For their part, Juventus went into the Sunday night showpiece looking to close in on league leaders Lazio, with three away points on the agenda. Filippo Inzaghi would not have been disappointed to learn that Torino sweeper Djibril Diawara was missing from the opposition line-up, his old bete noire succumbing, ironically enough, to suspension. In his stead, however, the Juventus forwards came up against the fearsome-looking Mauro Bonomi, a misnomer if ever there was one. The build-up to derby day had seen the shaven-headed defender declare that he would walk down Turin's main street wearing nothing but a pair of underpants if his team could overcome their inter-city rivals. Tantalising though the prospect might have been, Torino never looked like turning promise into reality.

Bonomi did, however, lead the way in taking the physical side of the game to its very limits, demonstrating ab initio the more attritional qualities that would serve his team well over the course of a bruising ninety minutes. This was a rip-roaring, good old-fashioned derby, with the home side determined to make the evening as uncomfortable as possible for the Bianconeri, and the latter more than able to combine traditional spit'n'sawdust with their customary grace and polish, trading blows and attacks in equal measure.

Of course, the underpinning for any successful side is a strong backbone, and it should come as no surprise that Carlo Ancelotti's men can 'mix it' on demand. Yet the parity in performance was also to the credit of Torino, who in Alessio Scarchilli have a midfielder of no little poise or perception. Indeed, Scarchilli went closest to breaking the defensive stranglehold in the first half, seeing his long-range drive tipped onto the angle of post and crossbar by the alert Erwin Van der Sar. The most striking aspect of the first period was the fair littering of yellow cards, with six of them handed out in the opening thirty minutes, but amid the many stoppages, the languid talents of Zinedine Zidane were stark. Amid the frenzy, the pirouetting Frenchman was a sight to behold, setting his team-mates in motion whenever he was able to break free from the shackles that Galante sought manfully to impose.

The clearest opening before the interval fell to Filippo Inzaghi, who headed wide after being played in by the combined excellence of the bespectacled Edgar Davids and Alessandro Del Piero. Moments after the break, the tireless Inzaghi - a constant threat despite the fact that the Torino rearguard appeared able to read his many runs - misinterpreted the intentions of strike partner Del Piero (and vice versa), the two stepping on each other's toes after a comedy of errors in the Torino penalty area left keeper Bucci looking vulnerable. Three minutes on and Inzaghi was again bearing down on Bucci's goal, only to be denied by the awareness of Roberto Maltagliati, whose crucial intervention probably prevented a certain goal.

Inzaghi's one-man crusade almost came to fruition on 62mins, when his header from a corner left the Torino keeper grasping at thin air but flew inches wide of the right-hand post. By now, Juventus were stepping up the pressure on an embattled Torino, the Granata marooned in their own half as possession became more and more of a premium. But for all the strengths and subtleties Ancelotti's men in black and white bring to a game, they simply had no means of extinguishing the passion play of their hosts.

The flow of bookings was always more fluid than that of the football, but Mr Bazzoli, another card sharp of a referee, had seemed willing to turn a blind eye to the countless indiscretions that went on in the second period in an attempt to keep the game eleven-a-side. However, having seen Torino's transgressors treated with a surprising degree of bonhomie in the second half, Davids bid an early retreat into the sanctuary of the away dressing-room after catching Asta with a despairing lunge as the Torino player broke into the Juventus half two minutes from time. Any sense of injustice would have been a touch melancholy, and the subsequent dismissal of Torino captain Gianluigi Lentini was enough to snuff out any such murmurings; the sequel to Davids' late flip coming when Lentini was cautioned for taking a dive.

Whether or not we will remember the 7th November for very long remains shrouded in doubt. However, they may not have heard much of Guy Fawkes in these parts, but there was enough of the combustible stuff out on the field of play at the Stadio Delle Alpi tonight to launch the Houses of Parliament into orbit, never mind the next millennium.