Sometimes it can feel as if the haka’s primal intensity is diluted by its sheer ubiquity.

Take the recent America’s Cup, where New Zealand skipper Peter Burling filed into a Barcelona auditorium alongside Maori tribespeople of the Ngati Whatua Orakei. There, in front of a crowd of befuddled journalists, the indigenous troupe mounted the dais to deliver their blood-curdling war cry. It fell short, it would be fair to say, of leaving Ben Ainslie trembling in terror. “Not really intimidated, to be honest,” he said. “But it was a lot of fun.”

Such is the essence of the haka in 2024: less a spine-chilling ritual, more an elaborate cultural curiosity. Familiarity is breeding not quite contempt exactly, but a certain weariness. Back in the 1970s, when the All Blacks played England at Twickenham just three times, a haka could be a genuine event. Today, it has been so popularised that one could easily break out in the middle of a shopping centre.

To be in Adelaide’s Moseley Square on the eve of the 2015 World Cup final was to see one staged by a flash mob. When similar scenes erupted in Surfers Paradise, even a policeman joined in. Whatever next – an impromptu haka in the aisles when you order your breakfast tea on Air New Zealand?

It is a subject where sensitivities are easily inflamed. The last time I critiqued the haka in 2014, likening it........

© Brisbane Times