THIS is how you face down the haka. Forget the eyeballing and Morris Dance, police in Utah just reach for the pepper spray.

A group of Polynesian football fans were in Roosevelt, 200km east of Salt Lake City. They wanted to perform a haka. But police said they were preventing players from leaving the pitch.

Eyewitness Zack Aguiniga tells us:

“As we’re there watching, we could hear the cops say, ‘make a hole’. But they were in the middle of their dance, and if anyone knows the haka dance, they’re loud and talking in unison.”

Police release the spray.

Says another eyewtiness. one Jason Kelly:

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” one observer, Jason Kelly said. “It was totally unprovoked.”

Because doing the haka war dance – with mimed disembowelment and optional throat-slitting – in front of police who have asked you to move aside is not provocative?