1 The All Blacks Now dumbed down into rugby union foreplay, the haka began in legend with Tanerore, son of the Maori sun-god Ra, who invented a hand-waving, foot-stamping dance to entertain his dear old mum, Hine-raumati. Soon, different haka were used whenever different Maori tribes met. New Zealand’s rugby tribe adopted the Ka mate variation, which, in what could have been a reference to modern-day flanker Reuben Thorne, speaks of “the hairy man who will cause the sun to shine” and first performed it on their 1888 tour of Britain. They’re still doing it today, which is sweet, although the new Kapa O Pango was unveiled to an overseas audience in South Africa in August. In the country with the world’s second-highest murder rate, it climaxed with a throat-slitting gesture. This has upset many rugby purists, who feel that it oversteps the mark in its aggressive gesture and has little to do with the sporting dance that set out to inspire generations of All Black teams. The jury is definitely out on this one. Watch this space.
2 Diego Maradona Dancing With The Stars (the Italian version of Strictly Come Dancing) was ideal for Maradona to show off his newly stapled stomach to Italians every Saturday night. Twinkle-toed on the pitch, there seemed no reason why the Trim One couldn’t be the wizard of the dancefloor. Dance coach Angela Panico said: “He’s very good, especially on tango and cha-cha-cha. He’s got rhythm.” Alas , the commute from Buenos Aires to Rome proved too much, and Maradona retired early, claiming doctor’s orders, although some cynics suggested his departure was more to do with an outstanding Italian tax bill of €31m (£21m).
3 Lee Sharpe He liked a drink, he liked the ladies, and whenever he scored on the pitch, he liked to celebrate with a dance of joy, christened the Sharpey Shuffle. He rarely stuck with the same jiggle, so the Sharpey Shuffle could lurch from a spectacular knee-slide that could have graced a West End musical, or an Elvis Presley-style wielding of a corner flag, to the dance from Three Amigos and some waddling on the floor with a less flexible Gary Kelly. In a recent survey, the Elvis impersonation was voted the Greatest Premiership Celebration — by just 2% of respondents.
4 Shahid Afridi Monday’s explosion in Faisalabad turned out to be an innocent gas canister, but Afridi didn’t know that when he used the minor distraction of everybody in the ground thinking they were under terrorist attack for a spot of gamesmanship unseen by all except the five television cameras beaming his ballet to the world. He hopped, skipped and swivelled, helping to rough up an already tricky pitch.
“I don’t know what happened or what I was doing. It looked very bad and it will remain a stigma all my life,” lamented Afridi. “Bad?” It looked awful. Even TV dance judge Len Goodman couldn’t excuse that pirouette.
5 Jose Maria Olazabal In 1987 at Muirfield Village, Ohio, Europe won the Ryder Cup on American soil for the first time. Debutant Olazabal treated the Americans to a fandango on the 18th green and again on the clubhouse roof after Eamonn Darcy had holed the winning putt. The hosts were not at all pleased. Curiously, they were happy with their arrhythmic but premature dancing at Brookline in 1999, where Olazabal, facing Justin Leonard, had a long putt to halve the hole as the Americans mounted a victory charge.
6 Eddie Waring Grandstand’s voice of rugby league in the 1970s was more popular than the game itself. The much- impersonated, trilby-clad Yorkshireman brought us the phrases “up ’n’ under” and, some say, “early bath”. Not an obvious candidate for the dancefloor, but the 1977 Morecambe & Wise Christmas special proved otherwise to an audience of 29m. Alongside such luminaries as Richard Baker and Michael Aspel, and dressed as a sailor, he performed There Is Nothing Like A Dame. Waring’s somersaults and tumbles defied belief and gravity. Only the churlish thought they were performed by athletic stand-ins with the help of camera trickery.
7 Denise Lewis There was no hesitation when heptathlete and childhood tap-dancer Denise Lewis was invited on to last year’s Strictly Come Dancing “All my childhood fantasies came together,” she trilled. Partnered by Latin specialist Ian Waite, she “had a fabulous time”. La Lewis glided where she once charged and finished a superb second to Jill Halfpenny, a result repeated in the Champions Of Champions dance-off. As nobody dared to quip afterwards, always the silver and never the gold — except for that Sydney 2000 Olympic one.
8 Anton Ferdinand Coming after 90 minutes, Anton Ferdinand’s equaliser at White Hart Lane last Sunday was a goal to remember. Ferdinand certainly thought so, for he charged towards the away support to do the dance of the daft. He wiggled and moved with all the suppleness of a minor celebrity on Tony Christie’s Is This The Way To Amarillo? video. “I’m not sure what I was doing. My mind just went blank,” he admitted afterwards. The travelling Hammers, always ones to know when an incident will go down in folklore, joined in. Next time Ferdinand scores, everybody will know what to do. Boss Alan Pardew noted: “If Danny Gabbidon had scored, he wouldn’t have done that silly dance. It’s what Anton is about.”
9 Darren Gough After 58 Tests for England, this year’s Strictly Come Dancing promised to show what a real allrounder Darren Gough was, not least as he is “too embarrassed” to strut his funky stuff in nightclubs. He promised to give a mathematically impossible “120%” to the programme and that he would “be pretty funny to watch”. As it happens, despite no longer being the lissom figure of yore, he wasn’t bad at all. He and Lilia Kopylova (The Rhino & The Showgirl, according to judge Bruno Tonioli) swept through a passable paso doble, a distinctly Austrian Viennese waltz, a jumping jive (in which his frankly unnecessary body-popping understandably annoyed judge Len Goodman) and a swinging salsa. It may not be cricket, but Darren’s fancy footwork is to be admired.
10 Mark Gastineau The New York Jets defensive end may have been 6ft 5in and 22st (not to mention a girlfriend-beater, strike-breaker and steriod-user) but in 1981 he invented the Sack Dance, performed after a giant Jet had taken down (“sacked”) a tiny quarterback in an act of legalised thuggery. The more violent the act, the more provocative the gyrations. This gaudy, showy samba usually involved miming the act of sex, but there was also prancing, fist-shaking, chest-beating and hip-thrusting. The National Football League banned it in 1984, claiming it was “unsportsmanlike taunting”. Really it was on aesthetic grounds.
