What are the connections between rugby & ki-o-rahi?

Question

What are the connections between rugby & ki-o-rahi?

Answer 1

A direct connection is unlikely. The story went that William Web Ellis was playing football one day at his school in Rugby when he caught the ball and ran with it, and thus rugby was born. This story has been challenged, claiming that Web Ellis was in fact demonstrating an old Irish game called Caid (which is similar to rugby) and later developed into Gaelic football, although this story is also slightly dubious. There was also a game played in Wales called Cnapan which resembled rugby as well.

But European settlers who saw ki-o-rahi may have taken the idea back to England and it may have been Web Ellis’s inspiration to pick up the football, but there is no evidence to suggest this.

Answer 2

There are strong connections, going by Maori traditions. The first Europeans to NZ coveted the size and physique of the Maori warriors. They saw Maori play very fast, physical, ball games and took the physical ball playing theories back to Britain where they were discussed and generally pooh-poohed. That is until one Hongi Hika arrived in 1820 resplendent in Maori costume and 6'3" of rock hard muscle.

He had an audience with King George lV and against all odds managed to weedle sufficient presents off the King to peddle them off for several hundred muskets. Hika left the King a "koha" (gift), telling him and his courtiers, when asked, that his physique was the result of vigorous ball playing and fitness regimes.

Step in one Thomas Arnold who latched onto this "epiphany" and from it created the concept of "Muscular Christianity". He ingeniously introduced concepts from Maori ball playing into the hacking and kicking games commonly played in Rugby School . He was very careful not to antagonise parents and the general public, so he always denied he stole ideas from Hika and the 'heathen' natives of NZ.

Maori have always claimed rugby evolved out of the English mode of ground play and their more aerial passing and ball-in-hand running game.