New Zealand Rugby Quotes

A truly enlightened attitude to language should simply be to let six thousand or more flowers bloom. Subcultures should be allowed to thrive, not just because it is wrong to squash them, because they enrich the wider culture. Just as Black English has left its mark on standard English Culture, South Africans take pride in the marks of Afrikaans and African languages on their vocabulary and syntax. New Zealand's rugby team chants in Maori, dancing a traditional dance, before matches. French kids flirt with rebellion by using verlan, a slang that reverses words' sounds or syllables (so femmes becomes meuf). Argentines glory in lunfardo, an argot developed from the underworld a centyry ago that makes Argentine Spanish unique still today. The nonstandard greeting "Where y'at?" for "How are you?" is so common among certain whites in New Orleans that they bear their difference with pride, calling themselves Yats. And that's how it should be.

Fresh start. Day two, socks around my ankles, way down, two Maori boys approached me before I could get to my desk. Probelm solved. That day and in the many enjoyable ones that followed, my classmates asked me dozen of questions about America, while detailing essential subjects for a New Zealand boy in 1976, including lollies, meat pies and chips, cricket and rugby, ABBA and Tintin comic books, and why their relatives with tattoos on their face did that funy dance while sticking out their tounges.

The best nicknames that I have ever come across: -Dai Young (ex-Wales rugby prop, current coach of Wasps) –‘Only the Good’. -Billy Twelvetrees (England rugby centre) –‘36'. - Martin Offiah (ex-rugby league legend)–‘Chariots’ - Nia Wales (ex-work colleague) –‘Chester’ - Fitz Hall (QPR defender) –‘One size’ -David Jones (lower league rugby player who had half an ear bitten off) –‘Dai 18 months’ - The New Zealand junior rugby team -the small blacks -The New Zealand basketball team -the tall blacks

You Are Not Your Jersey “Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.” - Colin Powell The New Zealand All Blacks (national rugby team) have a mantra: “Leave the jersey in a better place”. It means, this is not your jersey, you are part of something bigger but do your best while you wear the jersey. It provides a valuable lesson about enjoying your moment in the sun but letting go to pursue another one once your time ends. When I played in Toulouse they had the same mindset. The club only contracted a certain number of players each year and there was a set number of locker spaces. Each locker was numbered in such a way that was not associated with a jersey number and that was also the number you wore on your club sportswear. Some numbers were 00, others were 85 and mine was 71. When I joined the coach explained to me in French that this was not my number, but I was part of a tradition that spanned decades. My interpretation still remains, “You are not your jersey.

So, fast forward from Cardiff 1997 to Auckland 2011, from a Rugby World Cup quarter-final to a World Cup final, from a team heading towards defeat to a team heading towards victory. It’s the same two sides playing: New Zealand vs. France. It’s just as tight, but this time New Zealand lead by one point. Read the body language. Richie McCaw breathes, holds his wrist, stamps his feet – reconnecting with himself, returning to the moment. He looks around. There are no glazed eyes now. No walking dead. Brad Thorne throws water over himself, cooling his thoughts. Kieran Read stares out to the far distant edge of the stadium, regaining perspective. New Zealand, the stadium of four million people, is less calm. The dread casts a long black cloud. The spectators can’t help but flash back to the bad pictures. They are in the Red, but the All Blacks stay in the Blue. The clock counts itself down, slowly, slowly; until finally . . . the whistle blows. 8-7 New Zealand. ‘We smashed ’em,’ says Graham Henry. And in their heads, they did.

Even when you can only see part of the moon, the rest is still there.

The union team of New Zealand's national sport of Rugby has incorporated the static posture of the Haka war dance into its symbols. That symbol of the sprawling arms and legs is similar to that of the Dogon's Kanaga mask which I trace back to Egypt; it resembles the Ka signaling the beginning of the solar and/or lunar cycle based on the Egyptian theology when Osiris proceeds from the Great Pyramid (which is the House of Ka) into the Duat.