Latest news with #DarrenEngland
Perth Now
27-05-2025
- Sport
- Perth Now
Kiwi Gatland returns to rugby with club role in Uruguay
Former Wales coach Warren Gatland has made an unexpected return to rugby union in Uruguay. (Darren England/AAP PHOTOS) Credit: AAP Warren Gatland has taken up a position as an advisor at Uruguayan team Penarol in his first rugby job since leaving Wales during the Six Nations. In a post on Instagram, Penarol said the 61-year-old New Zealander will support coach Ivo Dugonjic and "turn all his knowledge into the service of the team." Gatland and the Welsh Rugby Union agreed to part ways in February, two games into the Six Nations, and end an unhappy second spell as the national coach after 14 months. He previously led Wales from 2008-19, during which time he also became coach of the British and Irish Lions to cement his standing as one of the world's best. Penarol play in the Super Rugby Americas.
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Dermot Gallagher shares new referee verdict after Everton VAR drama - 'I applaud'
Former Premier League match official Dermot Gallagher has backed Darren England for sticking with his on-field decision despite a VAR recommendation during Everton's clash with Fulham on Saturday. Late in the game with the Blues 3-1 ahead, the home side claimed for a penalty when Adama Traore's cross struck Vitalii Mykolenko on the arm from close range. No spot-kick was awarded by England, although VAR recommended he review the decision on the pitch-side monitor. The referee decided against changing his decision though, the first time an official has stuck by his initial call in this situation all season. READ MORE: Angus Kinnear start date confirmed as major Everton changes underway READ MORE: Michael Keane opens up on Everton future and chance to play in Goodison Park farewell Everton manager David Moyes reacted jubilantly to the call and Gallagher noted on Monday morning that plenty of others have been pleased to see the referee stand by what he believed to be the correct call. "And many, many other people I think," said the former referee on Sky Sports' Ref Watch. "Mykolenko is in a running motion, he brings his arm down to his body. "It does strike him but he makes no attempt to handle the ball. He makes no attempt to block the cross. It strikes him. I don't know what else he is supposed to do. "I applaud Darren England as well. It's the first one this season where the referee has stuck to his on-field decision. "I actually think [VAR] has looked at it too many times. He's studied it, studied it, studied it. He's convinced himself there's something that isn't there." Gallagher was also asked about Everton's second goal, which was subject to a VAR review for a foul and an offside. Carlos Alcaraz tangled with Fulham goalkeeper Bernd Leno before Michael Keane powered in a header at the back post. "Good goal," he said. "No offside, no foul. The goalkeeper doesn't get fouled, he's pushing forward as much as he's getting pulled.
Yahoo
11-05-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
'I am more surprised' - Mark Clattenburg gives verdict on Everton penalty controversy in Fulham win
Former Premier League referee Mark Clattenburg weighed in on the call to refuse Fulham a stoppage time penalty against Everton. The home players leapt in unison when Adama Traore's cross struck the outstretched arm of Vitalii Mykolenko inside the Blues' box. Referee Darren England waved away those claims but was then sent to the monitor to review his decision by VAR. Unusually, he stuck with his original call and Everton were able to see out the final minutes in comfort to secure a 3-1 win. READ MORE: Jordan Pickford loves new Everton chant as Marco Silva makes classy full-time gesture READ MORE: Marco Silva makes honest Fulham admission as he names reason for Everton comeback win The Premier League match centre later explained: 'VAR checked the referee's call of no penalty for a possible handball by Mykolenko – and deemed that his arm was away from his body, therefore recommended an on-field review. 'Upon review, the referee deemed that Mykolenko's arm was in a justifiable position given his actions and retained the original decision of no penalty.' For Clattenburg, the controversy was not over England's steadfastness but in the referee being asked to review the incident. He told the website Everton News: 'Premier League referees have different criteria when it comes to handball and I was not surprised it was not given in the end. 'There have been less than 10 penalties given all season for handball so there is a stricter approach on what constitutes a penalty. Mykolenko's arm is slightly away from the body but he tries to move it away as the ball comes in from a short distance.' Clattenburg added: 'I am more surprised a very experienced VAR in Michael Salisbury would recommend a review when this is not a clear and obvious error from the referee Darren England. 'We do not see very often referees after going to a review to stick with their original decision, so England needs to be applauded for this and in the end, the right decision was reached as I don't believe that this is a penalty.'
Business Mayor
10-05-2025
- Politics
- Business Mayor
Rallies held around Australia against sexual violence, anger that crisis not properly addressed during election
Tens of thousands of people have marched across Australian capital cities and regional towns calling for determined action to end gendered and sexual violence. Advocates say the crisis was not properly addressed during the federal election campaign, with funding pledges 'barely even hitting the sides'. The No More: National Rally Against Violence saw protesters gather in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide, Canberra, Hobart and in many regional centres. Founder of support organisation What Were You Wearing, Sarah Williams, called for more preventive action. 'We need to be able to stop it before it starts,' she told a two-thousand-strong crowd on the steps of Parliament House in Melbourne on Saturday. 'We need more funding for primary prevention, more trauma-informed response training for police, increased crisis housing, bail law reform and uniform consent laws,' she later told AAP. People marching against sexual violence in Brisbane. Photograph: Darren England/AAP Similar rallies were held simultaneously in every state capital as well as several regional cities and towns. Hundreds met in Sydney's Hyde Park while the regional centres of Newcastle and Wollongong saw a similar turnout, including the family and friends of Mackenzie Anderson, a young mother who was stabbed 78 times and brutally murdered by her former partner in 2022. Hundreds more rallied in Brisbane, carrying signs reading 'We weren't asking for it' and 'Weak laws cost lives.' In the lead-up to the rallies, organisers urged more men to attend and take accountability for violence against women. 'Men listen to men … we need more male role models out there,' Ms Williams said. Read More Trowers & Hamlins blames inflation for 'unchanged' profits Consent and healthy relationship education should be expanded to more schools with additional funding, and sporting clubs and major codes could also play a role in reaching different generations, she said. Since 1 January last year, 128 women have been killed, according to the Australian Femicide Watch website. Its founder Sherele Moody read aloud the names of the women as images of their faces were laid before Melbourne's Parliament steps. skip past newsletter promotion Sign up to Breaking News Australia Get the most important news as it breaks Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. after newsletter promotion 'We're here because men keep killing us,' she said. 'Violence against women is primarily a male problem … it's not a women's problem to solve but it's women who are the ones who do the work.' Advocates say a government-run national domestic violence register is desperately needed to track the issue. The rallies also called for fully funded frontline domestic violence services, expanded crisis accommodation and increased funding for primary prevention programs. Mandatory trauma-informed training for all first responders should also be rolled out, organisers said. The re-elected Labor government previously promised to prevent domestic violence perpetrators from abusing tax and superannuation systems. It has also pledged to invest more funding to stop high-risk perpetrators through electronic monitoring. But Moody said ministers and leaders needed to sit down with frontline services to figure out what works. 'All the safety nets have holes in them and the funding barely even hits the sides,' she said.
ABC News
25-04-2025
- Business
- ABC News
Increasing Australia's defence budget requires answering tough questions
We have a sometimes mystifying relationship with ideas about honouring those who serve our country, and with ideas about how we defend it. Past governments have been happy to spend half a billion dollars renovating the Australian War Memorial while so underfunding the Veterans Affairs Department that it couldn't properly look after veterans in a timely way, as documented by a royal commission. In the long, benign sleep in which we have been happy to think we didn't have to think much about defence, because #ANZUS, there have been the odd stirrings from slumber amongst the aficionados about what the right defence posture might look like. For example, should we look to the "Defence of Australia" — a policy stance which focused on our physical north — or did we have to think on a broader scale and commit to being part of a bigger unit racing around the South China Sea (for example) or being part of a global force for good. Both sides of politics signed up to AUKUS with very little debate, despite the many critics who questioned whether an even closer defence alliance with the United States was a good idea. ( AAP: Darren England ) Along came AUKUS Most recently, in 2021, along came AUKUS with its appeal of new ties, and new technology, with allies old and new. Both sides of politics signed up to it with very little debate, despite the many critics who questioned whether an even closer defence alliance with the United States was a good idea and also worried about an over-heavy investment in just one form of technology: nuclear submarines. Now we are in an election campaign where the opposition's biggest immediate financial commitment is to an escalation in our national defence spending. Photo shows two male politicians wearing suits Peter Dutton has pledged to better prepare Australia for future geo-strategic threats by spending an additional $21 billion between now and 2030. The Coalition wants us to spend 2.5 per cent of GDP within five years and 3 per cent of GDP on defence within 10 years, compared to about 2 per cent now, which Labor says it will lift to 2.3 per cent over the next 10 years. What's a good number? Well, strategic analyst Marcus Hellyer says, 3 per cent "has become the new industry standard for countries that are serious about preserving their security and also countries that are interested in demonstrating that they're not just freeloaders on the US". "A few years ago, the kind of industry standard was 2 per cent and so the NATO countries, for example, were aiming to get to 2 per cent," Hellyer says. "However, since then, we've seen war in Ukraine. We've seen a very wobbly US in terms of its international commitments, and also a US that is kind of running out of patience with freeloaders, and is demanding that its friends and partners. "It's telling the Europeans, it's telling its Asian allies that they need to get to 3 per cent. That is now the new benchmark." Why not increase defence spending? So, both sides think given everything going on in the world, we need to increase defence spending. And look, seriously, pick any number you like: 2.3 per cent; 2.4 per cent; 3 per cent or go the whole hog and follow Australia's richest person, Gina Rinehart and say it should actually be 5 per cent. Why not? Well, we don't have the money is why not. The conversation about increasing defence spending is taking place in the general la-la land in which discussions about the role of governments and spending takes place these days. Photo shows a male politician wearing a suit speaking at lectern in front of party members The opposition leader is being cautious with his language as he doesn't want to turn off Chinese-Australian voters, as the Coalition did last election. That is, if we want to dramatically increase defence spending, we need a major structural change in our budget. More taxes to be blunt. There also needs to be an updated, coherent and clear-eyed bipartisan view about what our defence strategy is trying to achieve. And, if we are going to spend so much money, what are we actually planning to spend it on? Already AUKUS is absorbing the increase in defence spending that the current government has announced during its term of office — to the detriment of other defence procurement and priorities. A navy without ships Hellyer, long one of our most respected defence analysts, particularly when it comes to the defence budget, says that the national defence strategy released by the Albanese government last year included "a lot of new money over the 10 years: $50 billion is the number they stated". (Even that commitment doesn't involve spending a lot of money immediately: another sign we are putting off a debate about actually funding all these ambitions.) "But all of that, except for $1 billion, goes on two capabilities: nuclear powered submarines being delivered under AUKUS and the so-called general purpose frigate program, which, essentially aims at making sure the Royal Australian Navy actually has some ships, because our ship building programs have been so slow that the navy's at risk of becoming a navy without any ships," Hellyer says. Read more about the federal election: Want even more? Here's where you can find all our 2025 "So it's a high priority program and an important program, but those two programs absorb all of the new money." The nuclear-powered submarine (SSN) program, he says, is already "distorting the ADF acquisition plan". "So already we are spending more on SSNs, and we're still seven, eight, nine years away from having them," Hellyer says. "But this year, already, we're spending more on SSNs than on the Air Force's entire acquisition budget. "If you want SSNs, but you also want to be growing the rest of the ADF to have the kinds of capabilities we need to have an effective deterrent, so certainly, I think 3 per cent is the sort of goal we should be heading towards." What should we spend the money on? Hellyer, who is head of research at Strategic Analysis Australia and describes himself as an AUKUS "agnostic", says that rather than a shopping list there are "two high-level principles here". The first is there's a lot of risk around AUKUS: that they don't arrive in time, or we don't get them at all. He asks: what other capabilities do we need? What do we need to hedge those risks? The second high level principle is: "are we happy to be dependent on the US, and where do we want to have self-reliance? What do we want to be able to do ourselves using Australian industry and Australian supply chains?" The lesson of Ukraine, he says, is that while we might never be completely self-reliant in fighter planes or nuclear powered submarines, we can deal with making "those smaller, so called consumables of war, in ammunition, in missiles, in drones". The Coalition's huge new spending policy was lacking a lot of details about what it intended to spend money on, though defence spokesperson Andrew Hastie did emphasise that, beyond procurement, we need to spend more on sustainment (keeping things working) and on personnel. Loading Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said this week a Coalition government would spend the extra money on "drone capability, guided weapons — which we invested into, that this government has pulled money out of — munitions and our capability across most platforms, including frigates, and our cyber defences". (Hellyer says that while it was true the current government had cut back spending on some programs, the Morrison government's wishlist was "just too big for the amount of money that they wanted to spend".) Photo shows a young male politician speaking in front of a blue background Senior opposition figure Andrew Hastie has warned Australia's long-standing military alliance with the United States faces uncertainty. Which brings us back to the glaring question in all this big talk on defence: where's the money coming from? This was where we got some of the most unsatisfactory answers. Hastie said it would come from "growing the economy". In the short term, the only source of funding that Dutton mentioned was repealing Labor's $17 billion tax cuts. Polls pointing to the Coalition possibly receiving its lowest ever primary vote next week makes the question of what it is proposing for defence, and the poor quality of its announcement, seem a little hypothetical. But it is still important because it has helped frame the discussion about where defence policy should go, even if Dutton loses next Saturday. As Hellyer makes clear, there are holes, too, in Labor's spending plans. There are also holes in Labor's defence spending plans. ( ABC News: David Sciasci ) Culture wars undermine credibility Defence, national security and law and order are supposed to be Dutton's political strong suits and they have all been out for a gallop this second last week of the election campaign. None of them landed with, shall we say, great aplomb. And the credibility cost of the sort of culture wars that Dutton has run as opposition leader were all too evident on Anzac Day when Australians saw Dutton decry the despicable disruption of the Dawn Service in Melbourne by a group led by neo-Nazis heckling through the Welcome to Country. Many Australians may have remembered that it was Dutton and his Coalition who, earlier this year, attacked funding for Welcome to Country ceremonies, which Dutton's waste-reduction spokesperson James Stevens said had become a "multimillion-dollar industry". Australians also know that the man who would be prime minister walked out on the Apology to the Stolen Generations in 2008 and said he wouldn't be standing in front of the Indigenous flag at media events as prime minister. "I've said before that Welcome to Country is an important part of official ceremonies, and it should be respected," he said on Friday morning when he condemned the incident. "I don't agree in our democracy that people can't accept the views of others." If only some of our leaders could consistently accept the views of others, instead of trying to weaponise them. Laura Tingle is 7.30's political editor. Having trouble seeing this form? Try
