John Roughan: The future of rugby and the America's Cup is at stake

New Zealanders are battling for the soul of two sports this weekend. Photo / Stephen Parker

As we wear the black undies today and lay out the red socks for tomorrow, spare a thought for Steve Hansen and Sir Russell Coutts. They have one thing in common. Both will be watching their teams compete for something greater than a series. They are defending the state of their game.

Admittedly, that is where the similarity ends. The Lions pose a deliberate, tactical threat to the game rugby has become; Emirates Team NZ would not deliberately reduce the spectacle Coutts has made of the America's Cup. In fact Grant Dalton insists his syndicate is fighting for the Cup's future. It hasn't signed up with the other syndicates to maintain its present format and presumably thinks it could produce an event even better.

The way his operation is performing in Bermuda suggests anything is possible. Those four wins last weekend were magnificent. The team didn't say much, didn't worry about two round-robin defeats by Oracle, just put their heads down, cycled and sailed that boat as fast as it has been designed to go in light wind. The results were a sparkling testament to the designer and weather forecasters as well as a level-headed young helmsman and an agile crew.

Now we all wait to see what Coutts and company have in reserve. They will want to win at all costs, as do Warren Gatland's Lions.

It is not looking too easy for the All Blacks tonight, as it did when the tour started. For that I'm grateful. The Lions can play. Unfortunately, they do not play the game New Zealand does.

To watch northern rugby ruled by a northern referee, as we've had to watch a couple of times on the tour so far, is a depressing experience. They play for scrum penalties. In the southern hemisphere we can't understand scrum penalties. To us a scrum is a restart, to the northerners it is the nub of the contest. It's about pushing one of the other side's props down to get a penalty.

I've never understood why this matters. Who cares if a scrum goes down? Get the ball back and play. But then, if the ball comes back to them they just kick it to set up another scrum. The northern game is about keeping within range of the posts for penalties.

How northern rugby retains an audience is one of the great mysteries of our time, but it does. The evidence is once again right here in the banks of red jerseys at the games. Lions supporters have taken over our stadiums much as Kiwis have colonised Bermuda at the moment. The visitors will whoop and cheer in ecstasy at the sight of a scrum heave.

It is not just sad, it's dangerous. Because if they happen to win playing this way, or worse, force the All Blacks to win this way, our rugby might lose its nerve. I'm serious. We can win this way, we used to do it with regularity when I was growing up, and we still have rugby enthusiasts, calling themselves "purists", who say this is the way it was meant to be played. It wasn't supposed to be pretty.

I'm not sure whether Gatland shares this view or whether he just plays to his team's strengths. Like him, I'm not sure what "Warrenball" is. It looks like standard northern tedium to me.

Notice something. The protagonists on both sides of these contests are Kiwis. Hansen, Gatland, Dalton and Coutts. It is another sign, I think, of how outgoing New Zealand has become. "Outgoing" is less grand than "global" or "international" but means the same. A tiny population is producing people who do not just succeed in international activities but dominate them, so much so that they can turn them into a New Zealand industry.

Gatland is just one of many Kiwi coaches of other country's teams, which often also contain one or two Kiwi expat players. Coutts seems to be drawing Oracle's shore crew from Warkworth. A Kiwi at Bermuda, Cara Carpenter, describing herself as "a mercenary's wife" had a letter in the Herald on Thursday suggesting the media and ETNZ supporters are unduly small-minded about the America's Cup.

"Forget about being the underdog or the only one battling to 'save' the Auld Mug from the evil empire," she wrote. Bermuda had produced, "some of most amazing racing and sportsmanship" she had seen. "I would hate to see this go back to the nasty, elitist and litigious event it was..."

We are about to see two battles for the soul of these sports. Hansen's starting team tonight lacks a truly reliable penalty kicker. If they win well the game is safe from the purists for another week and we can worry about what Coutts has in store. It might not be pretty.