However, opinions gathered from a few who attended the annual general meeting of the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron this week, physically or on Zoom, showed that Dalton might finally have got his point across about the finances.
Some said his presentation was too complex, but he managed to drive home that Dunphy's supposed rescue package was $50m short. He made another telling point – sponsorship (from New Zealand or anywhere) was near impossible because of the pandemic.
Sponsors wanted a clawback provision in the deal, meaning that if the Cup was cancelled or truncated for any reason (like Covid-19), Team NZ would have to pay back money because the sponsor had missed the promised exposure. Such deals are common in sport but, while a big football club like Arsenal could recoup funds with its next big gate-takings after a cancelled match, Team NZ couldn't.
Any sponsorship money would come with a spring-loaded return mechanism; the team would have to repay it (potentially all of it) if the regatta was cancelled, meaning they couldn't spend it.
That, and Dalton's insistence that taking on giants like Ineos Team UK and Alinghi with a $50m budget shortfall would only result in the loss of the Cup, might have satisfied most on why an overseas venue and hosting fee is sought.
However, some at the AGM maintained they were still confused about why the regatta could not be held in Auckland and money found locally – perhaps a sign that Dunphy's PR campaign partially succeeded, even if its only option now is legal action.
One attendee called Dunphy "impressive". Another instanced the exchange between Dalton and Dunphy at the AGM, with Dalton challenging Dunphy to say what he'd been trying to do with the New York Yacht Club. Dalton had an affidavit from the person who alleged Dunphy had been part of a conversation seeking support for legal action in the New York Supreme Court, an affidavit prepared after talk of a defamation action.
The attendee said Dunphy gave a political response (meaning he didn't answer the question), prompting catcalls from some RNZYS members. There was also a strained moment when Dunphy tried to mount the podium to address the meeting – only to have access denied, so he spoke from the floor.
The genesis of that moment probably came when Dunphy ally Jim Farmer QC withdrew his motion that the defence of the Cup be held in Auckland a couple of days before the AGM. If that motion had been passed, it would have been binding – in theory, anyway.
Farmer said Dalton had been calling RNZYS members who had signed the requisition allowing a vote to be held – persuading some to withdraw signatures on the basis that, if the motion passed, Team NZ would go into liquidation and the squadron would have no team to defend the Cup.
Farmer said there was a real prospect the motion/special general meeting would be "undermined by the threats made" and withdrew the requisition. Instead, Farmer, Dunphy and Hamish Ross (all aligned with Kiwi Home Defence) spoke in the "general business" part of the AGM, at which a vote cannot be taken.
Alternative translation: they didn't have the numbers to win the vote. Threats? It's called lobbying. Dalton was lobbying when he contacted the squadron members; KHD were lobbying at the AGM and have lobbied some overseas parties.
From the beginning, the KHD offensive has looked a lot like a takeover bid. There could be an Auckland defence if Dalton stepped down, said Dunphy in August before retracting that.
We now wait for the venue announcement. With that may come more legal action of the type that it was my grave misfortune to report on a few years back – three years of legal wrangling and tedium as Oracle and Alinghi duked it out in court before the one-on-one challenge in 2010 that indirectly led the Cup back to New Zealand.
So it's all been a bit Succession in its nastiness – and we should maybe leave with another Logan Roy quote (slightly abridged; we're a family newspaper): "Politics is what comes out of the horse's rear end. Wouldn't you rather be up front, feeding the horse?"
