For New Zealand rugby the liberating effects of a cathartic World Cup victory will only reveal themselves in time. Some things, though, remain the same. It seems that the haka, the world's most famous sporting war dance, is still an unapproachably hot potato: albeit the most tediously touchy of hot potatoes, a potato warmed by its own portable fug of cultural confrontationalism.
An agreeably sporting and keenly-fought World Cup final has still somehow managed to leave us with yet another haka-related moment of deep-tedium: France have been fined £2,500 for their performance of staged passive resistance to the Maori call-to-arms before Sunday's match. Faced with the standard puzzle of how to act during the minute and a half of designated pre-match haka France chose to link arms and advance to within 10 metres or so of their opponents. For this they have been deemed to be in breach of a recent regulation on acceptable ways to face down the All Black challenge.
The New Zealand team manager, Darren Shand, is among those who have already expressed unease about the fine. But still the International Rugby Board seems intent on putting about the idea that the only appropriate response is to stand looking vaguely interested, like bum-bagged tourists on a stroll around the Maori museum rugby experience. For their part France will no doubt have been aware of the likely fine, but the World Cup final is the biggest game in the career of every player, not just those with a culturally resonant war dance. As a result the question of how best to compose themselves immediately before kick-off will have rightly taken precedence over the strictures an IRB rule composed across a committee room table.
So, here we are again: more haka-balls. The real objection to all this is the sheer tedium of it all. On the face of it the haka has everything: theatre, history, spectacle, authenticity. The enduring touchiness about its reception has glazed all of this with a veneer of unwarranted boredom. And so the on-field response, and the subsequent rumbles of outrage at the very notion of an on-field response has evolved into a brain-numbingly dull behavioural cycle, a one-upmanship of cultural offence.
Who exactly is offended here in any case? Apparently not the All Blacks themselves. The haka is an established cultural entity (it even crops up in Finnegan's Wake). Nobody minds the haka, nobody objects. And every rugby fan wants to see it performed. In any case by now the haka really should be feeling confident enough about itself to withstand a little Gallic trudging. It has after all been performed at New Zealand rugby matches for more than a hundred years and invariably received with a respectful sense of ceremony – most notably on the famous occasion in 1905 when New Zealand made their first tour of Britain and the performance of "Ka Mate" was followed by a vast Welsh crowd singing back their own anthem, not so much as challenge but as a shoulder-clapping fraternal greeting.
There has been some recent tetchiness. Perhaps the process of haka-escalation started in earnest at Lansdowne Road in 1989 when Ireland adopted the increasingly common tactic of edging closer during its performance. In 1995 at Ellis Park South Africa players approached the haka aggressively abreast in a staged and concentrated stare-down. Then there was the horrible spectacle in 1997 of Richard Cockerill going nose to nose with Norm Hewitt and being pulled away by the referee. That really was disrespectful and Cockerill was rightly censured. And so the haka itself adapted a little, tooling itself up with added aggression. The Kapa o Pango was first performed in August 2005 in Dunedin. This is the version with what has been interpreted by many as a "throat-slitting" gesture, but which is apparently a traditional Maori gesture of empowerment (which just happens to look like a throat-slitting gesture). The gesture of empowerment is in the current Kapa o Pango haka, albeit slightly modified – and it was there before the World Cup final, despite some requests over the years to have it removed, notably from Bernard Laporte when he was France coach.
The sense of a certain lingering preciousness around the haka has endured rightly or wrongly, given a little extra fuel by the bizarre scenes at the Millennium Stadium in November 2006 when the haka was performed in the New Zealand dressing room after the All Blacks refused to recreate the haka-anthem sequence from that 1905 match. Richie McCaw explained that this was because the haka is "integral to New Zealand culture" and could therefore only be performed "in the shed" if it wasn't treated with the reverence due a cultural exhibit.
At which point it is tempting to wonder if this particular hot potato, this delicate piece of living history, will ever really sit easily on an international sports field. In an age of micro-managed preparation, of warm-up professionals and full-time gurus of the tiniest minutiae of pre-match preparation, the haka stands bludgeoningly centre-stage, bringing with it the entirely incompatible gravity of supra-sporting cultural significance.
Getting rid of the haka isn't an option. Nobody wants that. But getting rid of the po-faced and rather precious ringfencing of its sole right to offer a pre-match challenge can only be a good thing. Why not just take the brakes off and offer the Maori war dance the ultimate compliment of taking it at face value, as a challenge that is there to be met in whatever way its opponents can muster. Fining France simply for walking along in a line, while opposite them their opponents are miming acts of terrible corporeal violence, just makes the whole spectacle look a little silly.
