Jesus, HTFU, it's a bloody dance before the game, do you own little dance if you want, or maybe play rugby and beat them in a game...whinging about the Haka is just trying to cover for your own teams ineptitude when you constantly get beaten by the All Blacks....the Wallabies, the Springboks and more recently the French didn't have a problem with the Haka because they know if they play good rugby they can beat the All Blacks, perhaps the other teams just don't have it in them in playing skill?
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I was discussing for the sake of it, am I to feel now though, that you believe the Haka does nothing at all and is just a formality before a match similar to a national anthem. You see I would disagree whole heartily. Your Kiwi and obviously don't like to think of it as an unfair advantage, but surely you believe yourself it does something. Are you actually telling me that if you started for New Zealand and went out and did the Haka for the first time, you would just do a bit of a dance and get down to business. The Haka
undeniably does something for the mental strength of the players.
I would go further btw, I would say a team that takes there national anthem seriously and sings with a bit of passion gets an edge. Italy boomed out there anthem against Scotland in 2007 and scored 3 tries in 7 minutes away from home. Scotland on the other hand barely raised their voices, now its not there fault, heroic lyrics aside "
Flower of Scotland" doesn't sound great, but I would say it helped the Italians. In the 2008 6n match Ireland v France in Stade, instead of a band the French employed singers to sing the athems instead of play them. With no music the anthems sounded appalling, everyone was out of time, both teams went out and played shocking for the first 20.
These pre-match formalities do mean something, there are others too. In 2002 England were playing Ireland in Dublin. As the teams go out traditionally Ireland stand on the right and the away team on the left. Well England ran out first lead by Johnson, who decided he was standing on the right, maybe he didn't know. Ireland ran out and decided instead of standing on the left they would stand further to the right, off centre. Now before an Ireland game the President of our country (that is the equivalent of the queen for all you English, Scottish, Welsh, Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians or indeed two million Irish that live in the North on this forum) shakes all the players hands, and the red carpet is laid out in order to allow her to do this, Ireland were obviously not on this carpet and that was the controversy. Still Johnson refused to move. In a way he took a stand right at the start and set out his stall, he was doing things his way. England won that Grandslam decider, the last time they beat Ireland for 5 years.
If you disagree fair enough, but I would say most don't.
