Could it be that Irishness itself is the problem?

Before we reached that conclusion, we’d need to define “Irishness”. And maybe it’s the straining for that definition, more than anything else, that has been the problem.

If sneering at vicious parochialism makes me rude and stupid then yay! I am glad to be so unenlightened.

I think you’re wrong in finding several of the commenters on this thread (myself no doubt among them) viciously parochial. Be that as it may, with that last sentence you’ve written something with which I am happy to concur.

If sneering at vicious parochialism makes me rude and stupid then yay! I am glad to be so unenlightened.

I think this pretty much sums up my views of the haka debate too.

I’m english so I’ll spell it however I like, thank you.

Just as you wish, of course. To quote something somebody once wrote somewhere, “I don’t demand any pious acquiescence…. It’s up to you if you want to continue looking rude and stupid, but don’t say you weren’t warned.”

(In fact it didn’t even click after dsquared’s not-so-gentle rejoinder – only when I looked at the graphic at the top here and finally realised that it wasn’t a screenshot from a crazy 80s video game).

But yeah, as we aussies say dsquared was being up himself in his earlier comments.

Sorry – I didn’t mean to make a secret of it in the first place. That said, much humble pie to be eaten after the shocking Irish display last night.

dsquared, I recall you writing with a very english turn of phrase in a thread somewhere and assuming the rest. It is not actually your view of the haka which caused me to think this, but your use of words like “arsey”. Please forgive my assumption.

What part of thinking only European forms of celebrating identity are OK isn’t “racist and disrespectful to Maori culture.”

Can’t speak for anybody else on this thread. But I think what I want to say is that the haka (as preliminary to a rugby match—can’t really speak as to whatever other cultural significance it has, and recognise that it may have worlds of meaning elsewhere) is no more and no less silly than (say) the Welsh goat. You don’t want us to diss the Maori. I’m 100% with you there, actually. But don’t ask us to romanticise them either. One might even argue that’s its own, rather subtler form of racism.

BTW, I hope you don’t take away from all this that I dislike the haka. Very much the opposite. Indeed, I think about the haka a lot, and what it means for a country comprising settlers and natives (or, at any rate, settlers and much earlier settlers). One of the things I like about rugby is that it is organised on an all-Ireland basis. I have always wished Irishness might once more be as inclusive as Irish rugby is. It breaks my heart a little, then, that there is no functional Irish equivalent to the haka.

Well I’m afraid that a comment like that just betrays your “anyone but England” mentality: you obviously weren’t watching the rugby. England have been struggling for a long time, and I lost count of the number of consecutive matches they lost under Andy Robinson. Yes they were poor, yes the USA did well – but “highlight so far”, in a tournament where the host nation got turned over by the underdog in the opener? I really don’t think so.

yes, you are presuming, aren’t you, rather a lot, and being (un)surprisingly arsey about it.