All Blacks should do Haka on own time

THERE’S something about the haka – and more specifically the New Zealand haka – that just rubs us up the wrong way. We understand there’s cultural significance to it, incorporating Maori culture within the New Zealand identity. We associate it with rugby, but it has much deeper roots than that quite obviously.

Only recently footage went around social media of a haka being performed in Roche’s pub in Lyreacrompane and there was a joyousness to the cultural cross-pollination: deepest North Kerry meets the other side of the world, who wouldn’t get a kick out of that?

In the sporting context though – and we’ve written as much on these pages before – it’s much more problematic. We can’t see it as anything other than a massive unfair advantage for the All Blacks. It leaves everybody they play scrambling for a way to counter it.

Do you stand there stony-faced and emotionless? Do you link arms and eye them down? Do you, as Owen Farrell did last weekend, stand there with a smirking disdain? It’s another thing to consider for the opposition, while for the All Blacks it’s just another part of their pre-match routine, a way to psych themselves up and psych the opposition out.

And, then, when a team does find a way to counter it that works for them as England did last weekend with their V-formation it turns out they could be fined for it, for encroaching too close to the All Blacks. Honestly give us a break.

Our instinct is to ban the haka from rugby outright. At a stroke level the playing field. The thing is though that would be quite culturally insensitive, so how about a compromise? How about the All Blacks be permitted to do the haka as part of their warm-up, but they would have to do it on their own time, without the opposition having to stop and watch it?

You see it’s not so much the haka we have a problem with but the mandated acquiescence of everybody who plays them. If teams want to ignore the haka entirely that should be entirely their prerogative.