Midweek Fixture with Dylan Cleaver: Team NZ must remain in America's Cup

Sailing in Portsmouth drew a large crowd to England's south coast. Photo / Getty

My interest in the America's Cup has always been as a fly-by-nighter: engaged during the racing, disengaged and at times disgusted at the off-the-water antics in the years between regattas.

I've been as guilty as anybody as dismissing the event as a puffed-up exercise in billionaire bragging rights. There's still an element of that, no doubt, but last weekend I got the opportunity to observe what goes on in the strata below the Larry Ellisons, the Torbjorn Tornqvists and Matteo de Noras.

I was effectively embedded at Team New Zealand's base for three days (at the cost of the team), while they competed off the coast of Portsmouth in the first America's Cup World Series event in the lead-up to Bermuda 2017. I did not come down with the last rain shower - I realise that having a reporter in the camp is going to mean there will be an element of the team putting on their best face, but in truth there wasn't a lot to fake.

This is a skinny operation where everybody works long hours with the minor aim of presenting the team in a positive light to the myriad sponsors and VIPs who are a near-constant presence at the base over the three days, and the major aim of getting the prow of their AC45 catamaran over the finish line ahead of their five competitors.

At every level there simply isn't a lot of room for excess and over-sized egos. When they're not on the water, which is a lot of the time, these guys' working lives are squeezed into four shipping containers that sit inside a marquee.

This was a big event in the UK, due in part to the fact it was the debut of Ben Ainslie Racing, a local team. Hundreds of thousands of people descended on England's south coast to witness the Saturday racing. The Solent, packed with spectator craft on onshore watchers, was a massive shop window for the sport.

For the first time, I started to get a sense of why it was important that New Zealand, with its big marine industry and its production line of world-class sailors, was part of it.

Central funding is always a delicate issue, but it would seem to me that Team NZ's share of the trade and enterprise purse makes more sense than a lot of funding that gets dished out in the Sport New Zealand budget.

At the very top, the America's Cup remains a billionaire's playground and sooner rather than later Team NZ is going to have to establish a sustainable funding model that does not rely on the public purse to tide them over in that litigious lull between the America's Cup match race and the start of the next campaign (which most people understandably find quite distasteful).

But there is a big market out there for this racing, which really only became obvious among the thousands of bobbing boats on the Solent.

New Zealand is better off being on the inside looking out.

GIVE 'EM A TASTE OF KIWI...

Just to stay on a sailing theme, remember this drama?

Speaking to new Team NZ skipper Glenn Ashby this weekend, he recalled the incident and said he was on the high side of the boat and was just in the process of readying himself to jump (they had practised off a 10m platform for such an eventuality), when the capsize stalled and the boat started to right itself.

SPORTS STOCKMARKET

I'm buying... RWC 2015 Pool A tickets

A wee while ago, I would have had the Wallabies battling Fiji for third in Rugby's version of the pool of death, with England and Wales progressing to the quarters. Not now. The Wallabies dismantled Argentina in Mendoza when many people expected them to battle.

They also showed real ticker in beating South Africa after the clock ran out, when a draw was there for the taking (if it was the All Blacks, they'd be lauded for refusing to be defeated, whereas we just dismissed it as the Boks being unlucky after outplaying Australia for the majority of the contest).

We'll know more after next month, when Australia host the All Blacks in Sydney before arriving for their traditional flogging at Eden Park, but for now, I'm picking them to advance ahead of Wales come October.

I'm selling... NFL ethics

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell today upheld his own decision to suspend star quarterback Tom Brady for the first four games of next season for, in all likelihood, having knowledge of the altering of the condition of balls during a playoff game by a New England Patriot employee. Fair enough, you reckon. Cheating is cheating and good on them for coming down hard on a franchise that has earned a reputation for bending the laws of the game to breaking point.

Okay, so consider this. Brady's suspension for probably knowing about ball deflation is the same as what Pittsburgh quarterback Ben Roethlisberger got after his second sexual assault allegation in 2010.

Ray Rice, who people might remember as the guy caught on CCTV camera knocking out his fiancée Janay with one punch, originally received a two-game suspension from Goodell. The NFL clearly lives in a curious world when a vicious domestic assault is conduct only half as detrimental to the league as being aware of some air being let out of a ball.

I'M READING...

This considered obituary of Clive Rice, for so long Richard Hadlee's captain and seam-bowling foil at Nottinghamshire CCC.

OVER TO YOU

This is your chance to relive some memories, highlight a terrific grassroots sports performance, promote an upcoming sports reunion, or just send me crazy ideas. It's also not a bad spot for giveaways, if you're that way inclined. Email me at dylan.cleaver@nzherald.co.nz.

This (abridged and edited) from Irish rugby fan Adrian O Currain, following last week's Midweek Fixture.

"The excuse that Hansen came out with regarding the lineout drives by Argentina that resulted in great pack tries was not becoming of an international coach.

"For the coach to say and incorrectly followed on by the media 'experts' that lineout drives are boring is a pure sign of ignorance and showing a true lack of the 15-man game.

"It was a sad excuse by Hansen because his team utterly failed to deal with the lineout ... and he can't understand why...

"The players rely on coaches to do their homework on opposition teams before tests but it clearly showed that Hansen & Co were lacking in that department... A sign of a great coach is that he owns up and promises to remedy the problem, but to use the explanation in the press conference sparks of the dunces-hat syndrome.

"It clearly shows Hansen is a coach under pressure, is no Graham Henry, and if he doesn't deliver REWC2015 will be castigated."

Thanks Adrian, though I would urge you to read again. The issue from my perspective is not whether the lineout drive is legal (it is), if the All Blacks defended them well (they didn't), or even whether Hansen should have complained about it afterwards (he shouldn't). It is whether the modern emphasis on the lineout drive as an attacking weapon is good for rugby

I do not believe it is and agree with Hansen (who, again, should not have been the one delivering the message), when he says it is boring. There are many rugby purists who think it is integral to the sport. I accept that, but if you're in the business of trying to win new fans - and rugby bosses are very definitely in that business - then the lineout drive is your enemy.