Take the recent America’s Cup, where New Zealand skipper Peter Burling filed into a Barcelona auditorium alongside Māoritribespeople of the Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei.
There, in front of a crowd of befuddled journalists, the indigenous troupe mounted the dais to deliver their blood-curdling war cry. It fell short, it would be fair to say, of leaving Ben Ainslie trembling in terror. “Not really intimidated, to be honest,” he said. “But it was a lot of fun.”
Such is the essence of the haka in 2024: less a spine-chilling ritual, more an elaborate cultural curiosity. Familiarity is breeding not quite contempt exactly, but a certain weariness.
Back in the 1970s, when the All Blacks played at Twickenham just three times, a haka could be a genuine event. Today, it has been so popularised that one could easily break out in the middle of a shopping centre.
To be in Adelaide’s Moseley Square on the eve of the 2015 World Cup final was to see one staged by a flash mob. When similar scenes erupted in Surfers Paradise, even a local policeman joined in. Whatever next, an impromptu haka in the aisles when you order your breakfast tea on Air New Zealand?
It is a subject where sensitivities are easily inflamed. The last time I critiqued the haka in 2014, likening it to Cirque du Soleil, outraged Kiwis threatened to perform one outside my house at 4am.
So intense was the backlash, the column ended up leading New Zealand’s nightly news bulletin. A decade on, I have – without wishing to mobilise our friends across the oceans into more frothing tumult – a certain sympathy with Joe Marler for the vitriol he is now receiving for describing the haka as “ridiculous”, arguing that it “needs binning”.
The All Blacks perform the haka in the dressing prior to the test against Wales at Millennium Stadium in 2006. Photo / Photosport
A parade of New Zealand academics are lining up either to denounce him as tone-deaf or sneer that he might have received too many bangs to the head.
But once Marler had clarified that the haka is “only any good when teams actually front it with some sort of reply, like the league boys did last week”, you could see he had a point.
The incident to which he was referring – a decision by England’s rugby league half-back Mikey Lewis to square up to Samoa’s siva tau war dance at such close quarters that he butted heads with hooker Gordon Chan Kum Tong – was, by any standard, a rousing riposte.
It felt reminiscent of Richard Cockerill barrelling out of the Old Trafford tunnel in 1997 to eyeball New Zealand’s Norm Hewitt at haka time. Back then, the default reaction was to lampoon Cockerill, to ask why he dared advance on a sacred tradition. Now, the more appropriate question is: why not?
It has long struck me as absurd, this notion that opponents are supposed to be mute and reverential while 15 man mountains threaten to tear them to tiny pieces, sometimes adding the Kapa o Pango’s notorious throat-slitting gesture for good measure.
What New Zealanders regard as an inviolable expression of Māori pride is, for everyone else, the very definition of a psychological disadvantage. Except for years, a rule has persisted that teams must not advance beyond the 10m line when responding to the All Blacks’ challenge, never mind halfway. It is enshrined in World Rugby’s own rules, in the section marked “cultural challenges”.
Deference has become de rigueur. Woe betide anybody who rocks the boat. When Wales insisted in 2006 that the haka be wrapped up in time for Land of My Fathers, New Zealand threw an almighty fit of pique and choreographed it in their dressing room instead.
The encore two years later was scarcely less dramatic: when Wales coach Warren Gatland informed his players that the haka was technically not over until they turned away in acceptance, they chose to hold their ground, the tensions escalating into a form of Mexican stand-off.
It clearly irked Ma’a Nonu, who said: “What the Welsh did wound us up, it was really hard to accept. The haka is a war dance. If you’re going to stand there like that, then in the past people would have charged.”
Over the years, the issue has hardened into an intractable dilemma.
Do nothing in response to the haka and you risk giving ground to New Zealand. But do something, anything, beyond meek acquiescence and you are likely to spark a diplomatic incident.
Australians have conjured a few inventive solutions when the mood has taken them: David Campese simply ignored it at the 1991 World Cup in favour of a kicking warm-up, while Sam Scott-Young blew kisses at the All Blacks the following year.
Should any England player attempt the same at Twickenham on Saturday they would, in all probability, be accused of committing a micro-aggression.
It has fallen to Marler to expose the warped logic at work. On the one hand, New Zealand are at liberty to gain an edge on the field in the name of culture and theatre.
On the other, the opposition are ordered to stand there and take it. Gradually, this bizarre arrangement is being rejected. You see it in league, where Lewis confronts the intimidation head-on and is praised for his chutzpah.
And you see it in the words of the incorrigible Marler, who recognises that the haka is less a moment to be venerated than a provocation to be dealt with.
