KEY POINTS:
It was, in many ways, fortunate that new life was breathed into the haka at the weekend. The Welsh rugby team's two-minute stand-off with the All Blacks following the performance of Kapa o Pango in Cardiff introduced a new and welcome twist to a relationship that was showing significant signs of fraying.
The haka was in danger of becoming a figure of ridicule both on and off the field. While overseas teams were paying it less respect, British sporting columnist Frank Keating had gone as far as to describe it as a "now charmless eye-rolling, tongue-squirming dance".
Keating's comments have attracted a predictably angry response in this country. "It's only graceless and charmless [to them] because they haven't got a culture like we've got," said former All Black Wayne Shelford, one of the haka's most passionate performers. New Maori Affairs Minister Pita Sharples suggested the English media could "get lost".
Those responses were ill-considered. Rather than chiding people for lacking a similar custom, we should be examining why there is increased murmuring about the haka.
Such is especially the case because Keating, arguably Britain's foremost sporting commentator, is not one of those writers with a chip on his shoulder about all things New Zealand. On the contrary, he is an admirer of this country and its sporting deeds. Previewing a tour here by the British and Irish Lions, he wrote of a people who were "extremely kind, warm and over-generous". And of "the boys in black [who] will come down from their green-grey, sheep-speckled hills to stifle another invasion from the Redcoats".
In 2005, when the All Blacks returned to Cardiff 100 years after the Originals' 0-3 defeat, he said this was "nothing less than the lustrous centenary of all international sport".
If Keating now describes the haka as "tiresomely irksome" and "long past its sell-by date", he is probably reflecting two currents of discontent.
The first is that the ritual has been overexposed. The sharply increased number of rugby tests has diminished its novelty. And, rather than being reserved for special moments, the haka is now used to celebrate minor triumphs or, at Olympic and Commonwealth Games, for matters as mundane as welcoming team-mates. This overkill has sponsored a lack of respect.
Secondly, while most New Zealanders cherish the haka as an expression of this country's unique heritage, it is arrogant to expect others to automatically take that view. Courtesy aside, why should we expect them to be as tolerant of the practice? Some, with a measure of justification, point to its intimidatory menace and the edge it gives the performer. Indeed, it is a tribute to the drama of the challenge that most crowds, and most teams, continue to appreciate the ritual.
Keating also laments that the haka has become "an over-rehearsed, over-choreographed produced number with a nasty malignant edge to it". This is probably a reference to Kapa o Pango, which was composed for the New Zealand Rugby Union a couple of years ago. It lacks momentum and is longer than the original haka, Te Rauparaha's. There is much to be said for the brevity and continuity of the original.
The Welsh team's theatrical reaction to the haka ensures next weekend's international against England at Twickenham will not be, as Keating would like, the haka's last public showing. Yet his criticism should not be ignored. If the practice of the haka is not moderated, there is likely to be increasing disrespect.
The haka is too important to risk that.
