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Watch: Crowd drown out the haka as England players unmoved
The Twickenham crowd got in behind their England side as their players failed to respond to the challenge of the New Zealand haka in their Autumn Nations Series.
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There was much talk pre-game about how Eddie Jones’ side would respond to the cultural challenge but England players just stood there and watched.
The crowd however played their part, with the traditional Kamate largely drowned by the vast majority of the 82,000 attending in West London, who kicked into ‘Swing Low’ as soon as the New Zealanders started.
Richard Cockerill had implied that the players would respond the much loved traditional, as Cockerill did many moons ago.
“It’s a home game and we want a partisan crowd who are on our side. If the fans can drown out the noise of New Zealand doing the Haka then let’s bring it on,” the former Leicester hooker said.
“Is it a challenge or not a challenge? We’ll respect it how we want to respect it. It’s a psychological advantage for them and we will deal with it how we feel is right.
No response from the players but the crowd deployed 'Swing Low' to drown out the visitors. #ENGvNZL | Credit: @autumnnations pic.twitter.com/Dtj5TPWCS0
— RugbyPass (@RugbyPass) November 19, 2022
“I have no regrets over what I did and I think it’s a sign of respect for the Maori culture. It’s great theatre and it will be part of a big day.
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“I think the Haka has become a little bit sterile and too much is made of it when people do different things towards it. That’s overplayed.
Whatever the England players did or didn’t do, it certainly didn’t appear to work for them. The All Blacks had scored 14 unanswered points with just 10 minutes on the clock, with the men in white looking like rabbits in the headlights.
England eventually hit back through an Owen Farrell penalty but Eddie Jones will no doubt be pulling what’s left of his hair out at England’s turgid start to the game, a trend they have vowed to address.
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If rugby wants to remain interesting in the AI era then it will need to work on changing the rules. AI will reduce the tactical advantage of smart game plans, will neutralize primary attacking weapons, and will move rugby from a being a game of inches to a game of millimetres. It will be about sheer athleticism and technique,about avoiding mistakes, and about referees. Many fans will find that boring. The answer is to add creative degrees of freedom to the game. The 50-22 is an example. But we can have fun inventing others, like the right to add more players for X minutes per game, or the equivalent of the 2-point conversion in American football, the ability to call a 12-player scrum, etc. Not saying these are great ideas, but making the point that the more of these alternatives you allow, the less AI will be able to lock down high-probability strategies. This is not because AI does not have the compute power, but because it has more choices and has less data, or less-specific data. That will take time and debate, but big, positive and immediate impact could be in the area of ref/TMO assistance. The technology is easily good enough today to detect forward passes, not-straight lineouts, offside at breakdown/scrum/lineout, obstruction, early/late tackles, and a lot of other things. WR should be ultra aggressive in doing this, as it will really help in an area in which the game is really struggling. In the long run there needs to be substantial creativity applied to the rules. Without that AI (along with all of the pro innovations) will turn rugby into a bash fest.
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24 Go to commentsHow did Penny get the gig anyway?
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23 Go to commentsBilly Fulton 🤣🤣🤣🤣 garrrmon not even close
14 Go to commentsDoes the AI take into account refs? hahaha Seriously why not have two on field refs to avoid bias?
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