Sunday Sep 29, 2024
Sunday Sep 29, 2024
Friday, 21 June 2013 02:34 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
The awe-inspiring All Blacks, the New Zealand Rugby team, has adopted the Haka as a thematic introduction to their encounters, a fitting prelude to the unleashing of the magic of their near irresistible onslaught on the field. For decades now New Zealand has been a towering presence in the world of rugby, a game in which their prowess is universally acknowledged.
At international levels, rugby is a game for big men with big hearts. To an uninitiated observer, a clash between two world class teams will look like a big brawl albeit with strange rules. When the final whistle is blown at these electrifying clashes there is hardly anybody in the field without serious cuts and bruises.
Unlike in games such as cricket where a good eye and timing could overcome physical limitations, rugby is essentially a game of strength and velocity. Given their obvious disadvantages, it is very unlikely that teams from South Asia could ever match up to those European and Pacific Ocean sides who dominate the game of rugby.
But the determined participation of teams such as Sri Lanka in this tough game meant for a different weight class has often won the admiration of fans all over world. It is a courageous act and a sporting gesture on the part of the minnows. And all true sportsmen have big hearts which warm to a gutsy battler.
Of course it is little difficult to understand why a Sri Lankan school team would want to mimic a war dance of a warrior culture from many miles away. What is fitting in a certain culture could look awkward, when mimicked by another, altogether different clime. Instead of inspiring awe as the Haka was intended to, the mimicry may bring humour to the observer.
It is difficult to imagine a greater contrast in standards when we contemplate the rugby played by the All Blacks and that of the poor school team in Sri Lanka! Perhaps the Sri Lankan school team wanted to convey their admiration of the rugby prowess of the All Blacks by doing their famous Haka.
But what followed was a greater disaster. The opposite team’s reaction to the Haka was an ugly physical attack on the young players, right in front of thousands of spectators. A small entertainment done in high spirits, if not misplaced enthusiasm, was replied with an assault. It was a scene that would have sickened anyone with even a semblance of sporting spirit in him. The ugly reaction by the opposite team represented a meanness far removed from the spirit of sports, to say the least.
Some of our older schools pride themselves on so-called traditions. They make easy comparisons between them and British public schools on which our schools were originally fashioned. In the stupefaction of being colonised by an alien race, it was easy to forget the unbridgeable gap between two such contrasting cultures.
On examination, these so-called traditions often amounted to the superficial. By and large, a grasp of the colonial language, donning of his dress and mimicking of his habits, after sometime came to be referred to as “traditions”. But as Kipling famously said, will the East and the West ever meet?
Obviously, the rottenness of the enveloping society has affected even our school sports. The symptoms of the crisis, in the form of bribery, corruption and violence pervade the sporting fields of the schools today. Although the majority of the stakeholders are innocent of such activity, as it happens in cultures without the potential for regeneration, they remain apathetic.
And overall even the performing standards of the various sports, as often shown by the results at international meets, have fallen behind other countries. These include much smaller and even less resourceful countries.
It is in this context that we need to view that sorry scene of the young rugby players attempt at the Haka. Even the fantasy of an All Blacks opening scene was rudely denied to them.
The challenge before the sporting fraternity of this country is obviously huge. Never has the need for big hearts and minds in the sporting administration being greater. Only transparent, impartial and fearless men of impeccable integrity can stop the decay. Some may even say that we are asking for miracles!
Rudyard Kipling also observed: “But there is neither East nor West, Border, no Breed, nor Birth, when two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth.”
