The Sunday Times - UK (2021-12-19)

14 December 19, 2021The Sunday Times 2GS

Rugby Union Heineken Champions Cup

they clearly learnt a lesson. Exeter did

nothing in that period in this match

and it was perfectly fitting that

Thompson, on the hour mark,

clipped his fourth penalty home.

Exeter did work a way into the Glas-

gow 22 soon afterwards, but they gave

away a scrum and then coughed up a

penalty as their pack was folded

again. A few seconds later Glasgow

were again camped at the other end of

the pitch. But Exeter came again. And

this time they made something of it.

They set up a series of punishing

drives just short of the Glasgow line

and kept nudging the hosts back-

wards. When they finally got within

striking distance, they slipped the ball

to Sam Simmonds, who duly did what

he does best and thrust himself over

the line.

That brought them within a score

with nine minutes left, but they lost

their foothold a few minutes later

when they gave away another penalty

within Thompson’s range and were

duly punished on the scoreboard

again.

Matthews’s try and a conversion by

Duncan Weir sent the crowd home

happy, even if few will bother to try to

watch the replay.

Those devotees of Exeter Chiefs who

made a round trip of nearly 1,000

miles to support their team against

Glasgow Warriors yesterday travelled

with stentorian demands ringing in

their ears. They were told by the host

club what not to wear and

what not to sing.

Al Kellock, the

managing director of

Glasgow Warriors, had

asked Exeter fans

“not to attend the

game [wearing] faux

Native American

headdresses” or to

chant the Tomahawk

Chop during the match.

At Chiefs games, you

see a good few fans

wearing colourful

homemade

headdresses.

Wearing something

colourful to

Nothing in their set-up is intended to

make fun of others.

Cultural appropriation? Exactly

when does cultural celebration, the

sense of sharing and the sheer delight

in different cultures, end and

appropriation start? Where would we

be in this world without the keenest

interest in other cultures? Nowhere.

And where does it end? If wearing

a toy headdress is appropriation then

I can think of 100 other offences in

sport alone. South African rugby

players are famously interested in the

Scottish rugby culture of earning

money. They have come over in

droves and qualified for Scotland

under rugby’s shaky residential laws,

and stood there in a line in their

Scottish kit roaring Flower of Scotland

before international matches.

Then they have retired and gone

back home to South Africa. Surely,

through the Glasgow prism, that is

one of the greatest instances of

cultural appropriation in sport.

In his outstanding documentary

Is it really

necessary

to spoil

Chiefs

fans’

fun?

Stephen Jones

T

o say the fog swirled around

Scotstoun last night would

give the misleading impres-

sion that it was occasionally

possible to work out what

was happening. On a bitter

evening the whirling spec-

trum went only from dense

to impenetrable — and if either team

had thrown on all their replacements

without bothering to take anyone off

then no one would have been any the

wiser. It really was that bad.

Glasgow Warriors had asked Exeter

Chiefs fans not to come to the game in

their notorious headdresses, but

Chief Sitting Bull could have been in

the North Stand with 500 fully armed

braves and nobody would have

noticed.

Even if news of the action reached

the Glasgow crowd only by hearsay

and rumour, they celebrated wildly at

the end when Johnny Matthews, the

replacement hooker, plunged over for

the try that put the result beyond all

doubt and kept alive their Heineken

Champions Cup hopes.

Given the conditions, it was stag-

gering that the match kicked off at its

scheduled 5.30pm start time. For all

but the closest observers the players

were shadowy figures shrouded in the

Stygian gloom, and working out what

was happening on the far side of the

pitch was largely a matter of guess-

Exeter bruised by

painful slog in fog

work. So when Ross Thompson

opened the scoring for Glasgow with a

penalty after 13 minutes, he deserved

praise less for the purity of the strike

than simply being able to work out

where the posts were. On the basis

that most of the action up to that point

had taken place at Exeter’s end of the

pitch, the score was probably well

deserved, but the details of the

offence and the culprit were literally

lost in the mist.

Unsurprisingly, handling errors

proliferated and there was an impres-

sion (a word that may never have been

more appropriate) that the rash of

scrums that followed favoured Exeter.

Even so, they struggled to make much

of that advantage, for even as they

began to gain a bit of territory they

came up against some determined

Glasgow defence. Whether they actu-

ally spotted their tacklers was open to

question, but the Warriors did

enough to keep their line intact to the

end of the half, which meant the score

stuck at 3-0 until the interval.

In fact the closest we got to another

score in the first half was shortly

before the break, when George

Turner, the Glasgow hooker, broke

away from a ruck on a solo run that

looked almost certain to produce a try

until he was hauled down by the

Exeter chasers only a couple of feet

short.

There were cries from some close

to the action that Turner had been

tackled high by one of the Exeter play-

ers — which would have been solid

grounds for a penalty try, but this was

one occasion when you could forgive

a referee for being unsighted.

It was just as easy to forgive Thomp-

son when he whacked his second pen-

alty of the evening off a post seven

minutes into the second half. How-

ever, the young fly half, who had been

Glasgow’s Matt

Fagerson takes

on Stuart Hogg in

a punishing

evening for

Exeter

GLASGOW WARRIORS

22

EXETER CHIEFS

7

on the BBC last week, David Baddiel

investigated what he described as the

“toxic world of anger, hatred and

outrage” which these days descends

on anyone not espousing any cause,

or rejecting any action, with the right

level of anger, hatred and outrage.

I have my own sense of anger,

hatred and outrage. Some decades

ago — I can even remember where I

was at the time — I read Dee Brown’s

staggering Bury My Heart at Wounded

Knee. It is the story of the savaging of

Native Americans in the 19th century,

when they were driven away from

their traditional ways of life by the

American government and army. It is

the best book I have ever read.

The brutality, the slaying of

women and children, the merciless

nature of it all, was almost impossible

to absorb, and still is.

These days, the level of

deprivation in the reservations is still

ghastly, the number of people of

native descent in major posts is tiny.

The number of dispossessed

ALASDAIR

REID

their ears. They wereto

club what not t

what not to

Al Kello

managin

Glasgow

asked E

“not to

game [w

NativeAm

headdres

chant the

Chop dur

At Chiefs

see a go

wearin

homem

headd

Wear

colou

outstanding in the Warriors’ loss to La

Rochelle in France six days earlier,

had a chance to redeem himself only

two minutes later and this time made

no mistake.

Soon afterwards a huge roar

erupted from the crowd in one corner

of the ground. By a process of Chinese

whispers, the rest of us soon learnt

that Glasgow had won a scrum pen-

alty on Exeter’s feed. Thompson

stepped up again, hammered the ball

home and Glasgow were 9-0 up with

half an hour left to play.

The Warriors had fallen away in the

third quarter against La Rochelle, but

identify with your team is two thirds

of the fun of going along.

A simple “please” in his baleful

release was apparently beyond

Kellock, nor did he say anything

welcoming to those who added to the

occasion, and to Glasgow’s coffers.

“We are making this request out of

respect for the Native American

community, whose views on their

imagery and cultural heritage we

support, and the Glasgow Warriors

supporters.” He is alleging cultural

appropriation.

Exeter added the label “Chiefs” at

the start of their existence as a

Premiership club in waiting. The

Chiefs label goes way back into Devon

rugby history. Gradually, the number

of headdresses has grown and the

sound of the Tomahawk Chop often

rings around the terraces, without

the chopping actions familiar for

decades to American sports crowds.

It is just a simple chant.

Exeter are a wonderful club;

passionate, considerate, charitable.

Exeter supporters were

told not to wear

headdresses in Glasgow