Haka in sports
the use of a traditional Māori dance by sports teams
Haka, traditional dances of the Māori people, have been used in sports in New Zealand and overseas. Haka are performed to challenge opponents before matches. The dance form has been adopted by the New Zealand national rugby union team, the "All Blacks", the Māori All Blacks, New Zealand women's national rugby union team, the "Black Ferns" and a number of other New Zealand national teams perform before their international matches; some non-New Zealand sports teams have also adopted haka.
History
In 1884 the first New Zealand rugby union team to visit Sydney performed a war cry described by The New Zealand Herald as "the New Zealand football cry, 'Ake, ake, ake, ake, kia kaha' (for ever, for ever keep up your courage; go on with vigour.)"
During 1888–89, the New Zealand Native team toured the Home Nations of the United Kingdom, the first team from a colony to do so. It was originally intended that only Māori players would be selected, but four non-Māori were finally included. As the non-Māori were born in New Zealand, the name "Native" was considered justified. The team performed a haka before the start of their first match on 3 October 1888 against Surrey. They were described as using the words "Ake ake kia kaha" which suggests that the haka was not "Ka Mate".
The "Ka Mate" haka was not well known at this time. In 1900, a newspaper reported New Zealand soldiers in the Boer War chanting "Ka Mate!
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Haka in sports” as the use of a traditional Māori dance by sports teams. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q25210843. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1884, 1888 and 1900.
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This entry incorporates text from “Haka in sports” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.