I don't mind they fined them... I'm sure the French don't mind paying such a small amount just to put off the All Blacks at start. All mind games...
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I don't mind they fined them... I'm sure the French don't mind paying such a small amount just to put off the All Blacks at start. All mind games...
That 1973 Haka is hillarious!
Looking at each other to copy the moves :iconrofl:
Hence why it's a joke today
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IIRC that may be irrelevant anyway. I thought the team came up with Kapo O Pango (sp?) to reflect presence of Island players in the squad. (I Think the last RWC squad had about half a dozen Samoans and a couple of Fijians - and probably a Tongan or 2)
If that's right the AB's themselves were the ones to change the tradition. So how can they demand respect for it from all and sundry? If it's true that they now do the new version when playing teams who, in their opinion, don't respect the AB's (FFS), all bets would be off wouldn't they?
October 27, 2011
OPINION
Comments 105
Ritual ... the All Blacks perform a haka on the steps of Parliament this week. Photo: Getty Images
Over the past four months more than 5000 people have bothered to comment on my columns at smh.com.au and on the National Times opinion website. That seems like a lot. I don't usually read them.
In the evolution of newspapers, internet editions run ''comments'' at the bottom of many opinion pieces, in the spirit of the democratisation that the internet is meant to represent. We no longer talk at our readers, we talk with them.
In recent months, I've noticed that the number of people who feel the need to comment on my columns has grown. The past 30 columns open for comments (not all columns are opened for comments) generated 4698 comments, an average of 157 a column. I have read very few, but made an exception this week after discovering there had been an outpouring of 566 comments to my column last Thursday.
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I had argued that sports stars have a disproportionate influence in society. I cited Lauren Jackson as an excellent role model. Conversely, with the Rugby World Cup final imminent, I argued it was possible for a country to have too much invested in a sports team, citing New Zealand and the All Blacks. The column described the haka by the All Blacks as ''the greatest ritual in world sport''. It also said ''anything less than a New Zealand victory on Sunday will be an injustice''.
But I qualified this respect by saying that rugby people grossly over-rated their sport as a world sport, and the throat-slitting gesture by some All Blacks at the end of the haka was an ugly metaphor, with ugly connotations, and had no place in world sport.
The response was an outpouring of bile from hundreds of Kiwis. The column, they wrote, ''reeks of bitterness'', ''incoherent rubbish'', ''you are just bitter that you were beaten'', ''narrow minded'', ''trash'', ''racist stereotype'', ''narcissistic, culturally disrespectful'', ''racist slurs'', ''a horrifying article'', ''you want to take away the haka'', ''absolute garbage'', ''of such a low standard'', ''a good old-fashioned Kiwi-bash'', ''please tell me this isn't your day job!!'', ''nonsense'', ''little man reaction to getting beat'', ''embarrassing'', ''an ignorant, churlish racist'', ''self-deluded and out of touch with reality'', ''old, tired, xenophobic, ill-informed gutter journalism'', and a ''bitter and twisted load of drivel''.
There were plenty of insults about Australia generally, such as ''[the haka] shows the huge gap in race relations between Australia and New Zealand'', ''if only Australia had some heritage to be proud of'', ''everyone in Australia is a redneck racist'', and ''go learn how to write a cohesive article, convict!''
Hundreds of Kiwis wrote that I was attacking the haka and wanted it banned, and that it was just sour grapes, racism and cultural ignorance. And this was about a column that described the haka, unambiguously, as ''the greatest ritual in world sport''.
There is something wrong here: it was an outpouring of dog-in-the-manger, chip-on-the-shoulder, small-country-small-minded, defensive churlishness on an industrial scale.
There was also delusion. Dozens of people wrote to say that there is no throat-slitting gesture in the All Blacks ''Kapa O Pango'' haka, just a symbolic ''drawing the breath of life into the heart and lungs, known as hauora''.
A throat-slitting gesture is a throat-slitting gesture, especially when done by men about to engage in an intense physical confrontation. When the haka was performed prior to Sunday's world cup final, some All Blacks again made the menacing throat-slitting gesture, conspicuously Ma'a Nonu, who compounded the insult by pointing at the French team as he did so.
This gesture, and the rationalisations made for it, were pathetic. Yet it was the French team who were fined for moving too close to the All Blacks.
If the reaction to my column last week was any guide to the underlying truth of what New Zealanders really think of Australians, we would have a problem. But the problem, fortunately, is much narrower. The problem is the subculture of online ''comments'', which have evolved in a way that the newspapers have not intended. This forum is becoming dominated by a certain type of reader.
The overwhelming bulk of posted comments are anonymous, spontaneous and negative, with a heavy bias to vicious. So, you get a trifecta of ignorance. I'm not sure if this cheapening of the public discourse is what the media had in mind. Comments often come from roughly 0.2 per cent of readers, so they are not even reliably representative. They are the home of a certain type of personality, encapsulated, for me, by one reader last week, ''JJ'', who wrote: ''I didn't even read any of the article. Just came straight down to the comments section to say that you are an idiot.''
My advice to people who do not like me or my columns is to stop reading them. Irrelevance is my enemy, not insult. Don't rise to the bait.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politi...#ixzz1bvdLhkzP
Kiwis are not renouned for intellectual capability
Win
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For the next Bledisloe match, how about the :wallabies: advance on the haka and Horwill throws a cheque on the ground at the end?
:lolup:
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comma after the word" grammar",please
I'm not an expert on this, and I would hate for Rex to think I was a pedant, but isn't the "double quotation marks" usually used when quoting words that were actually spoken?
In this case wouldn't 'single quotation marks' be more appropriate to highlight the word 'grammar'?...
I was talking whilst typing:D