Haka

Writing about the All Blacks made me think of another bit of New Zealand trivia for you.

Maori have a style of dance called Haka.  It's performed by groups of men, women, or children, and can be done for fun, celebration, or welcome.  The dances involve lots of posturing with knees and elbows akimbo, rhythmic chanting and slapping of chests/thighs, and facial contortions like showing the whites of one's eyes and sticking out the tongue.  A vaguely creepy version of a hula dance.

There is also a war haka.  Fur-clad, be-speared, facially-tattooed warriors performed this prior to going into battle, preferably with their opponents worriedly watching from a distance.  The odd postures and unsettling facial expressions are exaggerated relative to a non-violent haka.  Lyrics are aggressive and delivered loudly in an antagonistic style.  The idea is to suggest to the other guys that they might wanna re-think their plans, because they're dealing with some guys who are not only awfully big, but also clearly crazy and will not be fooling around with this business of fighting.

Fittingly for their game strategy of 'winning isn't enough, we want the opponents to have to be carried off the field,' the All Blacks perform a haka prior to every rugby match.  So the French team or whoever stand there on the field with nothing to do but watch while these oddball New Zealanders go off their meds in front of them.  I bet a '1-2-3-GO TEAM' doesn't quite fire you up the same way after seeing that.