Picture the scene: You turn on a rugby match right before kickoff - maybe even one on FloRugby - and you see the camera capture a team making loud noises in a foreign language to go along with aggressive movements.

For those who aren’t used to the sport, the ritual can seem a bit bizarre. But for the Polynesian nations that practice the ceremonial dances/pre-match challenges you’ll sometimes see right before kickoff, they’re a vital connection to their heritage and culture.

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Pre-match challenges have been a part of rugby for nearly as long as the game has been around, and some of the most memorable moments in the sport’s history have occurred during those dances. They’re a battle cry, a fearsome declaration and a sign that something is about to go down on the pitch - all wrapped into one.

All of the countries that use traditional challenges, however, have their own unique spins on what they do. If you don’t want to get caught out calling a Samoan war dance a haka, for instance, this guide is for you.

Want to know more about rugby union’s most iconic pre-match challenges? Here’s a handy explainer about the history of each one - and some other dances you may find across the sporting world:

Haka (New Zealand)

Unquestionably the most well-known ceremonial dance/challenge in rugby, even sporting fans who don’t watch rugby probably have seen a version of the haka - used by many of New Zealand’s international sports teams - at some point. 

None of New Zealand’s national sides, however, do it better than the ones that made it what it is today, the All Blacks.

Paying homage to the country’s indigenous people, the Maori, the famous New Zealand Native squad of 1888-1889 that toured the United Kingdom and Australia, was the first known team to have performed the haka. 

The most well-known version of the haka, Ka Mate, began being used by the All Blacks in 1905, before the team debuted Kapa o Pango for the first time 100 years later in a test match against archrival South Africa.

Today, Ka Mate and Kapa o Pango are used interchangeably by the All Blacks, with the kaea (leader) choosing which haka is performed prior to a match and overall being in charge of directing players and ensuring they know where to be, what to say and what to do. 

An emotional and passionate haka prior to a big All Blacks match makes for one of the tensest pregame atmospheres you’ll find anywhere in sports, with kaea like Tana Umaga, Piri Weepu and TJ Perenara leading particularly fearsome hakas over the years.

Evolution of the haka. pic.twitter.com/4iVSNNJ6m0

— All Blacks (@AllBlacks) April 13, 2021

Cibi (Fiji)

A Fijian meke (dance), the cibi’s beginnings can be traced back to the country’s pre-independence times, when warriors would perform similar dances before and after battles against their Pacific neighbors and other tribes in the country. 

While under British colonial rule in 1939, Fiji’s national rugby team toured New Zealand for the first time. 

The All Blacks, who by then had been using a pre-match haka for a few decades, were greeted prior to each match with a cibi - a dance taught to the players by a tribal high chief after captain Ratu Sir George Cakobau decided that the Flying Fijians should have a challenge of their own to respond to the haka. 

Fiji went on to be the first team to go unbeaten in a full tour on New Zealand soil, and the cibi has stuck around as a pre-match ritual ever since.

The cibi’s wording and usage has remained mostly unchanged since Fiji’s national team implemented it, with the exception of a brief period in 2012 in which the team began using the bole, a dance with verbiage the team is accepting the other team’s challenge. 

The Flying Fijians went back to the cibi shortly after, but the Fijian Drua brought back the bole once the Fiji-based club made its Super Rugby debut in 2022, putting an exclamation point on a historic moment for rugby in the country that long had been wanting a club team at the highest level of the sport to call its own.

Siva Tau (Samoa) And Sipi Tau (Tonga)

Readily available origin stories and historical facts and figures are limited, but the tiny Pacific island nations of Samoa and Tonga stand tall on the rugby union battlefield with their own unique, passionate war dances known as the Siva Tau and Sipi Tau, respectively.

The current version of the Siva Tau used by the rugby union side was composed prior to the 1991 Rugby World Cup - the same tournament where the Samoans picked up a famous upset over Wales - with Le Manu swapping out the much slower Ma’ulu’ulu Moa for it. 

A fierce battle cry, the English translation essentially is Samoa signaling that it is ready for war; the Samoan rugby league team uses a Siva Tau with some different wording sprinkled in.

Meanwhile in Tonga, the Sipi Tau is the newest of the pre-match challenges used by rugby union’s big four of Pacific Island countries. 

Tonga, before 1994, mostly performed the kailao before matches. It's another traditional Tongan war dance that often involves clubs or sticks. 

King Tama Tu’i Tufahau Tupou IV composed the current Sipi Tau in time for the 1995 Rugby World Cup, and the Sea Eagles have used it ever since, though the length of the dance has been shortened from roughly two minutes to about 30 seconds over time.

Other Ceremonial Dances

Though the four dances/challenges listed above are the ones you’re most likely to see when watching high-level international rugby union, that does not mean that they are limited to just that sport. 

The Cook Islands, which is far more successful in rugby league than union, performs the ear-splitting pe’e before its matches, including when the Kukis played in the 2021 Rugby League World Cup in England. 

The similarly-tiny Easter Island has a local rugby team that will perform its own unique dance, the hoko, prior to a match. 

If American football is more your speed, the University of Hawaii football team has been known to do its own Hawaiian-language version of the haka known as the ha’a, with many members of the Rainbow Warriors’ roster often holding Polynesian and/or Native Hawaiian roots due to Hawaii’s remote location in the Pacific. 

High school football teams in American communities with a heavy islander population - such as Hawaii, Utah and Euless, Texas, home to a large Tongan minority - also might perform ceremonial/celebratory war dances.

And then there’s a pregame challenge/dance that South Africa - yes, really - used to do.

The indlamu is a Zulu war cry most often performed in southern Africa, and the Springboks decades ago performed it prior to some matches against New Zealand, before it was phased out over time, being erased entirely after the implementation of Apartheid in 1948. It hasn’t been used by the Boks in the modern age, but local teams in the country (like one from Soweto that World Rugby showed off in 2015) have been known to still practice the tradition.

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