Haka sets mood to take on the world

Traditional challenge does not improve the All Blacks’ game, but does unite the team

One thing I have never understood about the haka is the opposition to it from some people in the modern game.

I am a New Zealander of Maori descent and have been performing the haka since school level, it lives with me all the time. As a player, I was lucky enough to perform it in front of several different opponents. Two in particular have always stayed with me.

My first haka with the All Blacks was at the 1987 World Cup against Argentina. I was only told the day beforehand that I would be leading it as I was the only Maori player in the side. I was incredibly nervous, it was my first cap, only 21 years old, but a great privilege.

The other one that sticks out was when the Springboks had come out of international isolation and we played them at Ellis Park in Johannesburg in 1992. We were the first team they had faced for years and the atmosphere was absolutely brilliant.

I am puzzled as to why the haka has become a talking point. It is part of rugby tradition, and performing similar war dances before matches means just as much to Fiji, Samoa and Tonga. Traditions are just as important now as they used to be.

The haka will never teach you how to play rugby. If you, as the opposition, want to interpret the haka as an advantage, then it is only in that moment that it actually becomes beneficial to New Zealand.

I have seen the opposition allowing themselves to be intimidated by the haka. But it can also have no effect whatsoever. In Perth earlier this year, the All Blacks performed a great haka… then Australia tore us to pieces.

The haka does not teach you skill-sets, or what is required to win Test matches. TJ Perenara might lead the haka, but it does not lead to him making audacious offloads for tries as he did against Namibia. That was just a moment of sublime skill.

But it does help the leader galvanise the group into thinking you are taking on the world.

The haka began evolving into something meaningful when Wayne “Buck” Shelford was playing for New Zealand in the late 1980s. We made sure that we understood the history, the haka was reset and redialled.

Before that, people did not really speak about what the haka meant, the guys would have just done it and set the precedent, not necessarily understanding what it was for.

It is now a great performance, but it is only one part of the jigsaw. The harder bit is the 80 minutes that follows.

The essence of doing it is to get yourself pumped and the adrenaline going.

Think about Richard Cockerill and Norm Hewitt when England played New Zealand in 1997 at Old Trafford and their confrontation in the middle – people love that. It was a proper stare down. It fires everyone up.

I have no problem with opposition supporters making noise during it, such as the Irish

did in last weekend’s quarter-final – the 16th man, trying to offset the All Blacks’ haka routine by singing their hearts out. New Zealand just get on with it.

With New Zealand meeting England again at a World Cup, memories of the dropped goal I scored at Newlands back in 1995 are revived. I practised dropped goals into the thousands, but in matches I only attempted three – and I scored them all, so I have a better conversion rate than Dan Carter and Jonny Wilkinson!

There was that semi-final against England in 1995, another facing the Springboks in the first Test series the All Blacks won in South Africa in 1996 and against Wales at Wembley in 1997, while the Principality Stadium was being built.

For the one against England at Newlands, we were comfortably in the lead. Me trying a dropped goal was absolutely not part of the game plan. It was just one of those things, straight out of the back garden.

He hates me for reminding him of this, but Will Carling was the England player who kicked the ball to me before I struck the dropped goal. I tell him on a regular basis. He was trying to kick it into touch and sliced it!

Tomorrow’s semi-final is going to be a tough old arm wrestle. It would have made a great final, because I believe England and New Zealand are the two best teams and that the winner will go on to win the World Cup.

It will be a proper ding-dong and this England side can deliver.

The All Blacks will have to not only repeat their performance against Ireland, but go up a notch or two from that. Hopefully the weather will be kind to us and we get a cracking game.