I remember the first time I saw them, wandering into my dormitory’s common room one Australian autumn night in May. The sounds of crowds cheering, air horns blaring, and the oddly laser-like rugby whistles had been filtering out of the heavy green door for a half hour already, so it came as no surprise when I found the usual sole audience member comfortably in place on the couch. As one of the only college residents heavily invested in rugby, Jayden Conaghan, a medical student at the University of New South Wales, is perhaps the common room’s most frequent visitor, often found in onesie pajamas deftly alternating focus between physiology notes on an iPad and the game on television. This time around, the game in question was the annual Pacific Rugby League International test match, a fierce rivalry between the Polynesian island nations Tonga and Samoa. “Come on over,” Jayden beckoned. “They’re just about to do the war dances.” The war dances? I racked my brain, trying to think of a comparable American tradition. Touchdown victory dances in football? Probably not—the match hadn’t even started yet. Pre-game rituals like LeBron’s chalk toss? Unlikely. Maybe even WWE grandstanding? Equally far-fetched.
What followed was instead one of the rawest, most hair-raising confrontations I have seen televised on a major network in any country. There is truly nothing like it in the United States, and its celebration as part of the Australian athletic tradition speaks to the sheer toughness ingrained in their national sports culture. I was enthralled as the event unfolded before me on screen:
The two competing nations’ teams emerge from the catacombs on either side of the Parramatta Stadium onto opposite sides of the field. Full church choirs sing their respective national anthems, and the sports network broadcasts shots of certain zealous audience members, decked head to toe in their country’s colors, belting their hearts out. The rugby players, too, sing along, their faces stern, their eyes slightly narrowed, devoid of fear, channeling intensity and aggression. Although the anthems resemble Latin church hymns, wafting melodiously upwards in a kind of divine harmony (doubtless unachievable via a single pop star at an American baseball stadium), their lyrics are fighting words, with bits like “My strength is at its peak / make way and move aside.” Adjacent to each team are three muscular, shirtless, tattooed men, dressed in tribal garb: heavy-looking, intricately sewn garments, colored wreaths. They carry wooden clubs carved with geometrical designs.
But the war dances are what everyone is waiting for. Formally, they are challenges to the opposing team, but oftentimes, I’m told, they can make or break a match:
Tonga and Samoa walk toward the center of the field, players interlocked as one giant wall. The crowd roars again as Samoa form a huddle around their captain, who turns slowly at the center of the circle in order to make eye contact with each team member individually. He barks in the Samoan language, receiving a series of synchronized claps in return. When the huddle breaks after one massive chant, it’s like a switch has been turned. The crowd is ecstatic, but the players have entered a different level of consciousness entirely, striding into formation with a newfound savagery. Their eyes are big and wild, and they stand at full height, chests puffed out, shoulders spread wide. The war dance begins, and they roar in unison, limbs lashing out in quick jerking motions. They brandish imaginary spears above their head, shout war cries in their native tongue. The crowd feeds off their energy, becoming louder still. As the dance progresses, they move closer and closer to their opponents, emboldened with each step. Moments before it appears as though an actual brawl will break out, the whole thing ceases abruptly. Then Tonga has its turn, a similar display. By the end of each nation’s dance, the two rival teams are mere feet from one another. They never break eye contact.
Jayden and I sat in silence for the entirety of the performance. Given the chills running up and down my own body as I watched the rituals on an iMac-sized TV in our sparsely decorated university common room, I could only imagine the kind of electrically-charged testosterone boost they induce in actual participants on the field. According to Jayden, who himself plays on a number of rugby teams in Sydney despite being a full-time medical student, the dances are “choreographed by [the nation’s] culture from way back in the tribal period hundreds of years ago.” Their enactment today “gets people engaged with their ancestors” in a way very few other traditions could. Of course, Tonga and Samoa aren’t the only nations capable of such an aggressive pre-match ritual. Island nations like New Zealand and Fiji also have their own dances. Although they are unique in many ways, they all share some key characteristics, namely, that their tones are guttural and animalistic and that the body language at least one point viscerally evokes the act of tearing someone’s head off.
U.S. sports tend to start off slow, in comparison. The first quarter, the first lap, the first leg of the 4x400 relay—they aren’t nearly as important as the last. We crave the buzzer-beaters and last-second comebacks because they are the peaks of intensity, because they provide a surge of adrenaline and excitement. But for international rugby matches, including any one of the many nations with tribal history, the intensity often reaches its peak mere minutes before the first play.
What’s fascinating is that if a country’s team has no war dance, they have no defense. They simply stand, arms locked around each other, watching as the opposing team’s members reenact scenes of tribal battle and brutal murder. They scowl, jaws set, eyes unblinking, while the crowd roars as if from the stands of an ancient gladiatorial coliseum. In the final match of the Rugby World Cup in 2011, for instance, as the New Zealand All-Blacks executed one of the most ferocious hakas ever performed, the French rugby team had no choice but to stand in an arrow formation, awaiting their defeat at the hands of one of the most fearsome and highly-trained rugby squads in the world. You had to feel bad for them.
Gabriel Spadaccini graduated from Georgetown College in 2017 with a double major in music and English. He studied abroad at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia during the spring 2016 semester and blogged for the Junior Year Abroad Network.
