Inviting utu
Responses to the haka can have unintended consequences.
The myth that to “disrespect” the haka is to invite the All Blacks to strike down upon you with 80 minutes of great vengeance and furious anger is based on two games.
In dreadful conditions at Athletic Park, Wellington, in 1996, the Wallabies supposedly galvanised the All Blacks into one of their greatest performances by turning their backs on the haka. Then-All Blacks coach John Hart’s book Change of Hart has an entire chapter devoted to that 43-6 victory; the so-called calamitous and decisive blunder merits a single sentence: “The mind games continued right to the opening whistle: the Wallabies ignored the haka, preferring to go through warm-up routines down in their 22.”
And, in dreadful conditions at Lancaster Park, Christchurch, in 2005, British and Irish Lions captain Brian O’Driscoll responded to the haka by kneeling down and plucking a blade of grass, as he was apparently advised to do. In next to no time, he was out of the game and the tour after suffering a dislocated shoulder as a result of a double ruck clean-out – or spear tackle, if you’re British or Irish – by All Blacks captain and haka leader Tana Umaga and Keven Mealamu. The All Blacks won 21-3.
Umaga had this to say in his autobiography: “We’d supposedly regarded [O’Driscoll’s gesture] as disrespectful. The truth was we didn’t care what they did. I noticed him doing it but just thought, ‘Oh, that’s different.’ Opposition teams had tried a variety of responses and our attitude was always the same: whatever.”