3: Humming Along

Most of us only get to hear other countries’ national anthems while watching international sporting events. The tradition of doing that is likely the fault of New Zealand’s famous All Blacks rugby team. The New Zealanders have been intimidating international opponents with their haka war dance since the late nineteenth century. Teams around the world have tried to come up with ways of countering the impact of the intimidating pre-game dance. Countries like Samoa, Tonga, and Fiji perform their own war dances before games. Other nations have adopted a stare-down approach. The French rugby team chose to march toward the haka-performing New Zealanders in a V formation during the final of the 2011 World Cup, played in Auckland’s Eden Park. The confrontational approach didn’t help the French team (they lost), and it earned them a £2,500 fine from the International Rugby Board, which actually has a rule about how opponents should behave during the haka — they must remain, standing still, at least ten metres on their side of the halfway line.

That rule wasn’t in place on December 16, 1905, when the All Blacks took to the field in Cardiff to play Wales. Conditions at Cardiff Arms Park were perfect. It was a beautiful day, more like spring than winter. The sunshine and warm weather encouraged people to show up hours before the game to guarantee a good spot for what was expected to be a classic encounter. The New Zealand team, who were already a powerhouse in international rugby, were on a tour of the Northern Hemisphere. They tore apart every opponent on that tour, winning all but one of their thirty-five matches. Then, as now, they started out with the haka. And then, as now, their opponents didn’t really know how to respond. But the capacity crowd of more than forty-five thousand Welsh supporters knew what to do. The correspondent for Cardiff’s Evening Express wrote that there is a “time when a Welshman must either sing or crack and he sings. He did it on Saturday.” The crowd launched into the Welsh national song “Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau” (Land of Our Fathers).

Here’s how the Evening Express described the scene:

The Blacks had brought over the Maori war song with them, and it reeked of blood. With arms extended, and with stamping feet, they faced the Welsh team, and said the most cruel things. It was good Maori, phonetically rendered, but it was in the waving of arms, stamping of feet, and screwing of chins that the strength lay. In answer came the rolling heart tones of the Welsh singing, strident with calm confidence, greatly comforting. This had a great effect on the Colonists. They have since acknowledged that it took immediate hold of them, and that Wales had already scored.

Inspired by the crowd, the Welsh rugby team handed the All Blacks their only defeat of their tour. And their supporters started the tradition of singing anthems at international sporting events.

However, there really weren’t very many international sporting events taking place at the time of that famous Cardiff rugby game. Basically, the only international teams that competed against each other in team sports were parts of the British Empire, playing rugby, football, and cricket. The arrival of the modern Olympics started to change that, but the founder of the revived Games wanted to bring people and nations together rather than to celebrate nationalism. That was the idea behind granting the Olympics to cities rather than countries. For Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympic movement, the goal of the Games was not to celebrate national achievements but individual victories. He wrote, “The important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle, the essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well.”

As we know, that dream did not last long. Sports quickly became identified with national success. They became political. From the very beginning, national success was defined by the number of medals won, flags raised, and anthems played. The slow blend of nationalism and sporting prowess was completed at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, hosted by Nazi Germany. By then, the games were no longer about the struggle; international sports were purely about victory.

Emotional though they can be, Olympic anthem ceremonies are pretty passive affairs. The occasional athlete will sing along to the recorded instrumental anthem, but there is no sense of a massive national occasion. For that, you need two teams, a stadium, and as many fans as you can pack into the grounds. There’s only one competition that brings all that to a truly global stage: the FIFA World Cup.