According to what was reported before Easter, today is the day Alinta sends its formal bidder’s statement to AGL shareholders – officially bypassing the AGL board and going directly to the owners.

It is possible that small AGL shareholders will say: “Goody, we can swap our AGL shares for Alinta shares, let’s rush back our acceptance.”

It is also possible that pigs will fly.

The Slug, who does not believe in flying pigs or in AGL shareholders stampeding for a piece of Alinta paper, sees Tuesday as being little more than a line in the sand, a time when both sides in the sometimes boring game of name-calling get serious.

He might be alone, but The Slug is tired of Bob Browning from Alinta saying, “I’m a better manager than you.” Or AGL’s more low-key management team muttering that you really ought to be careful in dealing with the boys from the wild west.

The time has come to take the gloves off. For Alinta to put up its offer and for AGL to counter – and that’s when things could get really interesting.

As it currently looks, Alinta is a few points ahead of AGL on the scorer’s sheet. It has landed a few good blows, such as buying 20% of its target, and a few below the belt, such as making misleading comparisons in financial performance.

In boxing jargon, Alinta has probably won the first round.

The problem for Browning and his hyper-active crew is that this looks like being a 15-round contest and that means Alinta, weighing in at a market capitalisation of $2.9 billion, must move very quickly now, or be flattened by an $8.3 billion gorilla.

But to move quickly, Alinta will probably need to dip very deeply into its war chest and fork out more cash.

This can happen if the Takeovers Panel lets Alinta drop its 50.1% condition in the terms of its takeover. Should that occur, Alinta can wade into the market, lift its AGL stake to, say 30%, and theoretically have the firepower to seize effective control at a meeting of AGL shareholders and achieve the management changes it wants.

But if the 50.1% minimum condition remains, AGL will have time on its side. It will be able to mail out its counter-bid for Alinta – effectively creating a situation of two corporations facing each other with loaded takeover bids, and two sets of very confused shareholders watching their funds being burned up in a battle of management ego.

What then? Well, The Slug is uncertain, but it is possible that unless Alinta is allowed to strike quickly, and whack some cold, hard cash on the table to buy an extra 10% of AGL, then it is in deep trouble.

When all the hoo-ha is swept aside, AGL is almost three times the size of Alinta. It also has a more conservative share register, largely made up of investors who do not like west coast entrepreneurs, and who will not have taken kindly to Alinta’s misleading financial performance comparison that involved counting its one-off profits, while eliminating AGL’s one-off profits.

In a war of words during a takeover, especially one where a share swap is the only offer, this comparison “glitch” may count for more than meets the eye because the potential free kick it provides Team AGL when it comes to asking, “Who do you trust?”

But The Slug doesn’t really doesn’t care who cleans out the gas pipes of Sydney and Perth. He’s just glad to be able to say, “Game on – at last.”