"These guys look seriously happy," they'd say. "They must know something we don't. They must have something up their sleeves - apart from arms - to be looking so pleased with themselves."
See - very cunning psychological warfare.
After their happy blow-out, the boys would then be primed for champagne rugby - throw the ball around and generally enjoy themselves. After all, it's what the players themselves say in the pre-match interview.
Interviewer: "So how do you think you'll go tomorrow, Kevin?"
Kevin: "Well, Stewie, we're just going to go out there, stick to the game plan and enjoy ourselves."
So anything that gets them in happy frame of mind has got to be good.
The haka is used for all sorts of other special occasions. But the pre-stoush haka is, at root, simply a strategy - scare the bejesus out of the enemy, psyche yourself up, and so forth.
These days, opposing teams have all had haka densensitisation training beforehand. They're getting inured to the grumpy faces. Time to tweak the tikanga, move with the times, keep the opposition guessing.
Mind you, I think there's some haka fatigue out there, too.
When I was knee-high, the haka was just a now-and-again thing. First, there had to be an international team on tour and, if you were lucky enough, you got to see a test and the pre-game haka - and maybe a bonus haka if the Maori ABs were playing the touring team at your local venue.
So it was pretty special - the old tingle up the spine and all that. Mind you, it had a different feel, too - there seemed to be an awareness that the game it was preceding wasn't literally going to be a battle to the death as in days of yore, so there was none of this up-close, get-right-in-their-face stuff.
It was an expression of tikanga, but also an acknowledgement of tradition in a new context. So the haka had more of an exhibition element to it - much less confrontational, and enjoyed and appreciated by public and opponents alike.
I think the in-your-face haka in vogue in the past few decades was - and is - an abuse of a privilege.
Opposing teams were generously allowing All Blacks the expression of a ritual for which - in the days before other Polynesian teams went international - they had no equivalent themselves.
It was a disabuse, then, to use that privilege as a vehicle for overt attempted psychological intimidation.
But with the so-called Maori renaissance, the previously seldom-seen haka seemed frantic to make up lost time.
Suddenly the hills were alive with the sound of it - no longer just for the elite, now taking out the junior high jump at school athletics day seemed enough for a stirring tribute.
In fact, I even seem to remember a school assembly where - at assembly's end - Gerry Jackson received an honorary haka for having broken wind in spectacular fashion during assembly itself.
Now that was a Happy Haka.
