Seasoned campaigner Keven Mealamu says the Kiwis haven’t paid too much attention to the mocking dance, which mixes the All Blacks pre-match haka with the dance from the 1994 Spanish hit song Macarena. The haka is very meaningful to us.
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“We want to see men and women doing the Hakarena while the world celebrates one of sport’s most exciting tournaments”.
This time it was about an apparent disrespecting of an important element of New Zealand’s culture, and Mealamu clearly felt on safer ground when asked about the challenge posed by Argentina’s front row at Wembley on Monday which is likely to include hooker and captain Agustin Creevy.
The All Blacks, however, shrugged off the issue.
Mealamu then politely changed the subject, “To be honest, we’ve got a game to play this week – we’ve got bigger things to worry about”. “The world champions are in amazing form, with awesome power, strength and depth”, he announced in the video, in which he was accompanied by members of the Battersea Ironsides club.
Dawson, tongue firmly in cheek, called his “hakarena” England’s “secret weapon” against the All Blacks.
“A choreographer came down and showed us the moves and we all picked them up pretty quickly”.
Somehow, we don’t think we’ll be seeing Chris Robshaw and co performing the dance when they line up against Fiji on Friday.
Dawson took a light-hearted view, telling paperblog.com: “I thought my professional dancing career was over when I was runner-up in Strictly back in 2006, but as you can see I’ve still got a few killer moves left”.
“We were all up for it and had it down in about 15 minutes”.
All preposterous, of course, and prop Wyatt Crockett – heralded by World Cup statisticians as the most successful Test player in history, with just one defeat in 40 matches – was determined to treat it as such.
As an antidote to the Dawson farrago, All Blacks legend Jonah Lomu performed the haka as it was intended on Wednesday.
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“For us it brings us together as a team and a country”. Remember Australia’s attempts to drown it out with renditions of Waltzing Matilda?
