Hacked off with the haka

Kingsley Amis said the most depressing words in the English language were ‘Shall we go straight in?’ — meaning no pre-dinner drinks. But for many of us it’s: ‘Tonight is the folklore evening.’ At any holiday resort in the world this signals a bloke with a balalaika and plump ladies in national dress giving it large with some traditional and intermin-able dance. Time to head for the bar.

So let’s look at the ‘haka’, the preamble to any All Blacks rugby match, and now more or less any game on the current Lions tour. The Auckland Blues had knocked one up for their Lions game this week. It was called The Power of Many and had stuff about ancestors, challenges and the sea; all the ingredients of the Kiwis’ admirable myth-making. Sir Clive Woodward tried to do the same in New Zealand in 2005 with a specially commissioned Lions anthem called The Power of Four, but none of the Lions sang a word on that tour.

There is a lot of guff surrounding the haka. My rugby-loving parents told me it was a traditional New Zealand Maori welcome, though to my childish eyes it didn’t seem so welcoming. In 1905 the All Blacks began performing the ‘Ka Mate’ haka, with rather terrific lyrics: ‘I am Death. I am Life… this is the hairy man.’ But since 2005 they have used a new one, Kapa O Pango (Team in Black), composed for them after a copyright row over Ka Mate. This has pretty terrific lyrics too: ‘New Zealand is rumbling here/ The team in black is rumbling here.’ It ends with the long slow gesture which some say represents the drawing of air from the sky, but to me looks like throat-slitting.

Clearly the haka is one of the great sporting spectacles: mighty, magnificent and intimidating.