My own opinion is that each team is free to do whatever warm-up ritual they choose during their warm-up time. I wouldn’t seek to curb the haka, in fact I’d encourage the all-blacks to keep doing it as many of the crowd seem to enjoy it. (I think it is self-indulgent bullshit but there you go). If the opposing teams choose to use facing the haka as a motivational tool then they remain free to do so.
However, what I would dictate, if I could, is that the very final thing to happen before kick-off is not the haka but the national anthems. Not every team has a haka but every team has an anthem so that should be the equal footing on which the game commences.
I can’t conceive of any valid complaints with such a proposal. The only reason to say no would be special pleading on behalf of the all-blacks which can and should be safely ignored. No one team should get special treatment.
As mentioned upthread, NZ isn’t the only team that does the haka, so it wouldn’t be special pleading for a single team.
OK, a small section of teams. The point still stands.
Dang! That is embarrassing although I don’t remember it like that.
At my (traditional) boys school in the 1970s we had three hakas, one of which was only performed by the First XV. However if we’d performed Kamate as pathetically as those ABs, a prefect would have sorted us out - and not in a warm embracing way. A few thumps and being made to repeat it time and again.
It was actually a matter of school discipline to perform the hakas correctly and with fire. The masters probably didn’t care but we did.
I played rugby for seventeen years, with numerous embarrassing moments along the way, some too embarrassing to ever mention to anyone, and a few for which the statute of limitations has not expired, but none were as bad as that Haka.
…you were embarrassed to perform it, or you were embarrassed to watch it?
To watch it.
…I miss-read your comment and what you meant. Just pretend I didn’t ask that question! Apologies!
:: ducks and hides ::
:smack:
That Haka and the second one on this linkseem to be all Anglos (or whatever you call white folks in NZ) and no Maori players. Maybe that’s why it was sooooooo bad?
At 1:13 on the same video, is that Stu Wilson leading the Haka? Anyone know? I had lunch with Stu at a corporate event before the IIRC All Blacks Wallabies at the start of the World Cup in Melbourne about 10 years ago. Stu was also flying on about 12 different herbs, spices and herbs that night and took it upon himself to educate the group of International Fortune 500 CIO’s with a solo version of the Haka.