Vevo is scaling up its APAC operations with the promotion of Tim O’Connor to head of sales APAC and Blair Kelly to group sales manager, alongside the appointment of Alex Trumble as senior sales manager. New to the team, Trumble joins from Nine Network where he was the Digital Solutions Lead, following agency-side roles at OMD Australia and Loud Days. Trumble’s strong mix of analytical expertise, client management and knowledge of the BVOD and digital video market will further strengthen Vevo’s agency and client partnerships across ANZ. “Vevo has been on an incredible growth journey across APAC and it’s a real privilege to be part of shaping the next chapter. We’re seeing more demand than ever for premium video solutions, and I’m looking forward to helping lead Vevo’s expansion across APAC and working with our talented team to deliver new opportunities for partners across the region,” said O’Connor. Vevo recently celebrated five years of APAC operations, during which they have had zero staff attrition – a standout result in the fast-moving media landscape. With revenue, client partnerships and brand presence all on the rise, the expanded team structure is designed to meet growing market demand and capitalise on new opportunities across the region. Link copiedShareShare resultsBy chief election analyst Antony Green posted Fri at 2:00pmFriday 2 May 2025 at 2:00pmFri 2 May 2025 at 2:00pm Updated 32m ago32 minutes agoMon 5 May 2025 at 12:05pm updated 2h ago2 hours agoMon 5 May 2025 at 10:20am | WA Southern Wheatbelt and Mining Districts Gains Donnybrook-Balingup Shire from Forrest in the state's south-west. Loses Beverly Shire to the new seat of Bullwinkel. Loses a number of wheatbelt shires between Cunderin and Merredin and north to Mount Marshall to Durack. Taken togather thse nudge the Liberal margin down from 7.0% to 6.7%. (Victories by a party of government are indicated by thick coloured underlining.) Watson studied Environment Science at Murdoch University in the early eighties. Elected to WA Parliament in 1996, she represented the North Metropolitan region until 2013 when she tried to switch regions and win back the Greens' former seat in South West Region. She previously contested O'Connor at the 2016 and 2022 Federal elections. Watson was the first openly lesbian member of Parliament in Australia. Tempra spent her childhood in the Mid-West and has lived in the South West of Western Australia for the last 30 years. She lives with her husband and children on a farm located just outside of Manjimup. She is an experienced educator, having taught ages that range from 3-year-olds to adults and states that she is dedicated to ensuring that regional Western Australians are included in as many opportunities as their metro counterparts. Wilson is a fourth generation farmer who was raised on the family farm at Katanning. He has had two decades of involvement in agri-politics, as an active member of the Pastoralists and Graziers Association and served as Chairman of Western Graingrowers until his pre-selection as the Liberal candidate for O'Connor. He was elected to the House of Representatives in 2013 and has lived in Albany since 2015. He is Shadow Assistant Minister for Trade. Moir is a fifth generation grain farmer from Amelup, north-east of Albany. CNN and the BBC World Service which is copyright and cannot be reproduced AEST = Australian Eastern Standard Time which is 10 hours ahead of GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) Capital Football Tigers FC leads the way in the National Premier League under-23 division following their 3-1 win over Tuggeranong United at the Australian Institute of Sport A fourth goal of the season from Thinley Dorji put Tigers ahead early on but Anthony Antoniak responded in kind for Tuggeranong with his fourth goal of the season it was a fourth of the year from Coper Heagney that restored the lead for Tigers The match was in the balance until the closing stages when Zachary Ilijoski netted the home team’s third goal to secure the points Canberra Croatia suffered a first defeat of the season in the NPL competition as they slumped to a 0-2 defeat to Gungahlin United at Gungahlin Enclosed on Friday evening Having won three from three and facing a Gunners side who had won twice from three outings Croatia were on then backfoot early as Fabian Olivares opened the scoring inside three minutes And it was Olivares who sealed the points for Gunners in the 64th minute with his second goal of the match to send the Gungahlin supporters home happy on a cold evening O’Connor Knights moved up into third place in the league as they defeated  Queanbeyan City 3-2 at O’Connor Enclosed on Saturday afternoon Rocco Di Placido put the Knights in front after just two minutes and when Jack Janke banged home for two some seven minutes before the interval the Knights were on course for a third win of the year That was confirmed eight minutes after the resumption of play when Ivan Dzaja secured the points by adding the third There was a nervy ending as late goals from Aleksandar Dordevic and Seth Bonnett threatened a late comeback City falling just short of a remarkable recovery The points were shared at Stryda Park as Monaro Panthers and Yoogali SC both scored in the first-half as the match ended in a 1-1 draw Leo Vanderpol gave the hosts a twentieth minute advantage but Kaide Castle levelled matters up eleven minutes later and both teams went close but had to settle for the draw Ilijoski 82’) Tuggeranong United 1 (Antoniak 18’) Dzaja 53’) Queanbeyan City 2 (Dordevic 76’ Monaro Panthers 1 (Vanderpol 20’) Yoogali SC 1 (Castle 31’) Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time A serial pest in sperm donation groups has joined the cast of bankrupts, fraudsters and fantasists in Clive Palmer’s Trumpet of Patriots and is running in the hotly contested western Sydney seat of Lindsay Joseph O’Connor claims in the biography posted on the party’s website that he brings “a wealth of experience in mental health and counselling” to his candidacy Trumpet of Patriots candidate Joseph O’Connor has been revealed as a serial pest in sperm donation groups.Credit: Matt Davidson But this masthead can reveal that he has also presented himself as Dane McDuff Adam Nilsson and Jack DeBevay in Facebook groups for women and couples looking for sperm donations among a stream of identities that mushroom each time he is banned from a group Sperm donor groups generally do not allow members to use aliases Multiple women have complained to the group administrators that he has engaged in creepy behaviour sent them unwanted imagery and is using the groups for sexual gratification The unwanted material included videos of himself on a porn site called “Chaturbate” where he uses the moniker JackPhallus set up under the moniker Dane McDuff in 2019 “I kept knocking up all my previous girlfriends so figured I might as well come here and put it to good use,” he wrote “Australia only pls unless you’re willing to travel shipping sperm seems like it would reduce quality.” He set up his own sperm donation group in 2022 under the alias Adam Nilsson after administrators of other sperm donation groups collaborated to identify all his aliases and remove him from their groups offering to donate sperm as recently as September last year One of the rules of his group is that if a man agrees to donate via artificial insemination they cannot renege at the last moment and insist on natural insemination “Grow some balls I know a lot of you have tiny dicks and this is the only way your micropenis having self can get laid but I don’t care Trumpet of Patriots chair Clive Palmer.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen complains etc about anybody will be BANNED … This isn’t your soap box for you to have a cry and get sympathy because boo hoo it’s too hard.” It is not clear which of the three administrators of the group wrote the rules But administrators of other groups have identified in O’Connor’s group numerous donors and recipients who have been banned from their groups and claim he has rejected their offers to share evidence and collaborate to remove bad actors who put the community at risk saying he had banned numerous individuals from the group for catfishing and denied that he had sent unsolicited videos of himself to women in other groups He said he had been banned from the other groups for arguing and not any other reason “I was looking to help people because IVF is too expensive for many people He also shared screenshots of women who said they had become pregnant with his sperm but asked that they not be shared in the interests of the women’s privacy But he said he had little interest in donating any more O’Connor’s Psychology Today profile says he has expertise in men’s issues His candidate profile identifies housing affordability homelessness and unemployment as the key issues in Lindsay St Marys and Emu Plains in Sydney’s outer west He is the latest in a colourful cast of Trumpet candidates to exhibit multiple identities calls himself “Professor” but is a fake psychologist who bought his PhD online for $250 He also has a fraud conviction and is a former bankrupt a feature he shares with Deakin candidate Milton Wilde claims to be a long-lost descendant of Charlemagne and tried to change his name by deed poll to “Prince” Gabrial Pennicott is a reinvented conman who moved to the Gold Coast after spending three years behind bars for fraud offences in Victoria Other interesting candidates include Michael Jessop who is facing weapons and stalking charges after police found camouflage clothing duct tape and a cadaver bag inside his vehicle outside Bli Bli on the Sunshine Coast Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter. A serial pest in sperm donation groups has joined the cast of and is running in the hotly contested western Sydney seat of Lindsay. Joseph O\\u2019Connor claims in the biography posted on the party\\u2019s website that he brings \\u201Ca wealth of experience in mental health and counselling\\u201D to his candidacy. But this masthead can reveal that he has also presented himself as Dane McDuff, Blake McBeth, Adam Nilsson and Jack DeBevay in Facebook groups for women and couples looking for sperm donations, among a stream of identities that mushroom each time he is banned from a group. Sperm donor groups generally do not allow members to use aliases. Multiple women have complained to the group administrators that he has engaged in creepy behaviour, sent them unwanted imagery and is using the groups for sexual gratification. The unwanted material included videos of himself on a porn site called \\u201CChaturbate\\u201D where he uses the moniker JackPhallus. In one of his early profiles, set up under the moniker Dane McDuff in 2019, he boasted of a \\u201Csuper high\\u201D sperm count. \\u201CI kept knocking up all my previous girlfriends so figured I might as well come here and put it to good use,\\u201D he wrote. \\u201CAustralia only pls unless you\\u2019re willing to travel, shipping sperm seems like it would reduce quality.\\u201D He set up his own sperm donation group in 2022 under the alias Adam Nilsson, after administrators of other sperm donation groups collaborated to identify all his aliases and remove him from their groups. He posted his vital details, including a photograph, offering to donate sperm as recently as September last year. One of the rules of his group is that if a man agrees to donate via artificial insemination, they cannot renege at the last moment and insist on natural insemination. \\u201CGrow some balls I know a lot of you have tiny dicks and this is the only way your micropenis having self can get laid but I don\\u2019t care, go to a brothel,\\u201D the rule states. \\u201CAnyone who whines, whinges, complains etc about anybody will be BANNED \\u2026 This isn\\u2019t your soap box for you to have a cry and get sympathy because boo hoo it\\u2019s too hard.\\u201D It is not clear which of the three administrators of the group wrote the rules. But administrators of other groups have identified in O\\u2019Connor\\u2019s group numerous donors and recipients who have been banned from their groups, and claim he has rejected their offers to share evidence and collaborate to remove bad actors who put the community at risk. O\\u2019Connor denied this allegation, saying he had banned numerous individuals from the group for catfishing, and denied that he had sent unsolicited videos of himself to women in other groups. He said he had been banned from the other groups for arguing and not any other reason. \\u201CMy intentions were genuine,\\u201D he said. \\u201CI was looking to help people because IVF is too expensive for many people. Majority of people, sex wasn\\u2019t involved at all.\\u201D He also shared screenshots of women who said they had become pregnant with his sperm, but asked that they not be shared in the interests of the women\\u2019s privacy. One of them went through an IVF clinic, he said. But he said he had little interest in donating any more. O\\u2019Connor\\u2019s Psychology Today profile says he has expertise in men\\u2019s issues, sex therapy and peer relationships. His candidate profile identifies housing affordability, homelessness and unemployment as the key issues in Lindsay, which encompasses the suburbs of Penrith, St Marys and Emu Plains in Sydney\\u2019s outer west. He is to exhibit multiple identities. David Sarikaya, who is running in Reid, calls himself \\u201CProfessor\\u201D but is a fake psychologist who bought his PhD online for $250. He also has a fraud conviction and is a former bankrupt, a feature he shares with Deakin candidate Milton Wilde. Todd Juchau, a security guard from Murrurrundi, claims to be a long-lost descendant of Charlemagne and tried to change his name by deed poll to \\u201CPrince\\u201D. Gabrial Pennicott is a reinvented conman who moved to the Gold Coast after spending three years behind bars for fraud offences in Victoria. Other interesting candidates include Michael Jessop, 70, who is facing weapons and stalking charges after police found camouflage clothing, an axe, a shovel, duct tape and a cadaver bag inside his vehicle outside Bli Bli on the Sunshine Coast. He is fighting the charges. Start the day with a summary of the day\\u2019s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. . Play Duration: 4 minutes 53 seconds4m 53sPresented by The Coalition has been left reeling without a leader after a catastrophic election defeat on the weekend. The Labor landslide has many within the Coalition asking what it needs to do to appeal to mainstream voters, as they look to rebuild the party. Barnaby Joyce, Nationals MPHollie Hughes, NSW Liberal SenatorDave Sharma, Former Liberal Member for Wentworth Darren Chester, Nationals MP for GippslandDr Damon Alexander, Senior Lecturer in Politics and Public Policy at Swinburne UniversityRichard Marles, Deputy Prime Minister Donald Trump, US President MPs blame party policy for Liberal defeat(ABC News: Andrew O'Connor) TranscriptAndy Park: The Coalition has been left reeling without a leader after a catastrophic election defeat on the weekend. The Labor landslide has many within the Coalition asking what it needs to do to appeal to mainstream voters as they look to rebuild the party. Meanwhile the Labor government is celebrating a triumphant win. The Prime Minister working on selecting his team for his second term this week. Kathleen O'Connor reports. Kathleen O'Connor: As the Coalition comes to grips with one of its worst election performances in years, today disappointment turned to frustration for politicians like Andrew Bragg. Andrew Bragg: I think largely speaking we didn't do enough on the economy and I don't think we did enough to capture the centre of the Australian public support and I think ultimately that's where the campaign went wrong. Kathleen O'Connor: On Channel 7, Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce called the swing to Labor a bloodbath. Barnaby Joyce: You've got to learn your lessons from it. We had a very bad day in the office. There's no doubt about that. Both the Liberals and Nationals lost the Senate seat. We didn't get back Collier and the Liberals had a bloodbath, let's be frank. Now it's the first time since 2007 we've lost a seat. So we're not happy about that. Kathleen O'Connor: Peter Dutton was also the first Opposition leader to lose his seat in Parliament. The party now has to pick up the pieces and rebuild with a new leader. Key contenders include Shadow Finance Minister Angus Taylor, Dan Tehan, Deputy Leader Susan Lee and former SAS soldier Andrew Hastie. Outgoing New South Wales Liberal Senator Hollie Hughes didn't hold back in her assessment. Hollie Hughes: Look, I think there's going to be a lot of soul searching but I think at the end of the day the biggest issue, complete lack of policy and economic narrative was incredibly difficult for everyone out on the ground. People just had nothing to sell. Kathleen O'Connor: And she had some strong views on who shouldn't lead the party, saying this about Angus Taylor. Hollie Hughes: I have concerns about his capability. I feel that we have zero economic policy to sell. I don't know what he's been doing for three years. There was no tax policy, there was no economic narrative and the fact that we're in a massive cost of living crisis and Jim Chalmers has basically skated through unscathed. Kathleen O'Connor: The Labor landslide has many within the Coalition asking what it needs to do to appeal to mainstream voters. Some are even questioning the future of the electoral alliance between the Nationals and Liberals. Former Liberal member for Wentworth Dave Sharma says the party must win back urban voters. Dave Sharma: There's no way we can ever hope to be a party of government again unless we rebuild our appeal and our offering to those populations in big cities. Kathleen O'Connor: Nationals MP for Gippsland Darren Chester says the Coalition can bounce back if it's prepared to make some changes. Darren Chester: We'll review the campaign and look at where we went right and where we went wrong, what policies are best to take forward into the future. As much as we're in a poor position right now as I stand and speak to you from Lakes Entrance, the volatility of the electorate would suggest to me that we can come back strongly if we get our act together quickly. Kathleen O'Connor: Experts say the Liberals will need to target the cities, women, professionals and younger voters over the next three years. Dr Damon Alexander is a senior lecturer in politics and public policy at Swinburne University. Dr Damon Alexander: The lack of messaging or lack of clear messaging by the Liberal National Coalition was quite distinct across the campaign. The number of reversals on policy gave a bit of a sense that the actual policy work hadn't been done. Kathleen O'Connor: Dr Damon Alexander says once all the ballots are counted, there should be a new Liberal leader and Labor government frontbench by the end of the week. After that, he says the Liberal Party will have a long way to go before it can contend for government. Dr Damon Alexander: They would have been hoping at worst to get back into power at the next election. They're now looking at a minimum of two terms, I would think, before they're going to be competitive. Kathleen O'Connor: For Anthony Albanese, he's the first Prime Minister in 21 years to win re-election. Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles said it was straight back to work for the PM as he begins his second term. Donald Trump: We do have a pretty substantial agenda now to carry out and that's what we're going to do. I think you can expect some of that over the course, over the next period as we go through the processes of selecting the frontbench and allocating portfolios. Kathleen O'Connor: US President Donald Trump has even weighed in, congratulating Anthony Albanese on his victory and offering this to Peter Dutton. Donald Trump: The man that won is very good, he's a friend of mine. I can only say that he's been very, very nice to me, very respectful to me. I have no idea who the other person is that ran against him. And, you know, we've had a very good relationship. Andy Park: That's US President Donald Trump ending that report by Kathleen O'Connor. Download the ABC listen app to hear more of your favourite podcasts The 2025 federal election candidatesThere are 150 House of Representatives seats and dozens of Senate seats up for election on 3 May Here's a quick guide to help you find out who's standing in your electorate.Over 1,000 candidates are vying for election to the lower house in the upcoming election ShareGet SBS News daily and direct to your InboxSign up now for the latest news from Australia and around the world direct to your inbox.Your email address *Morning (Mon–Fri) Jack O'Connor said he was much happier with Kerry's performance in this year's Munster final compared to last year. Pic: Brendan Moran/Sportsfile Jack O’Connor’s post-match interview ran for 10 minutes As predictable as the outcome to the game we had just witnessed was that he would was the man Jack hadn’t so much succeeded as deposed in the role of Kerry manager during the fractious autumn of 2021 Peter wanted to continue for a fourth year That’s as much as I’d say about it,” replied O’Connor shutting down the line of questioning with the same speed as his team had shut down the notion of a Munster final contest There was one other question during the 10 minutes that Jack wasn’t overly enamoured with It related to their Sam Maguire group and the contention that his Kerry team and it will be interesting to see how they get on against Louth We’ll treat them with the respect they deserve The Munster final non-event can wait a second longer Kerry have never not topped their group in the All-Ireland series Jack wants that sequence maintained and extended He sees it as imperative that they go into an All-Ireland quarter-final off a two-week break in competitive action “It’s very important because it’s very difficult to play three weekends in-a-row at this level because of the intensity of the games and the length of them We’ll be endeavouring to go the direct route for sure.”  There was very little Jack saw fit to nitpick about Not even their easing-off second-half he took issue with the goals and pace of the opening half was never going to be sustained through the second especially when the result was so long taken care of “I am a lot happier after today than I was coming out of Ennis last year I thought there were times today when we played really good football “It was never going to work out that we'd keep that going for the full hour We got a little bit sloppy in the second half and turned over the ball a bit You'd be a hard taskmaster if you were quibbling with that performance What I like about it is the unselfish nature of the goals There was a great move there where Barry Dan palmed it in at the back post There were a couple of lads who could have lashed it in themselves Kerry’s supposedly needy area delivered once again and this in the continued absence of Diarmuid O'Connor Where Joe O'Connor is a treasure at coming late onto the ball in attack Barry Dan's more stationary approach - notwithstanding the 1-1 he notched here - is proving equally effective and a man like that will always be a big asset in that situation the midfielders were more link players and box-to-box very strong man under the ball so I think the new game is suiting him “We'd be happy enough with that area.”  He’d be hard-pressed to find an unhappy area after that pummeling From as little as €1 a week with our digital introductory offer Already a subscriber? Sign in more gaelic football articles HARD TO TAKE: Mayo manager Kevin McStay before the Connacht GAA Football Senior Championship final match between Mayo and Galway at Hastings Insurance MacHale Park in Castlebar By clicking on 'Sign Up' you will be the first to know about our latest and best sporting content on this browser You have accepted push notifications for this content. If you would like to manage your push notification preferences, you can do so here The unlikely bid of James O’Connor for a Wallabies recall ahead of the British and Irish Lions series could be boosted by a Rugby Australia ruling the 34-year-old would not be counted as an overseas-based “Giteau Law” pick given he is playing for the Crusaders in Super Rugby O’Connor has surged back into contention for selection in Joe Schmidt’s squad for the Lions tour in July after displaying excellent form off the bench for the New Zealand side this season The 64-Test Wallaby left the Reds last year to take up a one-year deal with the Crusaders the 12-time champions who missed the finals last year O’Connor has been winning praise in New Zealand for his calm and steady hand at the back end of games and he was swamped by teammates after nailing a post-siren penalty goal on Friday to give the Crusaders a win over the Blues The form has seen O’Connor’s name being mentioned as a potential member of the Wallabies’ squad, with ex-Wallaby Morgan Turinui saying last week he was being considered by senior figures in the Australia set-up and former teammate Drew Mitchell also calling for him to be considered O’Connor said at the start of the year he was keen to play against the Lions again (he was no.10 for the Wallabies in the 2013 series) James O’Connor is swamped by Crusaders teammates after his winning kick.Credit: Getty Images Another factor that could help O’Connor’s case is that RA is prepared to qualify him as a local player if selected and not as one of the three overseas-based players available to Schmidt “We’ve got a pretty open mind around that and obviously experiencing the speed and the combativeness of Super Rugby is helpful when you’re playing in and around this environment,” RA chief executive Phil Waugh said recently RA has for years been keen to introduce open borders for all players in Super Rugby Pacific It hasn’t got far because the incorrigibly risk-averse New Zealand Rugby are sceptical of letting All Blacks play for Aussie franchises but RA could lead the way by designating as O’Connor as a local player James O’Connor has been impressive off the bench for the Crusaders.Credit: Getty Images There are questions about whether Schmidt would need all three overseas picks anyway and then there’s whether O’Connor is even a genuine option Schmidt won’t have missed the widespread admiration for O’Connor in New Zealand where some have even asked when O’Connor would become eligible to play for the All Blacks O’Connor last played a Test for the Wallabies in San Juan in 2022, and the Dave Rennie-coached side lost with a then-record 67-27 scoreline Under World Rugby laws, players can declare themselves eligible to play for another country (for which they qualify) after an international stand down of three years. Jack Dempsey switched to Scotland under the same rule O’Connor running with the ball for the Wallabies in the second Test against the Lions in 2013 O’Connor could have been able to play for the All Blacks – through his Kiwi parents – in August but his stand-down clock re-set when he turned out for Australia A against Tonga and Portugal in 2023 With the memory of O’Connor’s match-winning kick in Hong Kong in 2010 former All Black halfback Justin Marshall said in commentary as the Aussie was lining up the kick to beat the Blues: “You almost wouldn’t want anybody else in the world taking this.” It’s not far-fetched that O’Connor will be seriously considered by Schmidt. He plans to name 40 when they come together in late June, and as seen with Kurtley Beale’s selection last year O’Connor is clearly still in good condition and is versatile to play several positions off a bench he is also one of the few active players who’ve experienced the white-hot heat of a Lions series In a camp where many of his rising playmakers are still inexperienced in Test rugby The current trans-Tasman status of O’Connor might also suit a role in the Australia and New Zealand Invitational side to meet the Lions in Adelaide But if Schmidt has done his homework - and you know he has - he’ll know that goalkicking doubles in value in a Lions series proper the Lions have averaged 22.6 points a game and their hosts have averaged 23.9 ten Tests have been decided by six points or fewer So it’s here that the stock of O’Connor - an 80 per cent goal kicker - really rises experienced goalkicker up your sleeve who can come off the bench stand over a tough kick and nail it in the 80th minute would be tempting for a coach preparing to meet the Lions Watch all the action from the 2025 Super Rugby Pacific season on Stan Sport the only place to watch every match ad-free The unlikely bid of James O\\u2019Connor for a Wallabies recall ahead of the British and Irish Lions series could be boosted by a Rugby Australia ruling the 34-year-old would not be counted as an overseas-based \\u201CGiteau Law\\u201D pick O\\u2019Connor has surged back into contention for selection in Joe Schmidt\\u2019s squad for the Lions tour in July The 64-Test Wallaby left the Reds last year to with the Crusaders O\\u2019Connor has been winning praise in New Zealand for his calm and steady hand at the back end of games The form has seen O\\u2019Connor\\u2019s name being mentioned as a potential member of the Wallabies\\u2019 squad with ex-Wallaby Morgan Turinui saying last week in the Australia set-up O\\u2019Connor said at the start of the year he was keen to play against the Lions again (he was no.10 for the Wallabies in the 2013 series) Another factor that could help O\\u2019Connor\\u2019s case is that RA is prepared to qualify him as a local player if selected \\u201CWe\\u2019ve got a pretty open mind around that and obviously experiencing the speed and the combativeness of Super Rugby is helpful when you\\u2019re playing in and around this environment,\\u201D RA chief executive Phil Waugh said recently It hasn\\u2019t got far because the incorrigibly risk-averse New Zealand Rugby are sceptical of letting All Blacks play for Aussie franchises but RA could lead the way by designating as O\\u2019Connor as a local player and then there\\u2019s whether O\\u2019Connor is even a genuine option Schmidt won\\u2019t have missed the widespread admiration for O\\u2019Connor in New Zealand where some have even asked when O\\u2019Connor would become eligible to play for the All Blacks O\\u2019Connor last played a Test for the Wallabies in San Juan in 2022 and the Dave Rennie-coached side lost with a players can declare themselves eligible to play for another country (for which they qualify) after an international stand down of three years O\\u2019Connor could have been able to play for the All Blacks \\u2013 through his Kiwi parents \\u2013 in August but his stand-down clock re-set when he turned out for Australia A against Tonga and Portugal in 2023 With the memory of O\\u2019Connor\\u2019s in 2010 former All Black halfback Justin Marshall said in commentary as the Aussie was lining up the kick to beat the Blues: \\u201CYou almost wouldn\\u2019t want anybody else in the world taking this.\\u201D It\\u2019s not far-fetched that O\\u2019Connor will be seriously considered by Schmidt He plans to name 40 when they come together in late June O\\u2019Connor is clearly still in good condition and is versatile to play several positions off a bench he is also one of the few active players who\\u2019ve experienced the white-hot heat of a Lions series The current trans-Tasman status of O\\u2019Connor might also suit a role in the Australia and New Zealand Invitational side to meet the Lions in Adelaide But if Schmidt has done his homework - and you know he has - he\\u2019ll know that goalkicking doubles in value in a Lions series proper So it\\u2019s here that the stock of O\\u2019Connor - an 80 per cent goal kicker - really rises but about to jump into life as an introverted music student in New England circa 1916 There would be virtually no break between the two jobs He started hitting the treadmill for hours a day Between filming the epic Colosseum scenes and going toe to toe with Denzel Washington he was getting a crash course in Kentucky dialect and studying old folk songs “I didn’t have as much time as I would’ve liked to lose as much Gladiator body as possible,” Mescal says “In those last two weeks of the shoot in Malta my trainer saw a lot of ugly sides to my hungry self.” and it was always this groupthink situation of Where can we find the time to force the universe to let us make this film?” says Hermanus—whose last film “We probably wouldn’t have been able to make this film when we wanted to because they weren’t the Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor that we now know today.” Courtesy of MubiSo here arrives The History of Sound wrenching historical drama starring two of the most exciting actors of their generation (The film premieres this month at the Cannes Film Festival before Mubi releases it in US theaters later this year.) The timing feels apt for everyone involved and that spirit infused the making of the film “How many times do you hear people who really try and get something made over five Because we’ll come across other opportunities in our life where we love a script as much as this Adapted by Ben Shattuck from his own short story The History of Sound examines the seismic impact of a fleeting romantic encounter between Lionel (Mescal) and David (O’Connor) two students at the New England Conservatory during World War I where Lionel hears David singing a folk song familiar from his youth transported back to his childhood—so we’re told in the lyrical narration of an older Lionel voiced by Chris Cooper—and instantly infatuated They talk about how they grew up and their dreams for what’s next They set a schedule for how often they can see each other And Lionel is kind of just being overwhelmed by this person but in a very slow-drip way—taking a long time to quantify the impact of this moment in his life and this relationship,” Hermanus says but we don’t realize they defined us until it’s too late.” Courtesy of MubiIn the mold of Americana dramas that were far more common a few decades ago The History of Sound covers the expanse of a life—with particular melancholy focus on each moment that Lionel and David share within it They walk dozens of miles and collect folk ballads from different corners of the country “My grandfather once said that happiness isn’t a story,” Lionel narrates at one point “So there isn’t much to say about those first weeks.” The effortless palpably sweet connection between the two men runs contrary to most depictions of queer love in this time period I would love to go to the movies and watch a movie about a same-sex relationship that maybe makes me cry So much of queer cinema—and I’ve made queer cinema like this—is about the struggles,” says Hermanus who’s known for brutal queer South African dramas like 2019’s Moffie this has always been about wanting it to be accessible to everyone We’re not going to make a movie about the problematizing of their relationship or their sexuality.” Youth and the love that blossomed around it starts to feel like a bittersweet memory “The film definitely has romantic gestures in it—intensely so in some places—but it is fundamentally about Lionel’s life,” Mescal says “It’s actually important to let audiences know not to come just expecting [romance] but it’s a subjective understanding of Lionel’s experience of that love.” Courtesy of MubiMescal first met O’Connor on Zoom during the pandemic “He was one of the first people that I was starstruck by after Normal People came out and I just adore him.” The two had separately gotten attached to The History of Sound over the years with no idea which character they’d play “A little bit of me at that point was reticent to lead a film to that extent,” the actor says But Hermanus had a vision in the middle of the night that Mescal should play the part This was before Mescal’s Oscar nomination for Aftersun or the offer to topline Ridley Scott’s massive Gladiator sequel The History of Sound felt like a homecoming in some ways—“Gladiator is the anomaly in terms of the genre of films that I’ve played in before,” he says—and O’Connor only aided in that experience “We felt very boyish in each other’s company throughout,” says Mescal but he brings out a childlike version of me I haven’t felt that kind of degree of boyishness in myself for a long time.” The duo sell a romantic connection that extends well beyond the bedroom “There is a kind of real sense of companionship and the joy and loss that comes with the presence and absence of that,” Mescal says “It’s not just about sex and the intensity of falling in love there isn’t much sex at all in The History of Sound—though the film carries a romantic sweep beginning to end “I didn’t want the sex of it to be the transgression and these two men are taking the risk of being sexual,’” Hermanus says “Ben wrote it in a way where there was no hesitation the sex scene is when Lionel is walking around David’s apartment the morning after [their first encounter] and he’s smelling everything and sitting everywhere He’s absorbing the energy of this person.” Courtesy of MubiOne reason Hermanus thought Mescal needed to play Lionel: “Paul loves singing.” While the first musical voice we hear in the film is technically David’s it’s Paul who is attending the conservatory for voice He’s also the one who ultimately embarks on a career as a singer “I get nervous when it’s committed to film and could potentially be or will be there forever,” Mescal admits To get to sing them and have them recorded—they’re not songs that I think tons of people will be overly familiar with so it’s nice to hopefully introduce some people to that kind of world of music.” He adds that the music was one of his initial ways into the project—he knew these songs well even as he was reading the script and wrote the short story in part as a love letter to richly emotional folk ballads—the sorts of songs whose origins often go back hundreds of years One of key songs shared in the film between Lionel and David “Silver Dagger,” dates back to the early 19th century “Narrative songs historically tell the stories of love They kind of become these oral history subjects,” Hermanus says listening to a Spotify playlist with hundreds of entries He was inspired to give the film a shape that echoed that of the music “The story of History of Sound—as a story itself as a movie—is in itself one of these songs The film team worked closely with composer Oliver Coates (who also worked on Aftersun) and contemporary singer-songwriter Sam Amidon to nail down an unforgettable soundscape Lionel and David hear the music they study in its original forms from town to town against Coates’s soaringly emotional score “It’s not about the beauty of the performance; it’s understanding what you’re singing about more so,” Mescal says “It was an easy thing for me to submerge myself in.” The balance between performing and watching others perform is precisely where Mescal’s performance comes alive “Something that really turns Lionel on creatively is to observe And I tried to inform that as much as possible in his physicality,” Mescal says “He’s got a totally different physical language to that of Gladiator but to try and play that truthfully requires a level of restraint that I love playing in is the most extreme version of that that I’ve played.” The full scope of The History of Sound’s thematic power gradually reveals itself through to the film’s final act The big scale of Hermanus’s filmmaking snaps into focus in what it means to hold onto love that feels so far away Mescal’s delicate lead performance completes its shape too “I spent a lot of time on set turning to Oliver ‘Is this going to read?’ And I think it does in the finished product But that was something that I was nervous about,” Mescal says You’re just trying to let time do the work in the film that will be something that interests them Time comes up a lot when speaking with those involved in The History of Sound You’ll often hear the phrase “labor of love.” Mescal has never been attached to a project longer in his career He now thinks back to when he first read the script in his mid-20s “The thing that I’m most proud about,” he says “is that the feeling I had when I read the script for the first time is what I got when I saw the film for the first time.” recorded live from the festival and publishing every day How Miriam Adelson Went From Big MAGA Winner to Casino Loser in Trump’s First 100 Days Trump’s Lies Are Finally Catching Up to Him The UK Has Found Another Reason to Be Mad at Meghan Markle “It’s About Him”: How Trump Is Perverting the Presidential Photo Stream The Ballad of Bill Belichick and Jordon Hudson The Truth Underlying Pete Hegseth’s Job Security Why Are Americans So Obsessed With Protein How Sebastian Stan Became Hollywood’s Most Daring Shape-Shifter Every Quentin Tarantino Movie Meet Elon Musk’s 14 Children and Their Mothers (Whom We Know of) From the Archive: Sinatra and the Mob FIND YOUR ONE NATION CANDIDATE, LOCAL POLLING BOOTHS AND HOW-TO-VOTE CARD HERE. Gemma Johnston is Pauline Hanson’s One Nation candidate for the electorate of O’Connor in the upcoming federal election A proud resident of Esperance and an elected councillor for the Shire of Esperance Gemma’s journey into politics was sparked by a local battle over a flagpole—an experience that opened her eyes to government overreach and the lack of transparency in decision-making Her resolve to fight for fairness led her to successfully run for council and now she’s taking that same determination to the national stage.Gemma brings a strong voice for rural and coastal communities who feel left behind by the major parties She has been a vocal opponent of the proposed South Coast Marine Park which she says is “ripping the heart out of our town.” She’s committed to protecting local jobs and the freedoms of people who live and work along the coast.Her platform includes cost-of-living relief Gemma has firsthand experience with the challenges facing the bush—from the GP shortage to regional housing and a broken transport system.“My family has worked in farming and commercial property in this region for over 50 years,” Gemma says “I’ve seen the strength and resilience of our people—and I’ll fight like hell to make sure they’re heard.”Gemma’s practical experience and fierce advocacy make her a powerful voice for O’Connor and for regional WA The One Nation political party was launched on the 11th April 1997 at Ipswich by its founder 2/6-12 Boronia Rd Brisbane Airport QLD 4008 oOh!media’s managing director and CEO Cathy O’Connor is step down in the second half of this year.  said in a release that O’Connor and the board had agreed that with the company’s “performance having improved” and “carrying strong momentum” in the calendar year it was the right time for a leadership transition oOh!’s total revenue grew 13 per cent in the fist quarter of this year with Australian media revenue growing 16 per cent in line with the Outdoor Media Association (OMA) It said Q2 performance is expected to be consistent with Q1 reported revenues of $636 million for the 12 months ended in the December just 0.3 per cent up on the $636.9 million in the 12 months prior With its H2 2024 numbers a marked improvement on H1 with the company predicting with 14 per cent revenue growth YTD in February 2025 oOh! CEO Cathy O’Connor told B&T in February that much of the reason for oOh!’s performance over the calendar year was the exit of big contracts But acknowledging there was a gap in organic share performance against the market That’s why we were very clear at the half-year to talk about energising our go-to-market and winning a lot of new assets,” she said “All the steps are in place for us to bring that share back to the business and that’s certainly starting to pay dividends We saw big improvements in the second half five per cent growth in Q4 and then we’re pacing up 14 per cent in Q1 new assets and those are the things that shift share back to the business over time as contracts move around.” said of O’Connor’s departure: “After more than four years leading oOh! and with the business performing strongly in CY25 that the time is right for new leadership to deliver the Company’s next multi-year phase of strategy execution and growth as CEO in the middle of the COVID pandemic and has been instrumental in leading the business through a period of significant change through its most successful period of major contract wins while implementing a disciplined commercial mindset and setting the platform for oOh!’s ongoing digital evolution “The Board remains highly confident in the Company’s strategy focused on energizing oOh!’s sales and go-to-market approach unlocking the full potential of our market- leading network of 35,000 assets and positioning the business to lead in the retail media segment “The Board thanks Cathy for her leadership of oOh We are delighted that she will remain with the Company until the second half of CY25 to facilitate an orderly transition.” for the past four years has been one of the most rewarding periods of my career and I am incredibly proud of the team’s achievements including the unrivalled success in attracting new asset contracts which underpin our future growth and the industry leading margins we delivered in an inflationary environment Having discussed with the Board the next multi-year phase of execution ahead of oOh! we have agreed that the Company is now ready for new leadership” has developed one of the strongest teams in Australian media including a leadership group that is among the industry’s most experienced and I thank the team for their commitment and hard work I strongly believe in the future growth and growing prominence of the Out of Home industry and that oOh has the right strategy to lead this evolution and generate long-term value for our customers and I remain absolutely focused on the execution of oOh!’s strategy.” The Board has commenced a process with a leading global executive search firm to appoint a new MD and CEO The comprehensive search process is being overseen by oOh and chair of the talent & culture committee The news: Outdoor media company oOh!media has announced the departure of its managing director and chief executive Cathy O’Connor after more than four years in the role The context: O'Connor intends to leave the role in the second half of the calendar year having joined as CEO in the middle of the Covid pandemic oOh!media said the board has begun a process with a global executive search firm to appoint O'Connor's successor that the time is right for new leadership to deliver the company’s next multi-year phase of strategy execution and growth," oOh!media chair Tony Faure O’Connor commented: "I am incredibly proud of the team’s achievements including the unrivalled success in attracting new asset contracts which underpin our future growth and the industry-leading margins we delivered in an inflationary environment." The source: ASX Editors' Note: Many Fast News images are stylised illustrations generated by Dall-E Cathy steps aside,Ooh!media seeks new lead,Growth path continues will step down from her role in the second half of 2025 after four and half years at the helm of the outdoor media giant Her exit from the OOH company was said to have been mutually agreed upon by herself and the Board of oOh!media with the company citing its improved performance and strong momentum as factors contributing to the leadership transition Sigaloff has since been replaced by Mark Fairhurst while Ackland has been replaced by Andrew Every in a consolidated role as chief strategy and retail media officer after an 18 year stint at Nova Entertainment Ooh!media reported a 13% growth in total revenue and a 16% increase in Australian media revenue in the first quarter of 2025 The company says it anticipates similar performance in the second quarter of 2025 and expects continued market share improvement throughout the year based on new assets from contracts announced in 2023 and 2024 The Board of Ooh!media has initiated a search for a new Managing Director and CEO Chair of the Talent & Culture Committee In light of O'Connor's impending departure the Board has withdrawn two resolutions related to proposed equity awards for her from the 2025 Annual General Meeting that the time is right for new leadership to deliver the Company’s next multi-year phase of strategy execution and growth," said Cathy O'Connor joined oOh!media as CEO during the COVID-19 pandemic and has been credited with steering the company through significant changes These include major contract wins and a focus on digital evolution and I am incredibly proud of the team’s achievements including the unrivalled success in attracting new asset contracts which underpin our future growth and the industry leading margins we delivered in an inflationary environment," said O'Connor including a leadership group that is among the industry’s most experienced and I thank the team for their commitment and hard work." Want your daily shot of #AI powered, human curated news? Become a member of Mi3 Australia and ensure you get our Fast News daily newsletter straight to your inbox here Got news you want to share with Mi3 Fast News? Email your media announcements with either Word or PDF attachments plus images to fastnews@ai.mi-3.com.au Learn how to elevate the customer experience with insights from 8,000+ global consumers in Klaviyo's latest report. Register now Already a member? Login here and what type of associations managers need to develop with their clients While the focus is on the management of music acts of number one albums on the (US) Billboard charts Murphy also astutely highlights another factor concerned with getting the best from people whose careers are sometimes on a knife’s edge: namely kind and intuitively positive relationships Valuable and insightful reading not only for music business students but also for established managers there are lessons to be learned from John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs by Ian Leslie (Faber We think it’s a first in by now far-reaching Beatles literature: a new story outline that doesn’t focus on one member but two the author focuses on the symbiotic relationship (loving conflicted) between Lennon and McCartney and their respective and/or mutual songs There are biographical details we have read about many times before but Leslie’s side-view approach displays insights heretofore unexplored which alone makes the book essential reading for fans Leslie argues that the customary narrative (Lennon as the “creative soul of The Beatles” and McCartney as his “talented but facile sidekick”) has skewed their true personalities cogently delved into and illuminated through songs such as Ticket to Ride and Julia (a mere four of the 159 Lennon and McCartney songs of The Beatles’ 184 recorded works) where one was the motivator and the other the midwife albeit making “indispensable contributions” this is an excellent book about the Tremendous Two and a contender for end-of-year plaudits but what of some American music acts that have steadily maintained success in their homeland but not on this side of the Atlantic The last time US soft-rock songwriter Boz Scaggs entered the UK Top 20 singles chart was in 1977 (with What Can I Say and This makes the first biography of the songwriter merely skims the surface of the man’s life and times interviewing collaborators and a few friends but not Scaggs himself There is some compensation in the contributions of colleagues and musicians but the spine of the book resides in the tried and tested album-by-album analysis while insightful to those who aren’t acquainted with the songs There is nothing at all routine about Universal Mother by Adele Bertei (33 1/3 series/Bloomsbury, £8.99). It comes at you instantly with fangs bared. Sinéad O’Connor O’Connor’s fourth album is put under the microscope here but perhaps not in the way you might expect the author takes as the basis for her scrutiny the fact that O’Connor was among the first public figures to experience “the guillotine of cancel culture” “In 1980, UK households receive a booklet, Protect and Survive ... Are these the end of days? It’s the right time to write radical music.” So starts To Hell with Poverty!, by Jon King (Constable, £25), the founding member of Gang of Four, a feverish post-punk/funk band much admired for their search for working-class justice. “We’re no longer Dr Feelgood impersonators but have … become ourselves with a radical set and a fierce onstage presence …” King continues the band story to the bitter end, with taut, spiky recollections of health issues and corrupt management. Gang of Four’s second album title tells it like it is: Solid Gold. Heartbreaker, by Mike Campbell (Little, Brown, £25) is in a similar gilt-edged category. Although Campbell is best known as Tom Petty’s guitarist and co-songwriter (from 1976 to Petty’s death in 2017), his life story has, perhaps inevitably, been overshadowed by his more famous associations. What a rags-to-riches life Campbell has lived, though, and how humbly he tells it. Tony Clayton-Lea is a contributor to The Irish Times specialising in popular culture Facebook pageTwitter feed© 2025 The Irish Times DAC Today’s full post is for our paying members only you’ll also find the coupon code for free member tickets to HumAIn To get maximum value from a paid membership of Unmade Your annual membership gets you tickets to next week’s HumAIn conference on AI on the media and marketing industry; to September’s REmade conference on retail media; to October’s Unlock conference on marketing in the nighttime economy; and to Unmade’s Compass end-of-year roadshow. You also get access to our paywalled archive. It now turns out that there is indeed going to be a succession process. O’Connor will be leaving later this year. Although her 12 month notice period means she could be around for many months yet, next month’s annual general meeting will be her last with Ooh Media. Today’s ASX announcement declares victory: “With the company’s performance having improved and with Ooh carrying strong momentum in CY25, the time is right for new leadership to deliver Ooh’s next multi-year phase of strategy execution and growth.” Welcome to a Tuesday update from Unmade. With today\u2019s announcement of Cathy O\u2019Connor\u2019s departure from Ooh Media we look back on her four-year tenure and ask whether the experiment of bringing somebody from outside the insular world of outdoor advertising was a success Today\u2019s full post is for our paying members only you\u2019ll also find the coupon code for free member tickets to HumAIn Your annual membership gets you tickets to next week\u2019s HumAIn conference on AI on the media and marketing industry; to September\u2019s REmade conference on retail media; to October\u2019s Unlock conference on marketing in the nighttime economy; and to Unmade\u2019s Compass end-of-year roadshow You also get access to our paywalled archive Subscribe now It now turns out that there is indeed going to be a succession process. O\u2019Connor will be leaving later this year. Although her 12 month notice period means she could be around for many months yet, next month\u2019s annual general meeting will be her last with Ooh Media. Today\u2019s ASX announcement declares victory: \u201CWith the company\u2019s performance having improved and with Ooh carrying strong momentum in CY25, the time is right for new leadership to deliver Ooh\u2019s next multi-year phase of strategy execution and growth.\u201D One of the images from Dingle, by Cian O’Connor. many look back on the pandemic years with a certain nostalgia the first time in their adult lives they had the chance to step off the treadmill and reassess their values and priorities Having recently completed his degree at the National Film School in Dun Laoghaire Co Kerry while he tried to figure out what to do next and most of my relationships and friendships had broken down,” he says I’ll start a new life and become a new person I was just going to get the hell out of Ireland O’Connor realised he had to find something to occupy his mind and I decided to take photos of the town and its people,” he says It was too interesting not to document.”  O’Connor arranged to interview many of those he photographed around the town Stuff they wouldn’t normally talk about at all A lot of people looked forward to getting back to work who ran the boat tours to see Fungie the Dolphin some people found that the lack of tourism was maybe a good thing It was a reason for us to reflect on how Dingle is going because a lot of other things have fallen by the wayside.”  photographer.  One of those interviewed was Finn Mac Donnell the fourth generation of his family to work at Dick Mack’s Brewhouse bar “Finn felt that the town is too expensive now producer of the Other Voices television music series that has become synonymous with Dingle “Philip brought up this analogy of the hare's corner You need an arts and culture centre in the town You can't just be maximising every square foot of land for profit He’d befriended a music producer and record company executive named Steve Ralbovsky He helped me get an internship with a script consultancy in New York who directed House of Cards and Sex and the City.”  O’Connor now works full time with the company “The last one is called An Chathair Mór/Big City I flew over my two best mates from Ireland to act in it and we shot it in Woodlawn up in the Bronx.”  An Chathair Mór/Big City tells of a young man who arrives in New York and forms a connection with a distant relative an older woman who shares her love of the Irish language the first film in the Irish language shot in New York “We got good press here on account of that,” he says The film premiered at Galway Film Festival and has since been screened at the Newport Beach Film Festival “And it’s screening this month at the Fastnet Film Festival in West Cork.”  It was O’Connor’s mother who encouraged him to revisit the material he’d shot in Dingle during COVID “One of the first people I photographed was Kathleen O’Sullivan at the Phoenix Cinema There's a Facebook group called Dingle Photos Past and Present I stuck the photo up there and said I’d see how it goes Another image from Cian O’Connor's exhibition entitled 'Dingle 2020: The Year the Tourists Never Came'. The response encouraged O’Connor to approach Féile na Bealtaine with a proposal to showcase his work The result is Dingle 2020: The Year the Tourists Never Came along with a selection of audio recordings “It's five years on from that first lockdown,” he says The people in the photographs have never had a chance to see them before The same with the interviews; no one has heard them I just want to give this exhibition back to the town I hope it’ll make people think about the resilience we had during COVID Everybody was freaking out about the lack of tourists but I'd never seen the town so bound together I don't think I would have been able to take these photos if the community wasn’t so strong.”  O’Connor is busy making plans for his next short film about a woman who's forced to move back to her hometown after she loses her job O’Connor himself has no plans to return to Ireland just yet there’s a lot a talk of a recession,” he says I’m paying the same rent here as I’d be paying in Dublin.”  experienced radio executive Cathy O’Connor is to step down from her role as Managing Director and CEO of oOh!media in the second half of 2025 With the company’s performance having improved O’Connor decided the time was right for new leadership to deliver the company’s next multi-year phase of strategy execution and growth Chair Tony Faure said “Cathy joined oOh As CEO in the middle of the COVID pandemic and has been instrumental in leading the business through a period of significant change Through its most successful period of major contract wins while implementing a disciplined commercial mindset and setting the platform for oOh!’s ongoing digital evolution.” For the past four years has been one of the most rewarding periods of my career including the unrivalled success in attracting new asset contracts which underpin our future growth and industry leading margins we delivered in an inflationary environment.” “I thank the team for their commitment and hard work.” O’Connor’s radio career began in the mid eighties working as a sales manager for Sydney’s 2GB and 2SM She went on to hold a number of executive roles at Austereo in the nineties including General Manager at 2Day FM and Triple M Board has commenced a process with a leading global executive search firm to appoint a new Managing Director and CEO and website in this browser for the next time I comment Δdocument.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value" The twelve years she spent as CEO of Nova not worth a mention Click here to sign up to our free daily newsletter for the latest in radio, audio and podcasting news and jobs THE CARLTON Football Club can confirm that Aasta O’Connor will take on the role of VFLW Senior Coach in 2025 O’Connor is currently the Blues’ AFLW assistant coach and will continue in the role throughout the 2025 season O’Connor is a well-known and respected figure in the AFLW playing in the first five seasons for the Western Bulldogs and Geelong including a pivotal role in the Dogs’ 2018 premiership triumph O’Connor is also a four-time premiership player with the Darebin Falcons and has been part of Carlton’s coaching panel since season seven back in 2022 The 2024 Senior Coach Glenn Strachan will continue to oversee the VFLW program and help with the on-field and performance strategy with the support of the coaching group and player development “We thank Glenn for all the work he has put into our VFLW program and are excited to see where both programs can go this year with the designated resourcing,” Head of AFLW Ash Naulty said "The alignment between the VFLW and AFLW continues to grow with Aasta’s appointment set to strengthen that further,” Naulty said “The crossover between our two programs has never been better and we are thrilled to have Aasta help grow our VFLW program this season and bring forth the professional standards “Not only is Aasta a talented coach but she is also a very accomplished player She is able to use all of her experience to best tailor her coaching which is something we are really excited about for our VFLW program.” The Carlton Reserves went down to a surging Coburg Lions outfit Michael Voss reviews a disappointing day in Adelaide Carlton has fallen to Adelaide by 60 points Jacob Weitering joins the season finale of the Summer Sessions podcast The Carlton Football Club is proud to reveal its 2025 Indigenous guernsey designed by Yorta Yorta siblings and founders of Bayadherra Hudson O'Keeffe had his most commanding performance of his VFL career to date in the Carlton Reserves' Round 6 clash with coburg Watch the best of the Carlton Reserves in the VFL Round 6 clash with Coburg AFL Senior Coach Michael Voss joined media following the Round 8 clash with Adelaide See what Michael Voss had to say ahead of Carlton's Round 8 clash with Adelaide Carlton Football Club acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the land on which IKON Park is located The Club also acknowledges and pays its respects to their Elders past and present and the Traditional Owners of the many lands on which we play our great game By continuing to use our site, you agree to our Private Policy and Terms of Use Josh O'Connor & Paul Mescal in The History of Sound first-look photos Josh O'Connor and Paul Mescal in The History of Sound New official details about the movie have finally arrived Ever since the movie The History of Sound was announced, it's been one of the most buzzed-about movies in Hollywood Not only does it star rising actors Paul Mescal (All of Us Strangers) and Josh O'Connor (Challengers) but it also features the two of them in a historical gay romance the film is about two men who set out to record the sounds and songs of their countrymen during World War I Thanks to a new Vanity Fair first look the movie "examines the seismic impact of a fleeting romantic encounter between Lionel (Mescal) and David (O'Connor) two students at the New England Conservatory during World War I." When Lionel hears David singing a folk song from his youth at a piano bar The two try to remain in each other's lives but in a very slow-drip way—taking a long time to quantify the impact of this moment in his life and this relationship," Hermanus told Vanity Fair but we don’t realize they defined us until it’s too late." The two meet up again years after college and embark on a trip around the Northeast to collect folk ballads So much of queer cinema—and I’ve made queer cinema like this—is about the struggles,” Hermanus said We're not going to make a movie about the problematizing of their relationship or their sexuality." "The film definitely has romantic gestures in it—intensely so in some places—but it is fundamentally about Lionel's life," Mescal added "It's actually important to let audiences know not to come just expecting [romance] but it's a subjective understanding of Lionel’s experience of that love." The History of Sound is a passion project for Hermanus who have all been interested in the script for years The film will premiere later this month at the Cannes Film Festival before being released by Mubi in theaters in the U.S. later this year. Mey Rude is a journalist and cultural critic who has been covering queer news for a decade. The transgender, Latina lesbian lives in Los Angeles with her fiancée. Kerry manager Jack O’Connor commemorates Paul Geaney on a job well done. Picture: Laszlo Geczo/Inpho The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a 2008 American film adapted from F Scott Fitzgerald's 1922 short story about a man who ages in reverse When Lee Keegan and Paul Flynn were chatting in MacHale Park after having watched the first half of the Munster final in Killarney Keegan referred to Paul Geaney as Benjamin Button This is exclusive subscriber content. Already a subscriber? Sign in Introductory offers for new customers. Annual billed once for first year. Renews at €120. Monthly initial discount (first 4 months) billed monthly, then €10 a month. Ts&Cs apply The requester URL cannot be found in our server. If you followed a broken URL please send an email to catholicna@catholicna.com so we can solve the problem. Click here to return to the homepage CNA is a service of EWTN News, Inc. Given Lex’s pedigree and experience already charging waves like Shipsterns, Deadmans and other slabs in and around his home on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, there was never any doubt that his first solo trip would be a success. We caught up with the teenager to see how he got on. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Lex O’Connor (@lex.oconnor) Tell us a bit more about your trip, how was it heading abroad on your own for the first time? Did you have any particular goals coming into the trip? My goal for the trip was to ride the biggest wave of my life which I definitely did but to also meet new people who understood the place and get to connect and learn from them which I also did. Was there any particular standout session for you? View this post on Instagram A post shared by Lex O’Connor (@lex.oconnor) What’s it like preparing for a big day at Nazare tell us about the feelings and emotions you go through which is a mixture of nerves and excitement I was pretty scared knowing that it was going to be huge The winds that day were almost as bad as it gets coming out of the West North West at like 35 knots Ideally you want light East North East winds I was also very excited knowing I was going to get the chance to surf the biggest wave of my life It’s the adrenaline rush which keeps me coming back for more What kind of preparation goes into surfing on days like that Preparation starts before I even get there doing breath work and weights in order to make sure I was physically and mentally fit before I got there I continued training at a local gym when I was there too it’s stuff like making sure your straps on your tow board are perfect The preparation is so important and can be the difference between life and death On the big days I was working with Eric Rebiere who is one of the best surfers and jet ski pilots out there as well as another guy called Daniel for back up safety On the big days you must have two skis running for you and a spotter the first session of the trip I had no ski driver and it was huge so I decided to paddle out on my own without a pull vest my board and a 5mm wettie because I didn’t own a pull vest at the time I still really wanted to get a big one but as soon as I got out there I almost copped one on the head the wave was double the size of anything I’ve ever see in my life Local charger Tony Laureano rushed over and told me to go in as it wasn’t safe without a vest and luckily it all worked out for the best as Tony reached out later that day and offered me his vest for the rest of the trip Who do you look up to for inspiration out there I look up to people like Kai Lenny and Lucas Chumbo who are surfing 60 foot waves like they’re six foot In the future that’s how I want to try and surf these types of waves and I think that’s how big wave surfing is going to continually progress How does Nazare compare to other waves like Shipsterns and Deadmans which we’ve seen you charging regularly The power of Nazare on a big day is something else it’s a lot more powerful than Shipsterns or Deadmans and the hold downs last a lot longer Shipsterns and deadmans are a lot more difficult to surf though because of the steps in the wave and the close proximity to the rocks What does the rest of 2025 look like for you I want to spend the year chasing swells all around Australia at waves like Deadmans I’m also hoping to get back to Nazare next winter to score some bigger and cleaner days Pipe Masters worth more points and will be the final event on the 2026 schedule Join us for a night of live music from Ethan Eshuys at Curly Lewis in Bondi to help raise money for a great cause Jaleesa Vincent shows us how to be more than just surfers Jaleesa embodies self expression as she rides her own boards shaped in high heels Usually in autumn as a southern swell hits and westerly winds howl around the magical Isle off Coogee There are plenty of legends born in the surf and the sounds of the famous island The young local who is mastering the world-class waves in his backyard Tai ‘Buddha’ Graham’s winding road to success and surfing freedom Get full access to every feature from our print issues watch all of our classic films & more … the Tracks covers from the 70s & 80s are now ready for your walls Sign up to our newsletter & get social You have reached ESPN's Australian edition. Stay on current site or go to US version playO'Connor a no-brainer for Aus-NZ Invitational team (2:02)The ESPN Scrum Reset team discuss James O'Connor's resurgence arguing he should be given the chance to further push his Wallabies case in the Au-NZ Invitational team Welcome to off-field review, where we'll wrap up the Super Rugby Pacific round in hopefully quicker time than it takes the TMO to rule on foul play That's the nature of the Jekyll and Hyde Waratahs who again looked completely lost on the road at the weekend While a measure of forgiveness is warranted given the scorching conditions in Lautoka some of the handling errors and poor defensive work is not so easily written off Had it not been for the early introduction off the bench of Langi Gleeson -- who is surely now a selection certainty for the Lions despite his decision to head overseas -- NSW would not have been in the contest as it was needing to only touch the ball dead in goal following a sprayed post-siren penalty goal to secure what may yet prove to have been a potentially vital bonus point; what transpired instead was some woeful decision-making first from Tane Edmed and Jamie Adamson the play then ending in farcical scenes when Joseph-Aukuso Suaalii picked the ball up in an offside position The TMO and referee Paul Williams were left with little choice but to award the Drua a penalty try; Suaalii probably unawares that unlike his former code of rugby league you can in fact be offside in the in-goal area in rugby And so the Waratahs left Fiji with nothing and were then reported to have not shown up for the post-match function This week's bye feels like the perfect opportunity for McKellar to reset his squad for what looms as a real scramble towards the playoffs and not a losing bonus point to their name in 2025 the Waratahs will likely need to beat either the Brumbies and defeat both the Crusaders and Reds in Sydney the Brumbies' bonus-point 24-0 win over Moana Pasifika on Saturday was a better performance than their classy win over the Reds a week earlier Shutting out the previous highest-scoring team in the competition ACT were forced to aim up early when Moana were hard on the attack before the visitors lost Tom Hooper to the sin-bin yet they were able to repel their hosts and then took the ascendancy on the stroke of halftime through a brilliant try to flyer Corey Toole rolling their maul to two tries for hooker Billy Pollard Larkham's decision to bring James Slipper off the bench also paid dividends with the veteran prop powering the Brumbies to scrum dominance which helped give them the field position they needed to use their maul The Brumbies have the feel of a team that is improving week on week and with a fourth road win now safe in their keeping for 2025 they are the Aussie team most capable of securing a top-two finish Wallabies coach Joe Schmidt has spoken only twice to Stan Sport so far this year he has not been available to the wider media It has prevented the Australian rugby community any clarity over his selection policy around those who are signed to play overseas beyond this year and denied the game his general thoughts on the collective performances of broader Wallabies player base he surely would have been asked about James O'Connor and whether or not the Crusaders utility could yet feature against the British & Irish Lions O'Connor has proven a shrewd acquisition for the Crusaders this season his latest effort a match-winning penalty against the Blues in Christchurch on Friday This column has previously flagged O'Connor for inclusion in the Australia-New Zealand Invitational team that will face the Lions in Adelaide the week before the first Test but there is growing support for the Super Rugby journeyman to be included in the Wallabies squad proper O'Connor has a history of stepping up in big moments but he now also has the maturity to match his talents His comments from earlier in the season on not knowing how to play 10 when first thrown into the playmaking hot seat years ago were honest and telling While the Wallabies have plenty of backline talent James O'Connor is mobbed after kicking the Crusaders to victory over the Blues in Christchurch Joe Allison/Getty ImagesTRANS-TASMAN TRACKER SET TO RAMP UP IN ROUND 11As it stands no New Zealand team has won on Australian soil in 2025 The Hurricanes' draw with the Force took their collective return to 7-0-1 while the Brumbies [twice] and Reds have each notched wins across the ditch That is a pleasing snapshot for Australian rugby and certainly supports the idea that the country was too thinly spread for talent to have five teams But a better idea of just whether it has been a quick of the draw to date or is indeed the exact kind of improvement the Australian game has collectively been after will come in the next few weeks starting with the Anzac Day blockbuster between the Reds and Blues in Brisbane followed by the Brumbies-Hurricanes clash in Wellington while the Waratahs and Blues meet in a potentially winner-takes-all clash in Auckland in the closing round and Australian rugby will really be riding a wave of momentum The Hurricanes were forced to settle for a draw in Perth after they could not be separated from the Western Force Both teams had the chance to win it within the additional 10 minutes but the Hurricanes probably should have wrapped it up in regular time And they would have been in a far stronger position had fullback Cullum Harkin simply ran the ball in for a try himself instead of attempting a pass back inside that hit the deck and saw a certain try bombed The two teams were tied at the full-time siren as Super Point looked destined However, a scrum penalty against the Blues delivered the opportunity for O’Connor to step up and deliver some magic. The former Red nailed the penalty from just under 40 meters out in the pouring rain as teammates mobbed O’Connor after his successful kick. Conditions had a major effect on the contest as Cyclone Tam continues to roll through New Zealand. As a result, the game turned into a battle of the respective forward packs. Prop Tamaiti Williams dived over from close for the opener after two minutes, capitalising on a Blues penalty shortly after kick-off. The Blues continued to work their way back into the contest and eventually struck back through lock Josh Beehre. Both teams had penalty goals to take the lead before the half, but it was Will Jordan who gave the Crusaders the lead thanks to the lone line break of the half. The fullback latched onto a perfect ball from David Havili close to the line to dive over for the try well after the half-time siren. It sparked the Crusaders heading into the sheds and this confidence was only boosted when Christian Lio-Willie dived over to start the second half for a 19-7 lead. The Blues had a mountain of time in the Crusaders’ half and eventually found the spark when needed the most through their inspirational number eight Hoskins Sotutu. Sotutu crossed for the try but saved his best effort for a spectacular flick from the ruck. It set up AJ Lam to touch down and suddenly the game was locked at 19-all. Beauden Barrett put the Blues in front with 13 minutes to go before O’Connor responded to level the scores. O’Connor’s boot would prove the difference as the Crusaders celebrated wildly after the siren for the win. I’m Joe Heschmeyer and I wanted to review the recent debate between Alex O’Connor I believe atheist actually against a Christian longtime viewers of this channel may know I’ve actually reviewed another of Alex’s debates back when he debated Dine Za I’m happy to say this one went way better for the Christian side I actually think it went really well for both sides I know it sounds like participation trophies but really both signs made really important points where I found myself thinking I was not going to go that direction at all and I’m really glad they did and there’s something I can benefit from with what they just said So I wanted to unpack in both cases one thing I thought they did poorly and one thing I thought they did well So I’m going to start with David and then turn to Alex I think David Wood did a good job on this debate I think he did a spectacular job in terms of strategy in terms of where he was going to go with the debate to prove that Jesus presents himself as God It was a pretty unexpected direction and a really good one you had to make it through about a hundred seconds of really uncomfortable opening icebreakers I didn’t know before I watched this debate who David Wood was I’d never watched anything he’d been in or read anything or he had not really crossed my radar in a deep way and I think that’s probably the way it was for many people who might’ve been familiar with one or the other of the debaters And so first impressions make a big difference not just for yourself but for the cause that you’re representing in this case literally whether Christ does or doesn’t claim to be God about the first a hundred seconds or so of his opening statement and then I want to unpack particular things that he does I’m not doing this to pick on David Wood at all I’m doing this because I’ve seen something of a pattern of doing this badly and I think what he’s trying to do is something that Alex actually does really well I’m going to let you listen for yourself and then I’m going to give my take on it Tell us when you’re ready so we can start the clock I’d like to thank LAN for arranging this conference and this debates one of many awesome debates taking place in 2025 I won’t say who the villain is in this debate I’ll let all you lovely Christians judge that for yourselves based entirely on our accents I’d like to thank Alex for finally showing up You got to give me some wiggle room on time people have no clue how dangerous debate con is actually with the lineup they had and the number and the volume of death threats against multiple speakers So plus he lives in what is rapidly becoming the Sharia compliant hell hellhole of the universe are you guys starting to miss Jesus over there in the uk so bear in mind the opening statement that he has is 20 minutes long and he spends a little more than 5% of it doing basically open mic standup to open up You often begin a debate or a talk with some kind of joke or something to sort of break the ice and to warm up the audience a little bit so that things go more smoothly You don’t always just jump in 0.1 and I get that but look at the kinds of icebreakers that he does I’m going to just name the 10 things he does in the order that I saw them that he’s ready to start and then Ruan starts and he is like you started okay already like a weird start which manages to both play the oh watch out Alex’s English card which I don’t know how that helps and to sound really condescending by calling him son he then calls this debate one of the many awesome debates pitting heroes against villains and then suggests that the crowd of lovely Christians can judge so who is he building up or putting down on each of these he’s seemingly knocking on the moderator Then he tells the crowd that they should judge the debate based entirely on accents I don’t really know what that was supposed to do because Alex He then says just in case it wasn’t enough Now if you’re aware of the whole backstory they had to postpone this debate because of death threats being made I think were mostly against David Wood because he’s got a lot of apologetics focused on Islam Alex O’Connor was a little uneasy about participating as originally planned So I’m thankful they were able to get it together and get the show literally on the road he tells Lan that he’s going to need more wiggle room on time because people cheered or clapped that Alex wasn’t dead when he made this point He then has an awkward laugh and says that everyone needs to quit cheering for Alex He’s a month and a half late the ninth he makes fun of the UK as a Sharia compliant hellhole I believe and then makes fun of the UK again saying they’re probably missing Jesus I get someone’s going to see this and say All of the jokes he makes are at either his opponent’s expense or at the moderator’s expense None of them advance his case at all with the maybe quarter exception that when he says the UK misses Jesus he sort of kind of segues that into the debate that he’s actually about to embark on want to contrast this with Alex’s opener Now the first thing to note is Alex’s opener is substantially shorter namely that David didn’t keep time well when he had the long icebreakers we just talked about I always factor in clapping into the timing of my speeches as I must apologize for the previous debate fiasco David’s right that most people dunno what happened but I suppose that is the essence of our debate this evening People thinking they know a thing or two about a person without hearing it from their own mouth I was thinking about how to approach this given that I didn’t know which approach David was going to take I woke up this morning in this fine resort opposite Legoland which means that there is a roller coaster just outside of my room and being a bit jet lagged I woke up quite to the most peaceful of noises that is the sound of children screaming for their lives Hearing the sound of innocent children screaming for their lives of course reminded me to read the Old Testament so let’s unpack how Alex opened because I think it’s a lot more effective I said he does make the joke about how David didn’t factor in the clapping but then he makes a sort of self-effacing joke about Probably the best joke either side had over the course of the evening but notice he’s not attacking David there He’s making fun of himself in his own country but then says there’s a lot of accusations you’ve just heard from secondary or tertiary sources which he’s already doing work to link to the debate at hand because his suggestion there pretty obviously is that Jesus doesn’t claim to be God the people around him do well you wouldn’t trust just what everybody else is saying about me they’re pushing the debate forward right out the gate even though I don’t like the cause that he’s standing for which then gets to the last joke that he makes He likes children’s screaming joke again And then he again leads it in this case to link it up to Old Testament massacres as he’s going to go in that direction masterful way of doing an opening statement And I understand especially people who don’t have a lot of experience with public speaking maybe you either don’t know how hard it is to do what he just did there I’m going to give a couple pointers for maybe how to do this not just because I think you might be doing public speaking like this but because I think in conversation with other people we can risk doing when we’re nervous the kinds of things that I think David did here I suspect that he was just nervous and that his nervousness put him in a bad direction rhetorically that actually really undermined A very good case for Christianity that he makes So the other reason I wanted to do this is because I’ve seen now a pattern of this Alex had a debate previously with Dinesh DEA that Dinesh did way worse than David Wood did It was somewhere between phoning it in and self emulation on Dinesh DE’s part and it’s worth seeing how similarly Dinesh opens with just awkward potshots at Alex before getting into anything that might be deemed I’m standing up because I want to kind of neutralize Alex’s accent advantage I mentioned this because it seems to me no accident that so many of the prominent so-called new atheists have British accents I think this is really important to that credibility because think of it if Hitchens and Dawkins and Alex were three southern boys from Louisiana I’m sort of sorry to put you through it in my own So it’s not just Alex O’Connor that this happens to In my own debate with James White recently I met him an hour before and he began in what I thought was a very strange kind of way by mocking my clothing and my wife and talking about how good he thought his own bow tie was well it’s great to be back here again this evening and I’m going to ask that whoever wins the debate this evening gets to take the little desk lamp home with them I think that should be the reward for that work I’ve never had a little desk lamp before on my desk that makes me feel very warm and fuzzy inside And I also need to make sure the bow tie is straight since I’m the only one wearing a tie this evening Just thought I’d mention that and check the shoes out too if you are in a situation whether it’s public speaking or you’re having a hard conversation or something and you feel the need to reach for a joke to break the tension to ingratiate yourself to the person you’re speaking to And if you are in a context where you’re giving some kind of formal defense of Christianity or anything He can afford to have everything written out scripted and really carefully thought out because he doesn’t have to wait and see what Alex O’Connor comes with So I give that to say this debate was off to a pretty rocky start and I didn’t know if I was going to enjoy the debate or if I thought that the Christian side was going to do well I was bracing myself for another bad debate where Christians embarrass before atheists like Alex O’Connor immediately after that my impression changed there’s about a hundred uncomfortable seconds and then it presents a fantastic case in which he focuses on an angle that I’ve not heard a lot of other people make at all the so-called two powers Just when I think you couldn’t possibly be any dumber you go and do something like this and totally redeem I’m going to actually let David introduce the idea in his own words and then I’m going to expand on it a little bit with some more scriptural passages but I think he actually does a really good job in the debate explaining it I just don’t want to play like 20 minutes of him explaining it right now the Old Testament is very clear that there’s one true God but there are numerous passages in the Old Testament where we see two divine figures Sometimes God seems to be in two different places doing two different things The Lord appears to Abraham and tells him that he’s going down to Sodom and Gomorrah to see firsthand how bad the people are So he goes down to Sodom and Gomorrah and what happens Genesis 1924 then the Lord reigned on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven The Lord on earth reigned down fire from the Lord out of heaven Come Zion escape you who live in daughter Babylon for this is what the Lord Almighty says the Lord was sent by the glorious one against the nations that have plundered you I will surely raise my hand against them so that their slaves will plunder them Then you will know that the Lord Almighty has sent me the Lord Almighty was sent by the Lord Almighty shout and be glad daughter Zion for I’m coming and I will live among you Many nations will be joined with the Lord in that day and will become my people I will live among you and you will know that the Lord Almighty has sent me to you The Lord Yahweh will live among them and they will know that the Lord was sent by the Lord Almighty there are a lot of passages in the Old Testament that point in this direction this is one of the things that Jesus sees upon in Matthew 22 when he sort of turns the tables on the Pharisees and he asks them what do you think of the Christ whose son is he They say the Son of David because he clearly is to be the son of David in the Old Testament And then Jesus challenges him and says like how is it then that David inspired by the Spirit calls him Lord now notice Lord is a divine title and he’s making the point that this is seemingly the God of David who preexist David and is yet somehow distinct from the other one called the Lord There’s something mysterious going on here and the Pharisees have no answer for it Now we see this in several places throughout scripture and so if you’re not attuned to this this is really important for making sense of Christianity that when Christ comes into the world and he claims to be not only the Messiah but seemingly claims to be the God of Israel The analogy I’d give you is like this I see all the clues now I missed them before but there they were and there might even be mysterious things that you’re actively wondering about and then they’re suddenly resolved in this way The two powers are mysterious in the Old Testament So you don’t have to argue from the Christian perspective people clearly understood the Trinity or even two thirds of the Trinity it’s just enough to say they’re very clear that there is one God and yet there’s two somethings something that are clearly both at play and are both being given this divine title of God in a way that is not a refutation of polytheism So there is something absolutely mysterious going on here One of the clearest places that you find this is in Daniel chapter seven it’s almost unavoidable because the passage you look at it and think what else could this mean So Daniel has this vision where he sees thrones plural and they’re placed and one of them is taken by the ancient of days and he’s described in very much this divine image The hair in his head was pure wool is thrown with fiery flames And so clearly we’re talking about God here Daniel says that he sees in the night vision and behold with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man now son of man in the way like the Hebrew idiom to be the son of X is to be X which is already a very curious way to describe someone What that already tells me something else is weird And David Wood rightly points out that when Jesus repeatedly refers to himself as son of man So one like a son of man comes and he goes before the ancient of days and is presented before him and two him was given dominion and glory and kingdom that all people’s nations and languages should serve him one for God the father and one for the son of man And we see this not in the New Testament but in the Old Testament well how did the ancient rabbis make sense of this And so a lot of the modern scholarship in this field is from Alan Siegel kind of reigniting interest in this from a Jewish perspective and he’s not interested as much in Christians’ agnostics who are the two groups that this is associated with He’s instead interested in the rabbis who are responding to this two powers theology And one of the things that keeps recurring is the people who believe in two powers in heaven have the better biblical argument So he quotes one of the ancient rabbinical sources rabbi Levi says God faced them in many guises when you see God and then God both appearing to act in two different ways we’re to just take that to mean the God appears in different ways Sometimes he appears standing there sitting or young and old and so on And then as proof of this allegedly with one of the examples is given Daniel seven that you see the thrones and the ancient of days Hiya Barr Abba who is early two hundreds just says if a horse son should say to you they are two Gods quote I’m the one of the sea and I’m the one of Sinai So it’s just like ad hominem attacks It’s like they don’t have a good way of explaining it but just remind them we’re monotheists and name call And obviously Alan Siegel is not overly impressed with that He points out not only does the passage allow the interpretation that God changes aspect it may easily be describing two separate divine figures more than one throne is revealed and scripture describes two divine figures to fill them One sits and the other seems to be invested with power possibly enthroned you don’t come away with the impression this is one figure in two different roles It seems very clearly the ancient of days is enthroned the son of man and both are clearly divine figures although the son of man curiously while being a divine figure is also as the name suggests human looks like the Christian claims about Jesus Siegel says the ancient of days may be responsible for judgment but delegates the operation to a son of man This is going to be really important when we get into Alex’s take So notice that the two powers make sense of what we’re going to call divine delegation The ancient of days delegates the operation to a son of man who accomplishes judgment by means of a fiery stream that this son of man is young the point of the reference is hardly evident in the text this is just a way of God showing us he’s young and old and so he appears as a young man and an old man and Siegel’s like that is not clear at all from Daniel seven There’s no indication that the son of man is any younger than the eternal ancient of days That’s just being added to explain away the problem of Daniel seven this rabbinical use presumes that some orthodox counter interpretation of this dangerous scripture has already developed and is well known that the two descriptions of God’s appearance may imply a contradiction in scripture is not specifically mentioned You said God was here and then you said he was over there And so oftentimes when you get to a passage like this when you know someone reading the Bible for the first time they’re likely to be confused by a certain thing you’re likely to explain it doesn’t mean that you might think it means it means this other thing but here they’re not doing that for the idea of a biblical contradiction They’re doing that for the idea of two powers in heaven which seems to tell us that there is some kind of tradition that the rabbis are rejecting of viewing it in this way instead of focusing on fighting off accusations of contradiction immediately follows the ex of Jesus with a warning that no doctrine of two powers in heaven should be derived from the passage the only reason to focus so much on hey don’t believe in two powers is because presumably people were believing in two powers Now here we have a difficulty and the difficulty is the documentary evidence sort of dries up not completely and that’s going to be important but somewhat we have much more evidence of rabbinical debates and commentaries and everything else in say the second third century ad and beyond than we do in the period before The rabbis leave much better records than did the Pharisees who preceded them We don’t always know how well those rabbinical debates matched earlier debates and that’s exactly the point Alex makes in response well we know from these post-Christian sources that we shouldn’t believe in two powers but that doesn’t tell us if this was anything more than a weird fringe view in the Old Testament times or in the times leading up to Christ Now I think there’s two answers to that One answer is that even if that’s true it still gives you a biblical basis to say There is something of an interaction between the father and the son It’s possible for something to be there in the text that wasn’t caught until the fullness of revelation in Christ So I don’t think it’s actually that strong of a counter I think he’s also just wrong about this it’s worth pointing out Alex had never heard of this until very recently and we know this for a fact because we can actually watch him discover it on video Then I’m assuming you’ve heard of the two powers in Heaven Motif there’s a Jewish historian named Alan Segal He wrote a book called The Two Powers in Heaven And what he talks about is there’s this weird thing happening in the Hebrew Bible where there’s almost two Yahweh figures that they point to we’ll say Yahweh reigned down fire from Yahweh And so Phil of Alexandria second tumble period talks about this two powers in heaven motif There’s the first power and the second power It’s almost like a sort of proto Trinitarian view he doesn’t have a dog in the fight of trying to prove this to be true He doesn’t believe in two powers himself as far as I can tell but he wants to acknowledge that there is this debate while it’s difficult to date the rabbinic traditions accurately in many cases the results showed that the earliest heretics used it as heresy Remember believed in two complimentary powers in heaven meaning the father and the son working in unison while only later could heretics be shown to believe in two opposing powers in heaven like a good God and then an evil dimmy urch like gnostic idea very much the Christian idea compared to two opposing powers And he’s saying what we’re going to call the Christian idea Although obviously the people who believed in this weren’t originally Yet this is older than the gnostic take on these texts The extra rabbinic evidence allowed the conclusion that the traditions were earlier than the first century Now he does a lot more work in part three of his book is all about the extra rabbinical evidence that we have that suggests that we find evidence of this before the time of the rabbis before the creation of Christianity is a distinct system from Judaism it seemingly even before the time of Christ he’s born maybe 2025 bc so he’s older than Jesus by about a generation or a half generation He doesn’t even seem to be aware of Christ or Christianity which is in its very early days during his life And so whether it had spread to Alexandria by the time he dies it’s hard to say partly because we don’t know exactly when he dies or how big the Christian community in Alexandria was philo does not appear in any way to be reacting to Christianity or copying it or anything like this He is instead dealing with some pretty tricky biblical texts So this one doesn’t look like a tricky biblical text in most English bibles because in Genesis 31 verse 13 It just means that’s like the non-denominational church that he likes it doesn’t mean that Beth means house or place and L means God or I am the God of the place of God where it seems to be a God sent by God That’s a very strange way for him to introduce himself God from God well surely this is just a case of a soul that God gains to show himself to and converse with that someone who’s been transformed by union with God can be called a God from God in some sense we need to carefully inquire whether there are two gods That sounds like we have to take something like a two powers theology seriously Although in his case he’s imagining something that would be heretical like two separate gods and so he is going to reject it You can’t say there are two separate Gods judaism’s very clear And he points out that in the text and says I am the God that appeared to be not in my place So I am the God that appeared in the place of God truly there’s only one who can be called God but we can in the less strict sense talk about others either heretically or in other ways being Gods if you want to say the gods of the pagans or something like this But he’s clearly trying to make sense of how we resolve these passages in places like Genesis that seem to point to their being a God from God So you got the Jacob’s ladder angels going up and down the ladder and above it And he comments on it that this is the archangel David points out that some of the angel of the Lord passages we have a very particular idea of what an angel is it refers to a mission ose to the messenger And so oftentimes an angel in the Bible refers to what you’re imagining although probably it doesn’t look like what you’re imagining other times though it refers to a messenger or refers to the priest or refers to the bishop in Revelation one to three here though it seems to refer to Christ being sent from God that the angel of the Lord isn’t an angel like you’re imagining it is God from God And so Philo similarly envisions that the angel the archangels he calls them is in some way God himself because he is described as the Lord and again you can’t blame this on the rise of Christianity Siegel commenting on this says not only can Philo refer to Yahweh as the logos He can also interpret other recurrences of Yahweh in scripture to indicate that the presence of an angel and then it’s the part that I just quoted from Genesis 28 It’s identified as the archangel who is the logos So this is going to be really important when John says in the beginning was the logos the word and the word is with God He wouldn’t completely but he’d be on the right track that the sending forth the word of God the logos coming forth is the message and the messenger and is in some mysterious way Philo is able to link the two Hebrew words for God theos and curios with the existent one and his logos respectively So that would be we would say father and son but I think it’s enough to say when Alex treats this is just like a weird fringe view but Philo is one of the two famous first century Jews it’s Philo and Josephus and Philo is clearly playing around with this stuff and there’s others as well You look at some of the non-canonical literature you can find them playing around with this idea of whether there’s another power whether it’s an angel or whatever it is one of the candidates kind of thrown out fascinating stuff so I love that David Wood went there because I found it really fascinating A lot of this was stuff I didn’t know and I think it makes a really good case that when we’re talking about what do we see from the way Jesus speaks and acts you understand his claims to be claiming to be the God from God even when he calls himself son of God or son of man We know that because the ones who had those roles in the Old Testament when we see those figures appear each time they’re referred to as God or some variation I mean there’s so many more predictable ways he could have gone with that but he went with a way that I think really delves deep in the Old Testament and shows the coherence between the Old Testament and the New Testament which I know is a thing Alex O’Connor likes to hit on Can we really say this is the same God in both places I think he does a really good job of exploring this notion of divine delegation or the delegation of divine power and authority Alex’s case is going to be like this There are times where Christ is presented as acting with divine power and one read is that’s because he is by his nature divine And that other possibility is he has been empowered by God to do things and you and I may be also empowered by God to do things but that doesn’t make us divine by nature Nobody’s going to turn around and worship you if you go and perform a miracle because you’re not doing it in your own authority You’re doing it in the authority of the one who sent you And Christ repeatedly points to the authority of the one who sent him So doesn’t it follow that he’s no more divine than you or I That’s kind of the crux as I understand it And I think that he makes some really good points in that that we as Christians are often kind of sloppy about in making the case for Christianity Jesus says that the glory you’ve given me The disciples we’re told in Isaiah in the book of Isaiah that God shares his glory with nobody And this is sometimes a suggestion that’s made is sometimes that because Jesus says he must be God because God shares his glory with nobody But people just seem to forget that in the same chapter Jesus says that He will give the glory that he has been given by the Father to the disciples too all I’m asking you to consider is however you interpret these verses where Jesus has given glory Jesus has given the judgment and bear in mind that Jesus is given all of these things what he then does with those things and whether he delegates them to other people because if he does then it’s clearly not just something that can be delegated to God himself Jesus also promises judgment over the 12 tries of Israel to the disciples Jesus forgives sins and only God can forgive sins I’m told that only God forgives sins but then Jesus gives that ability to his disciples all of these things which are supposed to indicate that Jesus has a special relationship with God but it’s a relationship that he hopes and literally prays that will be shared with everybody there’s some things that Alex gets wrong there but there’s a lot that he gets right And I regularly as a Catholic find myself making a variation of Alex’s argument because people say And they’re quoting whether they know it or not And so you can see in Matthew nine a version the account of the paralytic is in a couple of different gospels this is going to be Jesus proving himself here to be divine because they’re accusing him of blasphemy for which is easier to say your sins are forgiven or to say rise and walk but that you may know that the son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins Take up your bed and go home and the man does So now Jesus has given an ambiguous answer by his nature as a divine being or divine person he can do this or two as one sent by the Father the crowds go away assuming that he means the second of those that he’s not claiming to be God but is claiming to be given this God-given authority they were afraid and they glorified God who had given such authority to men Now notice Matthew is telling you they were right in understanding this If you don’t have a good Trinitarian theology and if you don’t have a good Christology here’s the things we got to keep straight But that is at the heart of the Christian claim that there are times where Christ is acting in his own power and authority in times where he’s clearly acting as one But then also even within Trinitarian theology remember the two powers that it is not just like two powers that have the exact same role And so there’s a clear sense of something like divine delegation but we also don’t mean that arbitrarily because there is a real sending that we see within the life of God and in what’s called the economy of God the son asks for the father to send the spirit through him philo And so we see this clear sending of the spirit from the Father through the son And so there are times when the things Jesus is saying about being sent and delegated authority and all this stuff This is a recognition that he is the son and not the father then those things can be as confusing to us as they likely were to the crowd in Matthew nine So all that’s to say when you find these things that God alone can do that could mean the one doing them is divine But you have to be a little cautious about that I would say the fact that Jesus is consistently doing things only God can do is pointing to his being divine But we do have to bear in mind that he does things like breathes upon the apostles and tells them that they have received the Holy Spirit I’ve heard many Protestants try to get around this passage They can only declare sins forgiven because only God can forgive them And they’re just denying Matthew nine that God has given divine authority to men that there are men who operate with divine authority this is Christ’s body and this is Christ’s blood because he’s acting with divine authority So much so that we refer to him as acting in the person of Christ He’s speaking the words of Jesus through him This notion of divine authority being given from the Father to the Son and from the Son to us is perfectly Christian it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me So some sense of that we have to hold onto and I’m going to look at the sacraments particularly here as an example but you can also be good not apart from God So example here would be John the Baptist and Judas greatest of those born among women who aren’t part of the kingdom He is never invited during his earthly life to join the church mysteriously And Jesus instead chooses as part of the kingdom you’ll notice the people who are baptized by John have to get rebaptized but nobody has ever described as being rebaptized who was baptized by Judas His point is that you are not better than John but the baptism given through you is better than that of John for the one is Christ So whether it’s Paul or Peter or even Judas who baptizes it is Christ who baptizes John does this symbolic baptism and it has to be redone we don’t prefer Judas to John obviously but we do prefer the baptism of Christ even when performed at the hands of Judas to the baptism of John the Baptist because his was just symbolic if you have this framework that God delegates authority and that he sends people forth with truly divine power then you can understand why the baptism that even someone as rascally as Judas Iscariot RAs feels like an understatement as wicked is Judases harriot a bad apostle can baptize and it is still Christ working through that awful instrument because of the delegation of divine authority So far I agree with all that part with Alex O’Connor I don’t think I know he gets a major thing wrong How then do we distinguish between the son being sent by the father and say the apostles or Christians more broadly being sent by the sun I want to flag a thing that he gets wrong pretty repeatedly He says Cathos because it means just as basically he’s going to argue it means that there has to be a unical relationship and we’re going to see that that’s not true We’re going to talk about sonship here born of woman born under the law to redeem those who are under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons and then a bunch of us adopted into sonship through redemption And because your sons got us sent the spirit of his son into our hearts crying Abba father So notice he has sent the spirit of his son again third person relationship is laid out there pretty explicitly But so too is the fact that Christ is son by nature then you can understand why when the father sends the son he’s sending one who is like him in nature But as we’re going to see in a little bit this concept of what’s called theosis or divinization this is actually part of the answer to what Alex O’Connor is hitting on that yes there are these passages which talk about us acting with divine power and authority and that happens here on earth is where it begins And then of course it happens in a much bigger way in heaven I know I’m going quickly through this part then you can understand how on the one hand we can say in John three 16 that God gave his only son because it’s talking to son by nature And then the same John can write in one John three that we should be called children of God because one is by nature and one is by adoption But then he says that we will become like him Jesus So there’s some kind of transformation to becoming St Peter’s going to call it partakers of the divine nature that’s a much bigger topic that I’m going to have time to unpack here because it’s somewhat adjacent to the question but him being the son by nature and we are by adoption is presenting Jesus as uniquely divine whereas we just do divine things with divine help So I think Alex’s strongest argument I think he’s actually exploring a part of Christianity that many Christians are woefully uneducated on and often get wrong And so it is worth asking when you see Jesus doing something Is it in the name of the one who sends him Because it is often the latter that doesn’t deny his divinity but it does point to his relationship to the Father is a little more complex than people realize His low point is the way he makes arguments tied to language that I think is not persuasive and not a good way of understanding language What I mean by that is he regularly makes these arguments that such and such a word basically always has to mean such and such a thing If you recognize a word might mean different things in different contexts hopefully it’s clear that this is not a good argument but a couple of the New Testament words for worship We’re told that Jesus only rightly accepts worship David flashed on a few passages of Jesus accepting worship in the gospels The word most commonly translated as worship in the New Testament is pros which means to bow down or prostrate before a higher authority then we have to consider the fact that David in the SEP agent that Joseph’s brothers ProScan before him when he’s governor of Egypt that the entire nation of Israel offers proneal worship to King David but it’s very much the same kind of idea this word pros is being used or this proneal worship as he calls it which is actually a very bad way to approach it because he’s adding the word worship to make it sound like worship every time And that’s just not handling the evidence well There’s actually one thing he is getting right and then explain how he’s mishandling that this is often translated as that one word worship different words in the Greek that that could be laia or laia like gifts or to make offerings which is where we get the word liturgy and ProScan And this refers to different aspects of worship There’s overlap between some of these terms And the problem is that these terms are often used in other contexts And so if you read these words just as they’re found in the Greek and they don’t all always mean worship Paul talks about a service being done to him if you understood liturgia there as like a mass or a service then he’d be claiming himself to be the object of divine worship He’s just saying that Timothy does something nice But in the other times that this same Greek word is used or I guess right in the direction he could have gone with it which is the mere fact that we see a word being used that sometimes means worship does not automatically mean that it means worship And any half informed Christian will admit all of that it always mean worship and therefore everybody’s an idolater And the problem with that is just that it’s flagrantly wrong because we often see this being done as an act of worship to God the Father If you can’t use the biblical verbiage for worship to mean that people are worshiping anyone then that doesn’t just mean people aren’t worshiping Jesus It also means they’re not worshiping the Father is it sometimes the verbiage doesn’t mean worship basically makes the same point that Alex is making but better when he points out that it’s very hard to weed out what are the squa intrinsic parts of worship that only belong in divine worship because we find other things like honor and veneration and all of that And his argument is the only thing you can really say only happens to God is sacrifice So you can read that for yourself in City of God and he makes a very good argument that at the heart of worship and this concept of worship is this notion of sacrifice Now that then becomes really tricky to apply to the case of Jesus because one of the arguments Alex makes is we don’t see people making sacrifice to Jesus in this way Don’t see the stuff that is just obviously unambiguously worship done to Jesus One is there’s a certain sense in which the sacrificial action is the action of the son being offered through the Spirit to the Father understanding worship in a Trinitarian way where Jesus is involved in worship but we worship the Father in Jesus by the Spirit And if you go to any mass around the world it is directed to God the Father specifically not just to the General Trinity or anything like that the offering of the Son to the Father that just as the Father sends the Son who sends the spirit spirit leads us to the Son who leads us to the Father This is built into Trinitarian Christianity and it’s built into the New Testament data and the Old Testament data for that matter that’s going to complicate the picture of why don’t we just see Jesus as an object of liturgical worship in that kind of sense and particularly with offerings being made but the other is that he’s right there in the flesh with them the Magi come and they present gold fit for a king which was an offering you would put on the incense for divine offering and Mer an embalming spice And the way Christians have classically understood this they’re acknowledging Jesus as the king of kings and as the true God but also as a mortal man that the son of man is all of those things And that fits very well with the picture in say Daniel seven Now pros just means to kneel or bat down or to worship that can mean an act of adoration and the sense of divine worship or it could mean something else Alex is going to push back and claim that’s just like special pleading I suppose I really want to nail down on this worship point since I was kind of getting at that at the end and David says but in a religious context it means something else How do you know that without begging the question if you see someone kneeling down to propose to a woman or you see someone kneeling down on both knees to be knighted or you see someone kneeling down before a figure is sending into heaven the intent expressed by the body is different in those contexts a word might have more than one meaning in English and Greek and Hebrew and every language that’s ever existed and as a result that certain amount of the indeterminacy of language sometimes the context is not a hundred percent clear Someone could read the Magi coming before Christ and giving ProScan and saying are they offering worship or are they just kneeling down because it’s a baby in a manger If you see somebody kneeling next to their bed they might be praying or they might be looking for something under the bed you have to kind of pay attention to make sense of that but to say there’s awfully a lot of prone being offered to Jesus and to just act like none of that counts because technically not every time is pro worship isn’t a very strong argument because it’s really an argument against reading things contextually and just assuming the same word is going to mean the same thing every time and it just doesn’t But I think the other thing that makes this a bad argument is something that you may have heard him mention already The whole point is ProSal isn’t automatically worship It’d be like if I called it kneeling worship pro just means to kneel to be prostrate well if you’re doing prostrate worship to David or anybody who isn’t divine that doesn’t automatically tell me you’re kneeling in worship unless somebody comes along and just adds the word worship on there If prone worship is something that only God can receive The entire assembly of Israel sinned when they bowed down before David I don’t think that’s a good interpretation Alex’s interpretation isn’t strong here because ProCon worship does belong to God alone It’s right there in the name worship but ProScan simply bowing down does not automatically So only if you add the word worship and then say well they’re not just prostrating prostrating in worship Well then they would be committee idolatry So I think he adds a word and then insists that the word pyo has to mean the same thing in all the context which nobody believes even if you don’t accept the divinity of Christ you have to reject the university of language The same word doesn’t always mean the same thing in every context but this is not the only word that he does this with Now you might’ve already kind of caught this theme but I actually think that what Alex O’Connor is arguing for that Christ is sent by God and what David Wood is arguing for that the two powers is a good way of understanding Jesus’s divinity fit together pretty perfectly because the whole point of the two powers is that God is sent from God That notion which Christians have been praying in the creed for a long time involves a sense of delegation and sending and mission And Christ speaks of that pretty explicitly But unfortunately Alex is going to argue against that on the basis that Jesus is sending must be just as our sending because of this word S Now he’s asked about this in a very good question he calls it the Eastern Orthodox idea of theosis it’s also the Catholic idea of theosis that we are called to become partakers of the divine nature Wouldn’t that resolve everything you just said And he really banks his entire rebuttal to that on one word that doesn’t work just as he thinks it does You’ve brought this up before the idea in eastern orthodoxy of theosis or deification does that solve the dilemma that you’re referring to the process of humans attaining likeness to and union with God divine nature and experiencing community with the Holy Trinity If we’re adding the Eastern Orthodox position he has Protestants would probably call that glorification They’re giving very specific language and then he’s given this godlike authority to his disciples Could you concede potentially that that solves the dilemma Only if that also describes how Jesus relates to his own father constantly Jesus is using the word cathos or which means just as in the same way as so sure maybe this is talking about a kind of elevation of humans to share in the likeness of God in some other kind of way But then Jesus would have to see himself in the same way which is in so many words what I’m trying to say So you can see how a lot of the argument comes down to we actually both agree that the Father sends Jesus This is at least certainly Alex is granting this is how the New Testament presents Jesus that he sends the Holy Spirit and he sends us does that mean our relationship is the exact same as Jesus’s and his case for why it does turns on cathos which would mean either we’re all members of the Trinity or Jesus he’s just a man sent as kind of an ideal but just one among many who are sent in this kind of mission And the problem is ke ethos just doesn’t mean that it doesn’t require what’s called university So quick breakdown in the way language works There’s unical language where the same word means literally the exact same thing in different contexts Seven and seven say you’ve got equivocal language where the banks of a river and banks that you do banking at but they don’t mean anything even relevant They’re just two totally different words that sound the same and we’ll get into some of those examples this food is healthy and this person is healthy you don’t mean the same thing those two times that you’re using the word healthy but there is a relationship because eating healthy food is healthy for you So when you’re saying the food is healthy but you mean that there’s some relationship to this notion of health that’s analogical language And when we’re talking about theology we often are using analog language and Alex seems to be resisting that which I think everybody has to acknowledge on the basis of this word that when you see the way the word cathos is being used it contradicts Alex’s claims in two ways The first is that we use cathos regularly for things that aren’t unical so will it be in the days of the Son of man But I don’t think anyone’s going to read Luke 17 and say the return of God in glory is going to be exactly like Noah’s Ark it doesn’t mean literally identical in all aspects there Or to take another example that I think is really pointing to the analog use but obviously you aren’t called to be merciful in the same way God is You can’t can’t be good in the way God is because God is good by nature and you are good only by adoption And Jesus later in the gospel of Luke makes that point he’s being again a little playful about But he’s doing this thing of recognizing the difference between the goodness of God and all other participations in goodness Jesus is not denying other people can be good but they’re good as it were by delegation They are good by sharing in divine goodness whether they realize it or not Caho is used to describe our relationship with mercy and God’s relationship with mercy That can’t be true if unless Alex’s claim is that Jesus thinks we can literally do the exact same thing God does but I’d be interested in how he would kind of explain that Cathos doesn’t mean this strict analogical likeness It doesn’t mean that it doesn’t require Unical relationship the father judges no one but is given all judgment to the Son There’s that divine delegation theme the ancient of days is clearly something we should have in view and you have the Son who judges the son of men that all may honor the son even as cathos then he’d have to say that Jesus says in the gospel jam that Jesus says he is owed the exact same honor as the Father If Cathos means that every time it’s used John five proves the whole case for Christianity then the whole reason for objecting to theosis demonization as a solution that yes The only rebuttal he has there is cathos and it doesn’t work here you find Jesus demanding something that certainly appears to be divine honor he who does not honor the son does not honor the Father who sent him So Jesus is both claiming to be sent by God and claiming to be worthy of divine honor like the Father I was not sure if I was going to like it or not I was kind of bracing myself for the worst I thought Alex did great and Dinesh Susa did not This time I actually thought both David Wood and Alex O’Connor did great especially if you exclude opening statements And both sides I think pointed to areas where maybe the other one was a little weak and I would love to see more of this kind of conversation once each person has had the chance to maybe dig a little deeper and explore the things maybe they weren’t as ready for and as I’ve hopefully made abundantly clear I think this is something where if you have the right understanding of the relationship of the Father to the Son and if you have the right understanding of the relationship of Jesus’ divinity and humanity and if you have the right understanding of our sharing and divine power through grace then you can say both sides are substantially right but that this is the heart of what Christianity has always claimed After pushing through back-to-back six day breaks a 10 day gap between games is a thoroughly deserved luxury for the Cats Following a big victory in Gather Round on Thursday night Geelong get the opportunity to rest and recharge before returning to action on Easter Monday against Hawthorn For Mark O'Connor it was a chance to sit back and watch fellow Irishman Rory McIlroy break his major drought in a thrilling finish to the US Masters O'Connor noted that it was great to relax for a few days but attention quickly turned back to football and the upcoming clash with the Hawks "We had the Masters over the weekend which was nice," O'Connor told K rock's Tom I think everyone was on the edge of their seat Seeing his reaction was pretty special for anyone we had a couple of six day breaks back to back so switching off is really good for a couple of days It is not too hard when the Hawks are going so well and it is such a big occasion so we just try to stay switched on during this period."  O'Connor has quietly made a very solid start to the 2025 season averaging over 14 disposals and five marks per game while also having a big impact when he came on as the substitute against Melbourne Awaiting the Cats in round six is the traditional Easter Monday blockbuster With nine career appearances against the Hawks to this point O'Connor is certainly familiar with the rivalry and the intense build up that comes with a Geelong and Hawthorn match there is always a big build up to the game," O'Connor said "I know Hawthorn are going really well now but even at times in the past when either team hasn't been going too well "That probably adds to the occasion as well we are certainly looking forward to hopefully a big Cats contingent going up and supporting us "Especially after the Adelaide trip where the fans weren't too friendly so we are really looking forward to that."  The Cats play their next three games at the MCG with 80,000+ expected for their home game against the Hawks on Easter Monday The best way to secure your seat is with a Melbourne Flexi Membership and attend any Cats Melbourne with a bundle of General Admission tickets Head to membership.geelongcats.com.au today Ollie Dempsey continues to go from strength to strength after another stellar display at MCG on Saturday night The AFL coaches votes are in for Geelong's thrilling win over Collingwood on Saturday night at the MCG Check out everything you can expect to see on the Cats channels in the build up to Sunday's clash with the GWS Giants Take an early glance ahead to Sunday's big clash with the GWS Giants at GMHBA Stadium Geelong Cats defender Lawson Humphries has entered the AFL concussion protocol following Saturday's game against Collingwood Jack Bowes joined 3AW on Sunday morning to chat through the big win over Collingwood at the MCG Following his sensational outing against the Magpies Patrick Dangerfield joined ABC Sport to talk through the incredible win on Saturday night Chris Scott praised the performance of Geelong's captain on Saturday night helping to steer the Cats to a brilliant victory Shaun Mannagh joined SEN Breakfast this morning with Garry and Tim touching on the Cats big win over Adelaide while also turning attention to the blockbuster round six clash with Hawthorn awaiting on Easter Monday Look back at some behind the scenes access after a huge win against the Pies at the 'G Ollie Dempsey spoke to Cats Media after a thrilling finish against the Pies After an importance performance down back in a thrilling win Watch Geelong’s press conference after round eight’s match against Collingwood Geelong Football Club acknowledges Wadawurrung as the Traditional Owners and Custodians of the Land on which our club our families and our communities work and play and those that will lead their collective future in Wadawurrung language is the place of the morning sun a place of deep cultural connection and significance a meeting place since the beginning of time We are honoured to walk with the Wadawurrung People respect and talk together on our journey on Wadawurrung Country Team Jayco AlUla will go all in for an Amstel Gold Race podium the first race of three at the Ardennes Classics with the 34-year-old Michael Matthews looking for a top-result in a race that he has a consistent list of results Matthews has enjoyed no less than six top 10 finishes at the event and is hoping for more in 2025 on a course that returns to its previous finish line location Vuelta a España podium finisher Ben O’Connor will provide the team another strong option for the likes of La Flèche Wallonne where the Mur de Huy will decide who is the deserving champion The pair will be looking for a strong showing in the final of the three races the lengthy iconic Monument, Liège-Bastogne-Liège on Sunday The Australian duo is ready for the tough week of racing and will have a solid support team around them for all three races in the shape of Cadel Evans GORR winner Mauro Schmid and former Italian champion Filippo Zana Coming into the fold for Amstel Gold and Flèche Wallonne only will be MTB World Champion Alan Hatherly Austrian rider Patrick Gamer and young Dane Anders Foldager the team recruit three fresh riders with Australian duo Chris Harper and Michael Hepburn plus Dutch rider Koen Bouwman Team Jayco AlUla at the Ardennes Classics 2025:Anders Foldager (DEN) *Amstel & Flèche onlyPatrick Gamper (AUT) *Amstel & Flèche onlyAlan Hatherly (RSA) *Amstel & Flèche only Michael Matthews (AUS) * All 3x racesBen O’Connor (AUS) *All 3x racesMauro Schmid (SWI) *All 3x racesFilippo Zana (ITA) * All 3x racesMichael Hepburn (AUS) *Liège onlyKoen Bouwman (NED) *Liège onlyChris Harper (AUS) *Liège only TBC Ben O’Connor“The Ardennes is always a hard week of racing We have a strong team and with myself and Matthews we’ve got options in the racing We know it will be hard racing; the weather can also play a big part in the outcome of the races.  I’ve been slowly building through the spring I’m feeling in good shape now and hopefully can do something in a one-day race Liege is a Monument of course and that gives a lot of motivation.” Valerio Piva“We’re ready to be back at the Ardennes Classics this year we have two strong options for the races with both Matthews and O’Connor Matthews has been consistent in Amstel and it’s a race we hope he can do well in this year O’Connor can be strong if he’s on a good day and we have a strong team around that can support well with the likes of Mauro Schmid 2025 Green Edge Cycling – Privacy Policy – powered by Butti Computer You are not permitted to download, save or email this image. Visit image gallery to purchase the image The students pipped the Southern Magpies 58-57 in the fourth round of the competition Southern led 17-16 at the first break but Physed B made a strong start to the second quarter and opened up a three-goal advantage by halftime Genevieve Taua (GS) dominated the shooting circle for Southern landing 51 of her 59 attempts at goal to run at 86.4% Hannah O’Connor was also on point with her shooting for Physed with a sharp 90.7% rate Physed midcourters Tia Pavihi (WA) and Molly Mason-Galletly (C) were on form with their feeds into their shooters Physed extended their advantage to 43-41 at the three-quarter break and defenders Holly Smith (GD) and Rebecca Mace (GK) were doing everything they could to prevent O’Connor and Meleitia Tatupu from scoring Phys Ed B had just enough in the tank to hold on for a one-goal win Physed A beat University-Albion B 55-44 and University-Albion A beat College A 64-48 Next week’s games feature University-Albion B against the Southern Magpies College A against Physed B and University-Albion A v Physed A in the late game Promotion-relegation will be played on May 12 Kerry's David Clifford celebrates scoring his first goal Somebody once observed that pressure in Kerry football is like weather Sometimes it’s good and sometimes it’s bad Yesterday in Killarney the weather was perfect David Clifford had a couple of goals bagged by the sixth minute