Sunday, February 11, 2007
The art of intimidation....
I thought the discussion we had about haka and intimidation as a form of sport was interesting and worth further thought...I was thinking about other factors that can make a team intimidating and uniforms were something that came to mind. As in anything, appearance defintely matters in sports. My high school basketball team was a poor public school and we used to play huge suburban schools with lots of money. We would walk into their huge beautiful gyms and they would not only have brand new uniforms, but matching bags, shoes, sweatsuits, water bottles etc... and we would immediately feel we were at a disadvantage. I think about us though and we must have looked pretty intimidating to them as well. Besides having a much more diverse team than any of those schools, we looked kind of thrown together and our gym looked kind of rough and tough. What is different can be scary and in sports, teams that have their own special warm up routine or uniform or look to them or do a haka dance can bring their team together and use these things as scare tactics...
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1 comment:
I think that people can use that style of intimidation as a form of motivation, too though. Walking into an away stadium can be nerve racking, but I always thought how great it would be to quiet down the other team's fans; to whip the smug look of reassurance off my opponent's face.
By the way, the guy in the middle of your Haka picture is named Daniel Carter, and he is widely acknowledged as one of the best rugby players in the world. One of my favorites, too :)
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