Latest news with #AlexWoodward
Daily Mail
6 days ago
- Sport
- Daily Mail
Ex-Collingwood runner reveals the 'crazy' response he gave to vile online trolls who sent him death wishes following his controversial 2018 Grand Final blunder
The man at the centre of a controversial moment during the 2018 AFL Grand Final has opened up about the surprising way he dealt with death wishes from some social media users in the aftermath of his unfortunate on-field moment. Alex Woodward, aged 32, played two matches for the Hawthorn Football Club during his professional footy career. His time in the top flight was hampered by injuries, with the promising Hawks star agonisingly rupturing his anterior cruciate ligament five times between 2012 and 2019. He was delisted by the Hawks in 2016 and went on to play for Collingwood in the VFL, but the string of knee injuries caught up with him, ultimately culminating in his decision to hang up the boots. However, he continued to play a role at the Magpies, with the 32-year-old going on to become a water runner. He would notably be embroiled in a highly controversial moment during the third quarter of Collingwood's 2018 Grand Final defeat by the West Coast. Nathan Buckley's side were leading the Eagles by four points with seven minutes left to go before three-quarter time. While the West Coast pressed forward, Taylor Adams would recover the footy inside the Eagles' forward 50. He looked to steady things by chipping out to Jaidyn Stephenson, who got free to collect a mark on the edge of the D. But the Pies utility was blocked off from claiming the mark by Woodward, who had inadvertently ran directly across Stephenson's line to the footy. The ball would instead be claimed by West Coast roaming midfielder Elliot Yeo, who gratefully took the mark and prodded his set shot straight between the middle sticks. It would be a vital score as the West Coast went on to secure a five-point victory thanks to Dom Sheed's last-gasp kick. For Woodward, the game is a difficult subject. During an episode of Channel 7's What Could've Been podcast, the former footy player opened up about the barrage of horrendous abuse that he received in the wake of the match. 'It was probably the onslaught afterwards that I wasn't really prepared for, and nothing that I'd really been exposed to at that point of my life,' he told the What Could've Been Podcast, speaking on the 2018 Grand Final. 'Keyboard warriors and these people online, where there's no real filter, can say what they like and there's no real consequence. 'The worst of it was enough to bother me. 'It was sort of before a time when it was getting called out as well. If someone says something now, it gets put on X or put on Instagram, and it's shared everywhere, and it sort of cancels them straight away. I was fighting my own battles for a while.' While he was not prepared for some of the comments, he revealed how he brilliantly kept his cool to 'disarm' the disgraceful trolls. 'My best action was to own it; I made a mistake, so I'm going to own it, take it in my stride,' he said. 'I wouldn't say it was pleasant knowing there were messages in my DMs and emails and stuff saying I should unalive myself, that type of stuff. Multiple hundreds of people — it was in the hundreds. 'You might think I'm a bit crazy, but some of them I just replied to. I just replied to them, saying, and this is as simple as it was, but I said: 'I'm sorry that you feel that way, I'll try to be better', and that was basically the gist of it. Almost like disarming them again.' In fact, his responses even led to some of the trolls performing a U-turn on their vile messages. 'A lot of them actually came back with an apology, which is not what I was asking for; I just wanted it to stop. 'That was my approach — I wouldn't really recommend it to everyone, because it is a little bit different, but that's how I handled it.' After being delisted by Hawthorn he would go on to join up with Collingwood's VFL side Woodward even revealed that he copped abuse from some people he knew. 'The frustrating part was that some of those messages were from people I knew. Whether I met through work or school, or social stuff. So those ones I wasn't as kind with the response.' Seven years later, Woodward is still recognised by many Collingwood fans for the controversial Grand Final moment. And he admits he still deploys the same tactic to 'disarm' fans and open up a conversation with them about the matter. 'Every now and then, if I'm at a Collingwood game, people might recognise me for the wrong thing,' he explained. My personality is I'll have a chat with them. Rather than say something behind my back, tell me how you feel. 'I'll try and have a chat with them and have a conversation around it. (It) disarms them.' Reflecting on the incident itself, Woodward, who was 26 at the time, owned the mistake, admitting that he needed to be more alert in the moment. Woodward opened up on the horrific abuse he received following the Grand Final The former Hawthorn player explained that runners are taught to 'commit to the direction you're running in' in order to get out of the way of the footy. 'I just put my head down and ran to the other forward pocket. I was just trying to get out of the way but I didn't know Jaidyn was behind me,' he explained. 'I didn't really know what else I could've done in that moment.' A heartbreaking moment was caught on tape in the changing rooms after the match as a teary-eyed Woodward was seen being embraced by Pies coach Buckley in the changing rooms at the MCG. 'On the way off I started getting pretty upset about it and I went straight to one of the locker rooms in the MCG where they keep all the food, and I just locked myself in there with one of my mates who came down,' he explained. 'Bucks came in, credit to him, he put his arms around me really quickly, and there's footage of that as well, because that was just before I went into the little cabinet area. 'I just went straight back in there, and he got around me again and just took all the blame off me.'
Gulf Today
07-08-2025
- Politics
- Gulf Today
Having a green card does not mean you can't be deported
Alex Woodward, The Independent Immigrants who are married to US citizens have long expected that they won't be deported from the country while going through the process of obtaining a green card. But new guidance from Donald Trump's administration explicitly states that immigrants seeking lawful residence through marriage can be deported, a policy that also applies to immigrants with pending requests. Immigration authorities can begin removal proceedings for immigrants who lack legal status and applied to become a lawful permanent resident through a citizen spouse, according to guidance from US Citizenship and Immigration Services issued this month. The policy also applies to immigrants with pending green cards through other citizen family members. People who entered the country illegally aren't the only ones impacted. Under new guidance, immigrants trying to get lawful status through a spouse or family member are at risk of being deported if their visas expired, or if they are among the roughly 1 million immigrants whose temporary protected status was stripped from them under the Trump administration. Immigrants and their spouses or family members who sponsor them "should be aware that a family-based petition accords no immigration status nor does it bar removal," the policy states. The changes were designed to "enhance benefit integrity and identify vetting and fraud concerns" and weed out what the agency calls "fraudulent, frivolous, or non-meritorious" applications, according to USCIS. "This guidance will improve USCIS' capacity to vet qualifying marriages and family relationships to ensure they are genuine, verifiable, and compliant with all applicable laws," the agency said in a statement. Those changes, which were filed on August 1, are "effective immediately," according to the agency. Within the first six months of 2025, immigrants and their family members filed more than 500,000 I-130 petitions, which are the first steps in the process of obtaining legal residency through a spouse or family member. There are more than 2.4 million pending I-130 petitions, according to USCIS data. Nearly 2 million of those petitions have been pending for more than six months. It is unclear whether those petitions involve immigrants who either lost their legal status or did not have one at the time they filed their documents. Previously, USCIS would notify applicants about missing documents or issue a denial notice serving as a warning that their case could be rejected — with opportunities for redress. Now, USCIS is signalling that applicants can be immediately denied and ordered to immigrant courts instead. Outside of being born in the country, family-based immigration remains the largest and most viable path to permanent residency, accounting for nearly half of all new green card holders each year, according to USCIS data. "This is one of the most important avenues that people have to adjust to lawful permanent status in the United States," Elora Mukherjee, director of the Immigrants' Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School, told NBC News. Under long-established USCIS policies, "no one expected" to be hauled into immigration court while seeking lawful status after a marriage, Mukherjee said. Now, deportation proceedings can begin "at any point in the process" under the broad scope of the rule changes, which could "instil fear in immigrant families, even those who are doing everything right," according to Mukherjee. Obtaining a green card does not guarantee protections against removal from the country. The high-profile arrest and threat of removing Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil put intense scrutiny on whether the administration lawfully targeted a lawful permanent resident for his constitutionally protected speech. And last month, Customs and Border Protection put green card holders on notice, warning that the government "has the authority to revoke your green card if our laws are broken and abused." "In addition to immigration removal proceedings, lawful permanent residents presenting at a US port of entry with previous criminal convictions may be subject to mandatory detention," the agency said. Another recent USCIS memo outlines the administration's plans to revoke citizenship from children whose parents lack permanent lawful status as well as parents who are legally in the country, including visa holders, DACA recipients and people seeking asylum. The policy appears to preempt court rulings surrounding the constitutionality of the president's executive order that unilaterally redefines who gets to be a citizen in the country at birth. That memo, from the agency's Office of the Chief Counsel, acknowledges that federal court injunctions have blocked the government from taking away birthright citizenship. But the agency "is preparing to implement" Trump's executive order "in the event that it is permitted to go into effect," according to July's memo. Children of immigrants who are "unlawfully present" will "no longer be US citizens at birth," the agency declared. Trump's order states that children whose parents are legally present in the country on student, work and tourist visas are not eligible for citizenship. USCIS, however, goes even further, outlining more than a dozen categories of immigrants whose children could lose citizenship at birth despite their parents living in the country with legal permission. That list includes immigrants who are protected against deportation for humanitarian reasons and immigrants from countries with Temporary Protected Status, among others. The 14th Amendment plainly states that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside." The Supreme Court has upheld that definition to apply to all children born within the United States for more than a century.
