Fox Sports 3, 5.30-10.30pm; Channel Seven, 7.30-10pm

AFL . Sydney v Collingwood. To come back briefly to Sebastien Chabal, what the hell makes a player a "cult hero", anyway? When On The Box was growing up, working the bagger's shift at a salt mine in outback South Australia by day and running tricks for the Adelaide mafia by night to pay its way through primary school, having a cult following meant having a group of teenage dorks in overcoats obsess over your every public action and public thought. That's still the case today. Philip K. Dick has a cult following. Christian Bale has one. Jello Biafra has one. Twin Peaks has one. On the evidence on Saturday night, Chabal is far from having a cult following. There were no dorks. Overcoats were aplenty, but not one was worn with cultish intent. There were no giggling, word-perfect renditions of answers Chabal has given at press conferences. There were no too-faithful-for-comfort re-enactments of moves he has performed at the breakdown. Yes, there were lots of people there who somehow thought of him as some kind of weirdo, but having people in the crowd shout out, "Hey look, it's the guy with the stupid beard!" isn't enough, on its own, to give you a cult following. Being called "Caveman" doesn't earn you, overnight, a horde of lifetime stalkers. No, Chabal is not a cult figure, much less a cult hero. He's just some bloke. It's time for the media to recognise this basic fact. In years to come, it is to be hoped that all mentions of Chabal will go along these lines: "The French, propelled by the efforts of some bloke called Sébastien Chabal, repelled wave after wave of attack"; "But Chabal, some bloke from France, proved equal to the task"; "The whole of France will be hoping that Chabal, revered throughout the country as 'some bloke', will be fit in time for tomorrow night's match." Swans by 38.

Channel Ten, 7.30-11pm

CYCLING . Stage one. The Tour is back and what a Tour it promises to be! Yes, there are some disappointments in the scheduling. The Prologue has been done away with, meaning instead of a thrilling sprint-fest through the avenues of some packed and summery European capital, we'll be treated tonight to the sight of a team tactics-first dogfight through the depopulated beet fields of Brittany. And with no Alberto Contador or Michael Rasmussen in competition, the race will suffer for the lack of, respectively, its most compelling climber and most compelling drug test truant. But that's OK, because with his two main competitors gone and only a pesky few Spanish kids to dispose of, Cadel Evans, Australia's own slightly more deserving Steve Bradbury of the cycling world, looks set to whoop his high-voiced, Tibet-loving way to the yellow jersey. (As we write, we are having an initial run of 10,000 T-shirts displaying the slogan, "Cadel Evans: The Slightly More Deserving Steve Bradbury Of Australian Cycling," printed and dispatched to a number of city boutiques.) So whip on the "Free Tibet" T-shirt and settle in for your appointment with the most exhilarating, fantastic, awesome, brilliant, yee-ha event in world sport (apart from Origin, the Ashes, the football World Cup, the Copa Libertadores, the NASCAR Nextel Cup, the semi-finals of the All Ulster Hurling Championships and any preseason fixtures Sydney FC play against Blacktown City, that is).