Racist incident mars dramatic Exeter Chiefs win

Exeter Chiefs have issued an apology to former England international Ugo Monye after he accused a supporter of racist abuse at Sandy Park.

Monye was at the Exeter game with Gloucester as part of the broadcasting team for TNT Sport when he experienced what he has described as “the most blatant racism I’ve seen from a supporter at a live game.”

Monye posted on the social media platform X: "So fed up, not a single person said a word, challenged or even reported it.”

Chiefs said they would be "launching a full investigation" and offered "sincerest apologies" to Monye, adding: "This behaviour will not be tolerated at our rugby club."

Premiership Rugby added in a statement: "Racism has absolutely no place in our game or society.

"Premiership Rugby offers our full support to Ugo Monye and we stand united with our clubs and players in the fight against racism."

This sorry incident deeply marred what had been a superb game of rugby, as the Chiefs fought back to defeat Gloucester 25 – 24, with Henry Slade slotting the winning points with the final kick of the match.

Exeter were in a position of relative comfort when tries from Rus Tuima and Dafydd Jenkins had sandwiched a Jack Clement score for a 12 – 7 advantage but Gloucester surged into a nine-point lead with just ten minutes left on the clock.

Stu Townsend dived over for a converted try to reduce the arrears to two points. The Chiefs then won a penalty in the final seconds and Slade calmly steered his kick between the posts to maintain their unbeaten home record.

Chiefs’ director of rugby Rob Baxter told BBC Sport: "There's two ways of looking at it. During our successful years, we have won a lot of games like that with scores in the last five minutes.

"But then again the team have to ask themselves whether they were satisfied with their performance going into those final minutes, and the answer would probably be not.

"The second half got away from us with too many unforced errors as some of kicks went off-beat, which surrendered momentum.”