Latest news with #Woolf
The Age
2 days ago
- Sport
- The Age
Why Woolf is poised to break the Bennett curse, and build his empire
It did not take long for Dolphins chief executive Terry Reader to know Kristian Woolf was the man to spearhead the NRL's newest outfit into the future. Even though the shadow of Wayne Bennett was going to loom over whoever took the reins, they knew they had their man. 'He was the number one target for us at the start,' Reader declared. 'Even with Wayne as our coach, we still had a lot of questions. He said 'we'll do it together, let's find the best coach, and he'll be the assistant and take over at the end'. 'I don't think there's ever been a better transition of NRL coaches than what's happened. We weren't building a house of cards, we were setting up a club for the future.' Thus far, Woolf has dared to orchestrate a miracle – overcoming four-straight defeats in the first month to have his side one-point shy of the top eight. He has done so amid a concerning injury toll – one which has claimed stars Tom Gilbert, Thomas Flegler, Daniel Saifiti, Max Plath and Jack Bostock for the rest of the season. Felise Kaufusi will also be sidelined with a knee concern, while Ray Stone has been playing with two busted shoulders. Loading Given their season even began with a last-minute relocation to Sydney due Cyclone Alfred, Reader did not hesitate to claim 'I don't think a first-year coach has ever gone through what Kristian has'. And yet, as he plots a boilover of his former mentor against South Sydney on Saturday, Woolf turned his nose up at excuses. 'I've never seen anything like what we've had, particularly with season-ending injuries. That's footy, we're not going to get frustrated or whinge about it,' Woolf said. 'We need to go out with a mindset that we'll be at our best, be hard to beat and give ourselves a really good chance. 'I know how hard they worked in pre-season, I know how hard they work for each other. They haven't given me any indication that they're going to change anything because we've lost a couple of players. 'If anything, they're more committed to working hard for each other.' Building his empire Barely 24 hours before the Dolphins announced Selwyn Cobbo would join the fold in 2026, Reader hinted the Broncos' flyer was not in their sights. How things can change quickly in rugby league. 'He's one of those blokes that can do things other people can't. He's a guy you want in your team rather than the opposition,' Woolf said. 'I don't think it was ever no interest, it's about availability, spots and things like that. A fair bit has changed in 24 hours … there's a bit of movement all over the place and both ways for us.' That movement suggests those off contract face uncertain futures, but points to Woolf assembling the squad he believes can deliver a premiership. Cobbo will be joined by St Helens lock Morgan Knowles, while Francis Molo and Sebastian Su'A arrived mid-season. Flegler, Gilbert, Bostock, Plath, Saifiti, Isaiya Katoa, Jeremy Marshall-King, Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow, Kulikefu Finefeuiaki and Kurt Donoghoe are signed until at least 2027, while Herbie Farnwort expressed his desire to remain. Reports also emerged England halfback George Williams could be signed, and even swapped with Kodi Nikorima. Woolf dismissed the notion. 'Kodi Nikorima is not up for sale or going to be swapped – that's not going to happen,' he said. 'He's playing his best footy at the moment. That's one thing we wouldn't entertain.' Breaking the curse Woolf tasted success before taking over from Bennett – guiding St Helens to three Super League titles while transforming Tonga into a global force. But given the history of Bennett's successors, the question was asked: could he break the Bennett curse? 'Coming into the NRL and the expectations and toughness of the competition, there are nerves anyway,' Woolf admitted. 'That [replacing Bennett] can certainly add to it. I thought about all that well before I came, [but] my two years working with Wayne gave me some confidence.' Loading Bennett has proven a tough act to follow. Jason Demetriou, Ivan Henjak, Steve Price, Rick Stone and Anthony Seibold did not last long. Yet after a winless first four rounds, Woolf did not panic. 'He's held up a high standard for us as a team. I think you can see from the way we started the year, to have a plan, now everyone's bought into what he's been teaching us,' Dolphins star Herbie Farnworth said. 'He's very calm, he's pretty much the same as what you see him on TV the whole time. The goal now is to make finals.' That mentality has guided them to seven wins their past 11 games, including triumphs of heavyweights the Storm, Bulldogs and Panthers while boasting the competition's second-best points differential. Despite losing 15 of 20 games across their past two campaigns from round 17 onwards, Woolf believed history was in no danger of repeating. 'It's always a challenge, when you don't get the start or results you want. That's part of the challenge,' Woolf said. 'I'm going to trust the work we've done, we've got great assistant coaches that put some new things in place. We've got to keep trusting each other. 'What's going to stop us falling into freefall is I trust the group.'
Sydney Morning Herald
2 days ago
- Sport
- Sydney Morning Herald
Why Woolf is poised to break the Bennett curse, and build his empire
It did not take long for Dolphins chief executive Terry Reader to know Kristian Woolf was the man to spearhead the NRL's newest outfit into the future. Even though the shadow of Wayne Bennett was going to loom over whoever took the reins, they knew they had their man. 'He was the number one target for us at the start,' Reader declared. 'Even with Wayne as our coach, we still had a lot of questions. He said 'we'll do it together, let's find the best coach, and he'll be the assistant and take over at the end'. 'I don't think there's ever been a better transition of NRL coaches than what's happened. We weren't building a house of cards, we were setting up a club for the future.' Thus far, Woolf has dared to orchestrate a miracle – overcoming four-straight defeats in the first month to have his side one-point shy of the top eight. He has done so amid a concerning injury toll – one which has claimed stars Tom Gilbert, Thomas Flegler, Daniel Saifiti, Max Plath and Jack Bostock for the rest of the season. Felise Kaufusi will also be sidelined with a knee concern, while Ray Stone has been playing with two busted shoulders. Loading Given their season even began with a last-minute relocation to Sydney due Cyclone Alfred, Reader did not hesitate to claim 'I don't think a first-year coach has ever gone through what Kristian has'. And yet, as he plots a boilover of his former mentor against South Sydney on Saturday, Woolf turned his nose up at excuses. 'I've never seen anything like what we've had, particularly with season-ending injuries. That's footy, we're not going to get frustrated or whinge about it,' Woolf said. 'We need to go out with a mindset that we'll be at our best, be hard to beat and give ourselves a really good chance. 'I know how hard they worked in pre-season, I know how hard they work for each other. They haven't given me any indication that they're going to change anything because we've lost a couple of players. 'If anything, they're more committed to working hard for each other.' Building his empire Barely 24 hours before the Dolphins announced Selwyn Cobbo would join the fold in 2026, Reader hinted the Broncos' flyer was not in their sights. How things can change quickly in rugby league. 'He's one of those blokes that can do things other people can't. He's a guy you want in your team rather than the opposition,' Woolf said. 'I don't think it was ever no interest, it's about availability, spots and things like that. A fair bit has changed in 24 hours … there's a bit of movement all over the place and both ways for us.' That movement suggests those off contract face uncertain futures, but points to Woolf assembling the squad he believes can deliver a premiership. Cobbo will be joined by St Helens lock Morgan Knowles, while Francis Molo and Sebastian Su'A arrived mid-season. Flegler, Gilbert, Bostock, Plath, Saifiti, Isaiya Katoa, Jeremy Marshall-King, Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow, Kulikefu Finefeuiaki and Kurt Donoghoe are signed until at least 2027, while Herbie Farnwort expressed his desire to remain. Reports also emerged England halfback George Williams could be signed, and even swapped with Kodi Nikorima. Woolf dismissed the notion. 'Kodi Nikorima is not up for sale or going to be swapped – that's not going to happen,' he said. 'He's playing his best footy at the moment. That's one thing we wouldn't entertain.' Breaking the curse Woolf tasted success before taking over from Bennett – guiding St Helens to three Super League titles while transforming Tonga into a global force. But given the history of Bennett's successors, the question was asked: could he break the Bennett curse? 'Coming into the NRL and the expectations and toughness of the competition, there are nerves anyway,' Woolf admitted. 'That [replacing Bennett] can certainly add to it. I thought about all that well before I came, [but] my two years working with Wayne gave me some confidence.' Loading Bennett has proven a tough act to follow. Jason Demetriou, Ivan Henjak, Steve Price, Rick Stone and Anthony Seibold did not last long. Yet after a winless first four rounds, Woolf did not panic. 'He's held up a high standard for us as a team. I think you can see from the way we started the year, to have a plan, now everyone's bought into what he's been teaching us,' Dolphins star Herbie Farnworth said. 'He's very calm, he's pretty much the same as what you see him on TV the whole time. The goal now is to make finals.' That mentality has guided them to seven wins their past 11 games, including triumphs of heavyweights the Storm, Bulldogs and Panthers while boasting the competition's second-best points differential. Despite losing 15 of 20 games across their past two campaigns from round 17 onwards, Woolf believed history was in no danger of repeating. 'It's always a challenge, when you don't get the start or results you want. That's part of the challenge,' Woolf said. 'I'm going to trust the work we've done, we've got great assistant coaches that put some new things in place. We've got to keep trusting each other. 'What's going to stop us falling into freefall is I trust the group.'
Sydney Morning Herald
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
A century on, Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway still resonates
Emily Coates is the first to notice the smoky letters. The mother stands outside Buckingham Palace, watching the aeroplane sketch a message in the sky. 'But what letters? A C was it? an E, then an L? Only for a moment did they lie still; then they move and melted…' One sample and you're in the world of Mrs Dalloway, or more the mind of Virginia Woolf, her novella-in-a-day marking a century this month. In the space of two linguistic quirks, from verbless sentences to lower-case sentence openers, you can see Woolf's rebellion against orthodox prose. On paper the plot seems facile. A society woman, early 50s, walks down Bond Street to buy flowers. ('What a lark! What a plunge!' ) Later that night, she will host a party with her Tory husband, Richard. Whoopee-doo, you're thinking. As was I, escorting Clarissa on her florist stroll last week, but then the skywriter arrived. In a sense, the aeroplane woke me. Until then, I was dealing in telegrams and omnibuses, a woman's reveries from another epoch, my own mind meandering as I tackled Woolf's language, her semicolon fetish, her block paragraphs, only for the floaty letters of GLAXO? KREEMO? to remind me of the novel's nowness. Mentally, who hasn't drifted during a chore? Clarissa herself drowns in a maelstrom of to-do lists and would-be lives. Self-awareness too ('She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged') as much as guessing the lives of passersby. Next comes the aeroplane, uniting the Westminster straggle – from Emily Coates to Mrs Dalloway to Septimus Smith on his park bench. It's a deft touch, and a reminder of Woolf's nearness to our own timeline. Even before smartphones deepened distraction, the human brain strayed. We think in 'toggle language' – the what-if subjunctive of competing realities: what is and what might be. What was, and what could have been. Here versus there. Septimus is embalmed in the past ('…he cried, into the flames! and saw faces laughing at him…″) just as Clarissa dwells on stolen kisses in a younger garden, or the garden party looming. Peter Walsh, Clarissa's would-be flame of youth, likewise sees the sky-letters. His thoughts match the message's fraying forms 'as if inside his brain by another hand strings were pulled, shutters moved, and he, having nothing to do with it, yet stood at the opening of endless avenues…' Later, Woolf resorts to spider strands as her metaphor, the fugitive tangents of thought seeking to attach to some focal point, an anchor in the swash of pondering. Dutch director Marleen Gorris deserves a medal, being the only soul brave enough to distil the text into film, as the feat can only fall short. Despite the flowers, the repaired doors, even Smith's jump from an upper window, the real action is invisible. Bells chime to remind the reader as much as the characters that time is passing, a random day being meted on the page.
Spectator
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Spectator
Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf? The BBC, it seems
'What a lark!' I thought to myself as I rose on a hot June morning to listen to a documentary on Mrs Dalloway. A century has passed since Clarissa bought flowers for her midsummer party, and Radio 4 has commissioned a three-parter, with actress Fiona Shaw presenting. 'What a plunge!' The first programme had been playing for all of two minutes before my hopes began to wilt like a delphinium. 'Her face adorns tote bags and internet memes,' says Shaw of Woolf in the preamble, which sounds as though it has been lifted directly from the series pitch to the BBC. 'I'll be asking what… Virginia Woolf has to say to us today.' There follow promises to explore Woolf's writing and to 'discover… how she challenged gender norms and wrote about mental health as human experience rather than just a medical condition'. My heart sank further with the first of many clips from interviews with experts. One author describes, in detail, his discovery of Woolf in the hands of a girl he fancied at school. Most of the contributors, in fact, prove to be the saving grace of this series. There's a fashion in documentaries at the moment for featuring many, many talking heads. This can be dizzying, but these – who include the excellent Alexandra Harris, Francesca Wade and Bryony Randall – provide much-needed depth. Shaw meets them at various Woolfian locations, including Monk's House and Bloomsbury's Gordon Square, and things improve. I'll admit to admiring Shaw in pretty much everything she does. Here, she is an articulate interlocutor, only armed in places with the heavy-handed script. There are some good forays into the sounds and silence of Mrs Dalloway and Woolf's aversion to Sigmund Freud. But then we realise how far from Woolf we've strayed. The novelist apparently waited until 1939 before reading any of Freud's works because she was 'wary of reductive tendencies of psychoanalysis to find a single answer'. This, indeed, was Woolf. She cannot be reduced; her prose, as we are reminded, is often concerned with the unexpressed thought. Her readers were credited with intelligence. We, on the other hand, are given the hard sell: told repeatedly not to be put off by her, not to be afraid of how difficult she is. It would have been nice to be enticed to her side with some of the subtlety and wit that won her readers in the first place. Those still afraid of Virginia Woolf and condemning of her snobbery might find The Girls of Slender Means more to their taste. 'Long ago in 1945 all the nice people in England were poor,' begins Muriel Spark's novella. It has been adapted many times for TV and radio, including with Patricia Hodge and Miriam Margolyes, but actor-playwright Simon Scardifield's version is a welcome addition. The narrator (Maggie Service) is skilled at weaving between character dialogue. The pauses are perfectly timed to make it sound as though she is there, observing the action, a calm voice amid the chatter of the May of Teck Club. This, the novella's setting, is a hostel for twentysomething-year-old women. Prepare for a lot of bickering over who is borrowing the Schiaparelli gown, the fat content of a cheese pie ('four million horrid calories!') and the assessment of vital statistics, hips especially. The narrative is of its time. There is no apology for this and nor should there be. Clever Jane, who works in publishing, makes frequent references to 'brain work' – that is, reading. Like studious Pliny the Younger, averting his eyes from the erupting volcano, Jane would sooner be at her books than celebrating VE Day outside. Selina is much less intellectual and more beautiful. There is a flurry at the arrival of a male author for dinner. The chemistry between Jane (hips: 38 inches) and author Nicholas – and Nicholas's interest in Joanna ('fair and healthy looking') – is well captured. As in Woolf, the internal narrative is all-important. Nicholas finds Joanna to be 'orgiastical' and longs to say, 'Poetry takes the place of sex for her, I think,' but doesn't. He is also eager to make love to Selina ('extremely slim') on the roof [a brilliant pause from the narrator] 'It needs to be on the roof.' Access is via a small window: suddenly hip-size matters. I won't spoil the plot, but Scardifield has made the narrative more uplifting than the novella with a simple switch in the order in which we learn events. This – and Spark's sharp one-liners – make it blissful summer listening.
The National
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- The National
Women's freedom to speak the truth must be protected
It's been almost 100 years since Virginia Woolf wrote these words, yet they could have been written yesterday. So too, perhaps, could the diary entry she wrote the day before A Room Of One's Own was published, in which she took EM Forster's decision not to review it as an ominous sign: 'It makes me suspect that there is a shrill feminine tone in it which my intimate friends will dislike.' It might seem odd that a celebrated writer who expressed her feminist views with such clarity and conviction would have had this wobble. But then, Woolf did not identify as a feminist – or at least not consistently so. In the same diary entry she fretted that she would be 'attacked for a feminist and hinted at for a sapphist', as if this might fatally undermine her argument that 'a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction'. READ MORE: I was at the protest for Palestine Action – here's what happened Among those who did review the essay was Vita Sackville-West, Woolf's friend and (female) lover, who declared: 'Mrs Woolf is too sensible to be a thorough-going feminist.' What, these days, might constitute a 'thorough-going feminist', from whom another woman of broadly feminist orientation might wish to distance herself? Would it be she who insists that women's rights must be grounded in an objective definition of 'woman' or, alternatively, her counterpart who believes 'woman' should be a mixed-sex category based on self-identification? Some would cite Woolf's gender-bending novel Orlando as evidence that she would be in the second group. It could equally be argued that the fantastical biography – inspired by the life of the aforementioned Sackville-West – was a product of its time that deployed the sex change of its protagonist to overcome in literature the sexual and financial barriers the woman faced in real life. Woolf herself was very conscious of her own privilege as a middle-class woman of means. BBC newsreader Martine Croxall (pictured, second left) sought to 'tell the truth' on Sunday when reading a story about heat-related health risks. Not, on the face of it, a controversial topic, but when she came to list the specific groups urged to take precautions, she faltered. The list included 'pregnant people', which she quickly corrected to 'women' with a split-second roll of her eyes. It might seem absurd that this one word – and that barely perceptible gesture – would generate countless news stories, but in the current climate it is no surprise. 'I hope you don't get hauled before the BBC News beak', wrote one follower on X/Twitter. 'Braced x' was Croxall's reply. It wouldn't be the first time Croxall had braced herself for conflict with the broadcaster's high heid yins. In March she was one of four female news presenters who agreed a settlement with the BBC over claims including sex and age discrimination in relation to a restructuring when its domestic and international news channels merged. It's probably safe to say that her diary entry for Sunday night will not have featured any concerns about being too shrill, or being taken for a feminist. The Times later reported that BBC bosses were 'intensely relaxed' about the script change, and that there was a 'groundswell of support internally for using 'honest language'.' So did Croxall 'tell the truth', or did she express an opinion that she holds? And if there are competing versions of the truth, which opinion should a public broadcaster (or any media outlet) express? By striking contrast, the word 'woman' was missing when LBC presenter Ali Miraj sought to make his point during a phone-in segment discussing potential regime change in Iran. A caller highlighted that 'women are getting thrown off buildings' in that country (a reference to 16-year-old Sarina Esmailzadeh and 17-year-old Nika Shakarami, who died during protests against the death of a woman in the custody of the regime's 'morality police'). READ MORE: Former Unionist party leader backs Scottish independence referendum In an extraordinary response, Miraj said that 'a lot of people might be disagreeing with the fact that people are scantily clad in Watford high street on a Saturday night vomiting into the gutter'. Regardless of whether you agree with his central point – that the UK cannot go around intervening in every instance where it disagrees with the values of others – it was a very troubling comparison, made worse by the fact that he chose a very ethnically diverse English town for his example. How interesting that he chose to refer to 'people', as opposed to the young women he was undoubtedly describing. 'Who cares?', I know many of you will be asking. What does this have to do with the price of groceries, the climate crisis, the cause of independence? Perhaps not much. But perhaps more than you think. The freedom to speak the truth must be protected. Without truthful language, we cannot have truthful campaigning. If everything is simply a matter of opinion, not a matter of fact, how can any politician be held to account for misrepresenting the facts, or telling outright lies? And if large numbers of women are too fearful to speak the truth, in case their 'shrill feminine tone' or versions of the truth will upset their intimate friends – or indeed their employers – where does that leave feminism? It certainly doesn't help the women who are 'falling' off roofs in Iran. On the contrary, it has created a disastrous rift in a feminist movement that is needed now more than ever, the whole world over.
