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How the Maroons salvaged Origin pride, as Southwell proves she's the next great halfback

How the Maroons salvaged Origin pride, as Southwell proves she's the next great halfback

All it took was a look from Maroons veteran Ali Brigginshaw, and Chelsea Lenarduzzi knew it was on.
With the Maroons trailing by two in the final minutes of a State of Origin series they'd already lost, Brigginshaw eyeballed Lenarduzzi from dummy half, and popped it up for the bustling forward to barge over for one of her 'favourite plays', and the match winner.
Lenarduzzi didn't play in Game I, in Game II she was added onto the bench and failed to fire, but as a late addition to the starting side in Game III, she thrived to prevent a series whitewash.
The Broncos' prop effectively bulldozed the Blues in her opening stint, tiring their defenders to help lay the foundation for the Maroons' opener.
And in a game littered with momentum swings – and handling errors – it was a defining 11 minutes, proving the Queensland pack wouldn't be outmuscled this time around.
There was an impressive supporting cast who stepped into the spotlight throughout the game, including Tarryn Aiken who cast aside a sub-par kicking game in the first half, to orchestrate much of the Maroons' mayhem in the second.
Julia Robinson was an immense defensive presence — and constant nuisance for her opposing winger Jamie Chapman, who gave as good as she got.
And while Brigginshaw was well below her best this series, which seems likely to be her last, it was fitting that she set up the match-winner and took the final intercept to snuff out any hopes of a Blues comeback after the siren.
But for all the positives the Maroons will take from securing the consolation prize in the dead rubber, it's a series that the Blues undoubtedly deserved to win, and where new superstars were forged.
Reigning Dally M medallist Olivia Kernick won the Nellie Doherty medal for the player of the series, largely off the back of a brilliant Game II, but this series was Jesse Southwell's coming of age.
Once again, her kicking was on point, her passing perfection, and her vision unparalleled.
Her hand in the Blues' second try was especially magnetic.
At first receiver approaching the Maroons' tryline she held the ball for barely a second, which felt like so much longer, such was the way she feigned the slightest dummy, carefully surveyed her options out wide, then delivered a pinpoint two-player cutout for Jayme Fressard to score.
Time is something the great players have a command of, and with each game, Southwell is mastering it.
And while it's unfair, and premature, to compare the 20-year-old Novocastrian to Newcastle's most famous number 7, Andrew Johns himself has heaped praise on her and predicted a bright future.
After debuting for the Blues in 2023, Southwell wasn't selected last year.
The time away has likely fuelled this year's resurrection, and not only has she set herself up as a player for the Blues to build a team around for years to come, a first Jillaroos jersey can't be far off.
Blues fullback Abbi Church was another who had a breakout series, and strong performance in Game III.
Every time the Blues went to Church, they were rewarded.
There was her heroic effort to hold Emily Bass up over the line, incisive line breaks, a clever grubber to earn a repeat set, and a perfectly weighted pass to set up what should have been a try to Isabelle Kelly, who inexplicably failed to ground the ball in the in-goal.
The Eels number one debuted in Game I, dethroning Emma Verran, and now looks to be a mainstay.
Overall this series won't go down as an Origin classic, and once again questions have been raised over the timing of it.
The Queensland competition doesn't kick off till June, with the NSW Premiership and NRLW getting underway in July.
It means both sides effectively come into Origin with no real match fitness, and only a six-week training block to prepare for the series opener.
And post-match, Maroons coach Tahnee Norris was blunt.
"It's the hardest game of football that these girls play in, and they came off the back of nothing," she said.
"We want the best footy that's played. These girls need to be playing NRLW so we can pick them off that. It needs to be in the middle of an NRLW season for sure."
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Wallabies fuming after refereeing decision in 29-26 loss to British and Irish Lions in second Test
Wallabies fuming after refereeing decision in 29-26 loss to British and Irish Lions in second Test

ABC News

timean hour ago

  • ABC News

Wallabies fuming after refereeing decision in 29-26 loss to British and Irish Lions in second Test

A furious Wallabies coach Joe Schmidt feels his side was the victim of an unfair refereeing decision during a dramatic final minute of their 29-26 defeat to the British and Irish Lions in the second Test at the MCG. In the shadows of full-time and in front of 90,307 spectators, reserve Lions back-rower Jac Morgan cleared out Wallabies counterpart Carlo Tizzano at a ruck, a phase before the tourists scored a try through fullback Hugo Keenan. Keenan's try, with only 50 seconds left on the clock, clinched victory and gave the Lions an unassailable 2-0 series lead. Morgan appeared to make contact with Tizzano's neck, triggering Wallabies captain Harry Wilson — whose side was leading 26-24 at the time of the incident — to plead with referee Andrea Piardi to review the play. Wilson believed it was an illegal clear-out from Morgan when Tizzano was attempting to pilfer the ball after the Lions' James Ryan was tackled five metres out from the Wallabies' goal line. Following consultation with television match official Eric Gauzins, Piardi ruled Tizzano and Morgan arrived at the ruck at "the same time" but there was "no foul play", meaning the try stood. Sitting alongside a shattered Wilson at their post-match media conference, Schmidt claimed Morgan's actions were a violation of World Rugby's laws relating to dangerous play at a ruck. Schmidt pointed to law 9.20, the crux of which states a "player must not make contact with an opponent above the line of the shoulders". "I think everyone can make their own decision on that," Schmidt said. "You just have to read law 9.20 and I guess you just have to listen to the description from the referee and then watch the vision. "When two players are described as arriving at the same time — just watch the footage." Schmidt said he could understand match officials making errors "because they're human". But he believed Piardi's interpretation of the incident contradicted World Rugby's well-publicised edict on player safety. "Our perspective is we felt it was a decision that doesn't really live up to the big player safety push that they're [World Rugby] talking about," Schmidt said. "You cannot hit someone above the level of the shoulders and there's no bind with the left arm [from Morgan]. The hand is on the ground. "That's what we've seen and we've watched a number of replays from different angles, so it is what it is. "We just have to accept it." Wilson said the incident warranted a penalty, which would have meant Keenan's try was disallowed. "Obviously I saw shoulder to the neck," Wilson said. "Carlo was pretty sore after it and he was straight down, so I went to him [Piardi] about that and got told since he [Morgan] wrapped his arms [around Tizzano], it was all good to be in the neck." Schmidt said the Wallabies were "gutted" but he was "immensely proud" of their effort, having led for almost the entire match. Not surprisingly, triumphant Lions coach Andy Farrell saw the incident differently to Schmidt. Farrell felt Morgan's clear-out was legal. "I thought it was a good clear-out live," he said. "I couldn't understand what he [Piardi] was going back for. They seem to go back for everything these days, don't they? "But I'm so pleased the referee held his nerve." When Wilson was remonstrating with Piardi, Lions captain Maro Itoje rushed in to confront the Wallabies skipper. Itoje agreed with Farrell's assessment of Morgan's clear-out. "Naturally, their captain was trying to get their point across and trying — in my view — argue for something that didn't happen," Itoje said. "I guess I was arguing for something that did happen. "Fortunately, Jac was accurate with what he was doing and everything was fine." Lions fly-half Finn Russell was in the vicinity of the ruck when Morgan made contact with Tizzano. "They [Wallabies] had boys over the ball and Jac just cleared them out … it was a hard clear-out, that's all it is," Russell said. "I think he [Tizzano] obviously popped up holding his head as if it's illegal, which it wasn't." The Lions tour will wrap up in Sydney next Saturday night with the third Test at Stadium Australia. The Wallabies had lost the series opener in Brisbane last weekend, going down 27-19 to the Lions.

China's carbon emissions may have peaked thanks to renewables push
China's carbon emissions may have peaked thanks to renewables push

ABC News

timean hour ago

  • ABC News

China's carbon emissions may have peaked thanks to renewables push

Climate experts say China's carbon emissions may have peaked, which could affect global climate targets, the fight against global warming — and the Australian coal industry. China is currently the world's biggest emitter, accounting for some 30 per cent of global carbon emissions, but a report by the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) found that in the year to May 2025, China's CO2 emissions dropped 1.6 per cent. China policy expert at CREA Belinda Schäpe said the trend had also continued in the months since. Ms Schäpe told the ABC the finding was "really unique" because the only other times the country had recorded a year-on-year decline in CO2 emissions were during times of economic downturn, like the COVID-19 pandemic. "It's really quite a historic result," Ms Schäpe said. "It's due to a really rapid increase in renewables build-out in China that has translated into an increase in power generation coming from clean sources and driving down the coal share in the power mix, and with that, bringing down emissions." She said China led the world in green energy uptake. "In May [2025] alone, China built out 90 gigawatts of solar capacity, which is really huge. It translates to roughly 100 solar panels per second. "We are now at a point where solar and wind capacity is actually bigger than all thermal power capacity. So not only coal, but also including gas, oil and other fossil fuel sectors." Li Shuo, director of the China climate hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute, told the ABC he thought that despite previous emissions fluctuations, the country would continue to reduce its carbon output. "It certainly suggests that after three decades of very rapid economic growth, and also growth in China's emissions, the emission peak point for China has come very close, if it has not happened already," Mr Li said. "We have certainly entered into, if not yet an emission peak, a plateauing period for China's emissions. "We have entered a new phase of China's emissions, a phase that features a stabilisation of China's emissions and increasingly large-scale integration of China's renewable energy power, which, I hope, will actually make the country reduce its emissions from this point on." If the world is to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius, the amount of emissions released into the atmosphere needs to come down, not stabilise, according to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Climate experts say a failure to limit global warming below that figure will result in catastrophic consequences for people and the planet. Despite the rapid installation of renewable energy plants across the country, China is still building new coal-fired power plants. Beijing approved on average two coal-powered projects a week in 2022 and 2023, after power shortages in 2021. Belinda Schäpe said a backlog of these projects was now coming online, but they were using less coal. "There's been a significant drop in coal imports … in June, there was a 25 per cent year-on-year drop in coal imports," she said. "In June, China's power demand growth was actually 70 per cent higher than last year this time around, but solar and wind power generation met 89 per cent of that power demand growth. "That's what we've been seeing over the last six months, really, where renewables, or solar and wind in particular, accounted for 24 per cent of total electricity generation. Chinese President Xi Jinping has pledged to continue phasing down the country's coal consumption in the next five years, between 2026 and 2030. Jorrit Gosens, a climate change and energy policy fellow at the Australian National University, said Australia needed to rethink the future of coal mines. "The writing is on the wall a little bit in the future economic potential of that industry," he said. China imports roughly 30 per cent of Australian thermal coal exports, making it Australia's largest market. Dr Gosens said China's increasing wind and solar power generation, combined with increasing domestic supplies of coal, created a "double whammy" for Australian coal exports. "It should be expected that those export volumes will continue to decrease over the next few years." Other Asian markets of Australian coal, such as South Korea and Japan, would follow suit as they decarbonised, he said. Dr Gosens pointed to the Mt Arthur coal mine in NSW, for which BHP could not find a buyer because of the shrinking demand of coal and its liabilities, like rehabilitation costs. He said local community leaders and the federal government needed to transition communities historically reliant on coal mines into other industries. "Currently, we're still seeing more resistance to change than embracing of that transition, which I think is a risky strategy given the demand for our product is not going to be determined by those local communities or by the federal government," he said. "Our best bet really is to make sure that there are viable alternatives for when it does get to that point." US President Donald Trump's policy agenda has seen green energy subsidies replaced with coal subsidies. Li Shou said it was clear that the two countries were now on different paths. He said some conservative forces within China may use the US's withdrawal from clean energy as motivation "for domestic inaction", but he was confident that it would not change the country's policy direction. "China has over the last decade or so become the superpower when it comes to wind technology — deploying and manufacturing wind, solar batteries and electric vehicles," he said. "This will not change because of what is happening or not happening in the US and if anything, Beijing will just continue with this green path because doing these things is ultimately in the country's long-term economic interest. "There has been a realisation on the Chinese side that they should continue and double down on their climate and environmental agenda, not because of the global situation and the US situation, but just for their own sake, to clean up the skies in major Chinese cities." China is set to announce its new climate reduction targets as part of the Paris agreement later this year. He said that would tell the world a lot about where the global appetite to reduce emissions was at. "Whether China chooses to coordinate with some of the other geopolitical powers will also tell us a lot about where the global climate agenda stands and to what extent countries, including China and Australia and the European Union, can still engage," Mr Li said.

How many close friends do you really need?
How many close friends do you really need?

News.com.au

timean hour ago

  • News.com.au

How many close friends do you really need?

In 2025, many of us are living alone. Or we live with housemates, cotenants, flatmates – people who may share a fridge, a lease, even a dog, but not necessarily our inner world. While the population swells in our cities, and digital devices keep us constantly connected, many of us live in a kind of emotional isolation. We go to work, we cook our meals, we scroll our phones, we answer messages – and still feel deeply alone. For generations, it was a given that our romantic partner, our spouse, was also our closest confidante – the person we could cry in front of, confide in, lean on when the day had simply been too much. But for some, the presence of a partner only throws the lack of connection into sharper relief. Intimacy cannot be assumed. And for the growing number of people living solo, the question becomes starker: if not a partner, then who? The answer, it turns out, is friends. Not a friend. Friends – plural. Research from News Corp's Growth Distillery with Medibank reveals that those with the best self-reported mental wellbeing are also those with the most people in their corner. On average, people with high wellbeing have five people they can rely on; those with poorer mental health report just over three. Australia is in the grips of a mental health crisis, and people are struggling to know who to turn to, especially our younger generations. Can We Talk? is a News Corp awareness campaign, in partnership with Medibank, equipping Aussies with the skills needs to have the most important conversation of their life. That gap might sound small, but in practice, it's enormous. It's the difference between feeling like there's always someone you can call, and running through a dwindling mental list of names when things start to unravel. The data is compelling. It confirms what many of us know instinctively, but sometimes forget to prioritise: that connection is not an optional extra — it is vital. Friendship is not decoration for a busy life. It is one of the structures that hold us upright. And yet, many Australians don't feel able to build or rely on that structure. The research also found that nearly half of us feel unprepared or unsure how to talk about mental health – even when someone turns to us for help. And when it comes to talking about our own struggles, we hold back out of fear: not fear of judgement, but fear of burdening others. We silence ourselves to protect the people we care about, not realising that this silence builds barriers where we need bridges. What emerges from this research is not just a picture of loneliness, but a profound uncertainty about how to connect in meaningful ways. Many of us are deeply social in practice – attending events, replying to group chats, showing up for work drinks – but feel emotionally cut off. We keep things light. We're funny, dependable, generous. But not vulnerable. Not fully ourselves. And in doing so, we miss out on the nourishment that true connection can bring. It's tempting to try to solve this with another app, a new social initiative, a government-funded campaign. And those all have their place. But there's something more elemental at stake here – something that doesn't require policy or innovation, but courage. We need to talk to our friends. Really talk. We need to be brave enough to say, 'I'm not okay.' Or even just, 'I'm struggling today.' We need to listen to each other without scrambling for solutions. To be present, even if we don't have the perfect words. Of course, that kind of honesty doesn't appear overnight. It takes time, and trust. But the alternative – isolation, both physical and emotional – carries its own costs. Mental ill-health is not just a personal issue. It's a public one. It affects families, workplaces, healthcare systems, communities. And it's growing. We cannot afford to pretend that mental wellbeing is something people can cultivate entirely alone. The most resilient among us still need others. That's why the link between support networks and mental health is so powerful. It gives us something tangible to work with. If we want to improve wellbeing, we can start by expanding our circles. That might mean reaching out to old friends and suggesting a catch-up that's more than just a walk-and-talk. It might mean gently probing when someone gives a breezy 'I'm fine' that doesn't ring true. It might mean noticing who is always the listener and never the speaker – and inviting them to take up space. These small actions don't always feel like mental health interventions, but they are. A text message that says 'thinking of you' might be the first step out of someone's emotional fog. A regular coffee catch-up might become someone's only appointment they truly look forward to. We don't need to be therapists to be impactful. We just need to be consistent, and willing to show up – even imperfectly. And we need to remind ourselves, too, that we are not burdens. If someone cares for us, they probably want to know how we really are. It is not weak to need others. It is human. In a culture that prizes independence and stoicism, this may feel radical. But if the research tells us anything, it's that no one thrives in isolation. We thrive in connection. We flourish in friendship. So maybe the real message from all this data isn't about mental health campaigns or social trends. Maybe it's simpler. Maybe it's this: pick up the phone. Send the message. Make the plan. Build the net before you fall. Because one day, you might need it. And so might someone else.

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