Rugby world cup 2015

[thejuice]

They should have the Tommy Murphy Rugby World Cup or Rugby Bihatimber

[AZOffaly]

The Rugby Bihatimber is the 6 nations.

[andoireabu]

https://youtu.be/ZlHS_Mn7nWE

This should backfire nicely on england if they meet new zealand!

[deiseach]

https://youtu.be/ZlHS_Mn7nWE

This should backfire nicely on england if they meet new zealand!

Matt Dawson: the great 'Hakarena' irritant who will never be truly important enough to hate

Dawson, who caused sides to split the country over with his oh-so-hilarious Haka parody, epitomises why people who hate rugby hate rugby
      
By Jonathan Liew

Mate, get over it. Mate, it's just a bit of fun. Mate, yeah?

In a way, it's hardly surprising that Matt Dawson has irritated the All Blacks with his utterly hilarious "Hakarena" video. Irritation is the operative word here; not anger, and certainly not hatred. Dawson will never be truly important enough to hate. And unlike genuine hatred, irritation is a tough quality to pin down, being attained not through individual acts of heinousness, but simply by a state of being.

New Zealanders temporarily outraged by Dawson's hilarious – no seriously, get some duct tape, my sides are coming apart – parody of the Maori haka are simply experiencing what all viewers of A Question of Sport or televised rugby have known for a while. Dawson would win a Nobel Prize for Irritation every year. He would turn up at the ceremony in Stockholm; make a few quips about Volvos and saunas in a needlessly loud voice; leave the stage holding aloft the giant cheque and hollering something about all the drinks being on him tonight.

If there is one definable quality to Dawson's indefinable offensiveness, it is petty aggression. He is the guy at the pub who always talk a little louder than he needs to. He is the guy who tries to race you at traffic lights. He is a Twitter banter account in human form. He is the sort of person for whom the word "mate" is not a term of endearment, but a grammatical punch in the face, an axiom to be deployed at the start of every sentence like a capital letter. There is a spiky competitiveness to him that probably came in very handy when he was playing rugby, but now just comes across as a bit weird and insecure. Mate, don't ruin this for me. Mate, don't kill my buzz. Mate, yeah?

Naturally, Dawson's achievements in the game have lent his words a certain weight, and so in retirement speaks as if utterly convinced that he is the wisest and most charismatic man in the room, even when all the available evidence contradicts this. Imagine how irritating Tim Lovejoy would be – how shamelessly self-aggrandising, how inoperably insufferable – if he had not just played professional football, but won the World Cup with England. Matt Dawson is the man you are imagining.

In fact, the two have shared a screen in the past: most notably on BT Sports Panel a couple of years ago, when Lovejoy announced with a beaming smile that the channel had secured live rights to the Champions League. Not to be outdone, Dawson's reaction was to celebrate wildly, punching the air with both fists before pointing at his studio guests and shouting: "You were here! You were here!"

Almost a decade after retirement, Dawson appears to have carved himself out a little niche, if that is what you call the curious cytoplasmic void in between the realms of the competent and the funny. It is the delusion of someone so utterly lacking in self-awareness that it is reasonable to ask whether he actually exists at all in his own right, rather than as some ghastly figment of our collective subconscious. Evidently, as this latest video demonstrates, Dawson is rather enchanted with the vision of himself as some sort of modern comedy genius: Milligan, Cleese, Everett, Dawson.

Yet while good humorists generally punch up, Dawson generally provides an object lesson in punching down, as he demonstrates by mocking a traditional indigenous Oceanian cultural expression of respect. Like many of the worst excuses for synthetic japery, it is conducted with a faintly condescending perma-sneer throughout.

Already, you can hear the rumbling sirens and flapping truncheons of the banter police. It's just a prank, though, yeah? Just a bit of fun? Like that fun prank when Derwyn Jones hit Dawson in the backside with a cactus on a 1994 Barbarians tour of Zimbabwe, and Dawson reacted with his customary good humour? "They wanted pain," Dawson recalled in his autobiography. "The blow cut me, blood started to ooze from my cheeks, and I exploded in rage."

In essence, people like Dawson epitomise why people who hate rugby hate rugby, and why people who hate England hate England. He represents the morons and the charlatans of the sport, its privileged and entitled side, and in so doing does it a grave disservice.

The truth is that rugby is much more of an inclusive, national pastime than many of its detractors would care to admit. Go to places like Bath and Exeter and Leicester and Northampton, and you will find an entirely different sort of game: a game watched by families, a game that resonates with all social classes, a reasonably-priced day out that brings communities together.

But to many casual observers, their first glance at the sport is something more prosaic. The unnervingly corporate sheen of Twickenham. Or the armies of moneyed, Jack-Wills-clad Home Counties hooligans you find in the pubs of south-west London. Or the witless, pseudo-ramblings of Dawson on television. And the danger is that people see these things, and think that's all the sport has to offer. It isn't.

And yet, perhaps it is Dawson that comes out of all this affair worse than anyone else. After all, one of the most arresting qualities of the "Hakarena" video is that the music being played bears little or no resemblance to "Macarena", the song made famous by Los del Rio in the mid-1990s. Instead, it is some of sort of generic Euro-pop track that presumably is supposed to sound like Macarena, but not enough to excite the copyright lawyers.

This, perhaps, is the final insult, the definitive yardstick of an ailing career: evidently, it costs less to hire Matt Dawson to dance to Macarena than it does to buy the rights to the song.

Mate, honestly?

[Tony Baloney]

https://youtu.be/ZlHS_Mn7nWE

This should backfire nicely on england if they meet new zealand!

Now England Rugby have hardly commissioned this. I would like to see a team go nose to nose with the All Black's when they're doing the haka.

[AZOffaly]

Did the French do that at some stage? It was electric I remember. They ended up bringing in that rule that the other team has to stand on the 10 metre line or wherever it is.

[AZOffaly]

This is what I was thinking of

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sn_ZyQ7jW9o

[deiseach]

Willie Anderson did it first - fat lot of good it did us.

[AZOffaly]

Willie Anderson looks like a lad 'fake' fighting in a pub or something. Hould me back lads...

Or a Water Protester.

[Tony Baloney]

Loads of teams have fronted them up. All hammered no doubt! Ireland did it in the 80s. The aussies used to just ignore it. I think Martin Johnson went nose to nose with one of them years ago too.

[AZOffaly]

France beat them that night I think. It was the 2007 World Cup.

[Tony Baloney]

Loads of teams have fronted them up. All hammered no doubt! Ireland did it in the 80s. The aussies used to just ignore it. I think Martin Johnson went nose to nose with one of them years ago too.

It was actually the usually shy and retiring Richard Cockerill

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9hOZRHpleH8

[JoG2]

Christ but Matt Dawson is one annoying turd of a man

[andoireabu]

I know england rugby aren't behind it and i know it's a joke but from a new zealand players point of view, it is easy motivation. And it isn't hard to understand why they could take offence. You dont want to give new zealand any reason to play harder against you, and by disrespecting the haka you do just that.

[screenexile]

Rarely you see an article that is just pitch perfect with every line and that one about Matt Dawson absolutely nailed it.

The video is hideous and anybody who has played Rugby should know that the Haka is used as a war cry yes but also as a mark of resepct and to undermine it like that is a huge slap in the face to New Zealand.

You can be sure that Lancaster and Robshaw won't be thanking 'Dawes' for it anytime soon the mouthy twat!!