It’s game on!

After winning a fifth race to beat Artemis in the last contest of the qualifying round, Emirates Team New Zealand has made their way to a highly-anticipated clash with Oracle in the America’s Cup final.

The stage is set. The contest will be close, and New Zealand will have the chance to once again make the America’s Cup New Zealand’s Cup.

But some are already saying this year’s final could be overshadowed, perhaps even marred, by the fact the America’s Cup is a terrible, overly complicated, comically litigious excuse for a sport where the winner makes the rules – often for their own benefit – and nobody in the world actually cares about it anyway.

It’s a minor gripe to be sure, but some are already cautioning organisers to be wary, and not let it take away from the spectacle.

Oracle’s Jimmy Spithill conceded there was a risk, albeit only a small one.

“I don’t think too much about that, and ultimately, I think that’ll all come out in the wash,” he said. “The America’s Cup will be raced, it will be watched. It has too much of a rich history to be marred by the fact it’s objectively terrible, pointless, and should never happen again.”

Team NZ helmsman Peter Burling agreed.

“It’s a problem, to be sure,” he said. “But it’s just one problem. You don’t do away with an event just because you should for every conceivable reason.”

Radio Sport commentator Tony Veitch thinks the boys have it right.

“Definitely,” he said. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my career, you don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. You can’t take one thing. You have to look at the whole picture.

“For example, I broke my wife’s spine, never behaved remorsefully, and lashed out at people for caring, but that doesn’t make me a bad person, now, does it?”