It is at that tingling, barely perceptible stage at the moment, but it threatens to burst to the surface.
It can be seen most obviously in Auckland, where New Zealand Rugby and toothless college sports bodies have allowed to run unchecked the domination of a few schools with chequebooks large enough to take the best players from low-decile schools.
It's not the fact that these kids are often sold an unrealistic vision of a life of wealth in rugby that rankles most. Most damaging is the perpetuation of the idea that they should be grateful for being given the opportunity to escape less prestigious rugby environments.
One of the stated aims of NZ Rugby according to their latest AGM was to make rugby the game of choice for wider Auckland. By their own admission they have failed, but it is these schools and their born-to-rule old boys' networks that are actively working against that aim - making it instead the game for narrower Auckland.
This creeping elitism can be also seen in pricing, where we're asked to accept the idea that tickets to tests will be unaffordable to a large chunk of New Zealanders as if it is the most obvious thing in the world.
Said NZR chief executive Steve Tew to Fairfax a few days ago: "There's no question when you get to the [Lions 2017] test matches the prices will be familiar to people having had a World Cup and Lions tour in the past. But we've got a number of games so there'll be opportunity certainly for kids to come cheaply to watch the Super clubs."
Tew has confirmed the fears of many: the All Blacks are only available to those who can pay the most, but never mind, there's always the Blues!
Anybody who dares suggest that pricing the All Blacks for maximum return is not an ethos that sits well with the idea that they are a team for everyone is dismissed as having lost their "economic realities" faculties.
And maybe they have.
It is tough to keep producing the best team in the world and bloody expensive to provide the framework and infrastructure to enable that to happen, but I don't believe people are naïve about this.
The rugby public grudgingly accepts that daylight tests are the Hanging Gardens of Babylon - a thing of great beauty and wonder that we'll never see again. They painstakingly acknowledge that to watch the All Blacks live from the comfort of their couches, they will have to pay the broadcasters a monthly fee (which has just increased, again).
They might cringe when the front of the shirt - "it's not a jersey, it's a portal through which men pass" - is sold to an American insurer, just one more piece of crass commercialism that was captured inventively here by The Spinoff's Calum Henderson, but understood it to be inevitable.
They have long accepted that the All Blacks' mystique is available to the highest bidder, but they will surely baulk at the idea that All Blacks tests have become the domain of the corporate elite. "The team of the boardroom" does not quite have the same ring to it.
NZ Rugby is in the midst of a gilded age. The All Blacks are back-to-back world champions. They are led by a popular coach and are sprinkled with a seemingly neverending supply of stardust.
They can host a side that has played seven tests in New Zealand and lost all seven by a combined score of 284-46 and put the "Full House" signs out. They can point at those signs and say the market has spoken.
Eden Park is not sold out because they're seduced by the allure of Wales, or the night-time time elements, or the extortionately priced food and beverage; they're coming because the All Blacks are the hottest ticket in town.
And NZ Rugby are milking that for all its worth. They just need to remember, from time to time, that the bedrock of the sport here and what separates it from most of the other rugby playing nations is its egalitarian appeal. The All Blacks need to remain the face of that appeal.
Lose that and only time will tell what else you might lose in the process.
SPORTS SHAREMARKET
I'm buying... the Ali legacy
As a human he was clearly flawed but his beauty as an athlete and human far outshone his wrinkles. My favourite Ali quote: "A man who views the world the same at 50 as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life." I'm often reminded of this quote when I listen to talkback radio.
I'm selling... Queen's Birthday weekends
What a dull long weekend of sport, enlivened only by a typically unpredictable Warriors uplift. Apparently the French Open finals were good, but if you can get excited by tennis on clay, you're a step ahead of me.
I'M READING ...
This is not so much a great read on Novak Djokovic as it is a troubling read for tennis fans. It highlights the dearth of talent in the men's game below age 29. The story suggests the game might have to pin its hopes on a major breakthrough beyond the Djokovic-Murray-Nadal-Federer power bloc on Dominic Thiem and, gulp, Nick Kyrgios.
MY LAST $10
Another week, another win. Getting cocky.
Last week: In the absence of any decent rugby odds, I took a simple AFL double - North Melbourne and Adelaide to beat Richmond and St Kilda respectively. Norths won by 70 points, Adelaide by 88. It was perhaps the easiest wee $17.40 gross collect imaginable.
This week: Didn't see anything resembling value in the Wales test, but I do think the oddsmakers have over-reached on the Warriors after one good week. I'll take some of the Newcastle Knights with an 8.5-point start at $1.87.
Total spent: $170 Total collected: $245.25
