the only party in touch with the people on this issue.
Mr Quinn's weakest moment was when he disputed that Mr Adams had been an architect of the Peace Process, saying instead that he was only a contributor to it.
The audience reaction to Mr Adams' response showed they put a higher value on his role than that.
Mr Adams won several rounds of applause for rhetorical flourishes, but the debate wasn't about winning over the people in studio but a much wider audience. Last night's television confrontation had its roots in sharp comments Mr Quinn made about Sinn FΘin in a radio interview on RTE's This Week programme on the final day of his party conference last September.
Later in the same programme, Mr Adams accused him in turn of making scurrilous remarks, blamed Labour for much of the State's ills and challenged Mr Quinn to a public debate. Mr Quinn agreed immediately.
The contest is much more than a personal grudge match. Sinn FΘin, with one Dβil seat, is openly seeking to displace Labour with 20 seats, as the voice of radical Ireland and of the disaffected urban voter. No matter that in the next general election the seats that Sinn FΘin is threatening are all held by Fianna Fβil - in the long term Sinn FΘin sees its growth as dependent on its ability to win support in Labour's traditional heartlands. Last night won't have decided that contest. But it allowed Mr Quinn put himself across as more human and engaging than his media image often suggests, while giving Mr Adams a national platform for his party's battle for Dβil seats.