Andy Farrell was in his element, arguably the chattiest and happiest he’s been at any of his team announcement briefings all season. He had eagerly accepted the opportunity to digress into a prolonged segue about his beloved rugby league and especially the Auckland-based franchise, the Warriors.“My connection with the Warriors is something that’s pretty special for me because when I started off my career as a young kid, I was looked after by the people that started up the Warriors. John Monie was my coach, and then he started the franchise at the Warriors. “You go into the changing room and all the names of every single Warrior that’s played for them are all around the changing rooms. Number one is Dean Bell, and he was my first ever captain (at Wigan). I’m going out for a meal with him tomorrow night.”Underdog Ireland gear up for All Blacks test Listen | 23:52Farrell then brought up Frano Botica, who played for the All Blacks and the New Zealand rugby league team. He was another Wigan team-mate of Farrell’s before he moved to the Warriors.“He (taught) me everything to do with goal kicking. I’ve kicked all my life because of Frano.”Farrell continued along the line of his former Wigan-turned-Warriors team-mates: “Andy Platt was someone that I looked up to massively, and he looked after me as a kid, as well Denis Betts, who is one of my best mates. So the connection has been there for a long time.”The Warriors coaches were pitchside while Ireland trained on Tuesday, before Farrell and his assistants paid a visit to a Warriors session on Wednesday evening.But neither coaching ticket will be able to watch the other in action this weekend as the Warriors’ game against the Dragons at the Go Media Stadium kicks off 25 minutes after Ireland’s Nations Championship clash against New Zealand at Eden Park, just 12km over the road.Robert Baloucoune during Ireland's captain's run at Eden Park ahead of the Nations Championship fixture against the All Blacks on Saturday. Photograph: Billy Stickland/Inpho The latter is set to be a 46,500 sell-out, but so to too is the 25,000-capacity Go Media Stadium. The Warriors sit second in the National Rugby League with the Dragons bottom of the 17-team ladder.There was a time when the Warriors wouldn’t have dared to go head-to-head with an All Blacks game. But then again, there was also a time when Super Rugby was virtually the only show in town. Not any more.It’s hard to think of a bigger change in the New Zealand sporting landscape since the late 1990s/early 2000s than the rise of rugby league. Back then, Super Rugby drew huge crowds to Eden Park to watch a generational Auckland Blues team play outrageous rugby with Carlos Spencer in his pomp.“We had an outhalf who was given licence to play what he saw in front of him,” Doug Howlett said of Spencer. “We were always alert to anything, because we didn’t know what he was going to do next – offloads, passes out the back, between the legs.” It was a golden era for the sport, when Super Rugby budgets dwarfed that of the Warriors. Now, it’s the other way round. The Warriors have millions to market their game now while the balance sheets of other sides pale in comparison.It also looks like this pattern is trending in one direction, given the NRL recently signed a 500-million-per-year television deal, covering both terrestrial and pay-per-view, and there’s a widespread expectation that a second south island New Zealand franchise is on the way, most likely in Christchurch.A mural of the All Blacks at Eden Park. Photograph: Billy Stickland/Inpho The lure of the All Blacks is still enormous, but rugby league can offer financial incentives to players which exceed that of Super Rugby and certainly the provincial rugby union teams. Warriors scouts now openly attend matches involving the leading rugby union schools and have a thriving underage programme.This is compounding the lure of professional contracts in Europe – be they in the URC, the English Premiership, or, especially, the Top 14 in France – which has further weakened playing levels provincially and in Super Rugby. European rugby offers greater variety and riches than a domestic career outside the All Blacks, or for those nearing the end of their playing days. In this light, the loss of the South African franchises to the URC has been keenly felt.As Keith Gleeson outlined last weekend, the decline of Super Rugby in Australia is bad for New Zealand rugby too. It’s likely that the All Blacks’ upcoming tour to South Africa (with a further Test in Baltimore, USA) is to compensate for the South African sides switching to the URC.But the threats to rugby union’s hegemony in New Zealand don’t stop there. More and more schoolchildren are now turning to basketball. This has, in part, been inspired by Steve Adams, a professional player for the Houston Rockets who has been playing in the for 13 years. Rowing is also an increasingly popular sport for young Kiwis, although that’s predominantly in private schools.TVNZ presenter Andrew Saville, who has been on the rugby union beat since the early 2000s, shares the concerns of many New Zealanders concerned about the future of rugby union there.“The current All Blacks team could win the World Cup next year, but I worry whether they’ll have a team good enough to win it in the future because of what is going on,” he says. “I fear the horse may have bolted.”