Latest news with #Lazarus-like
Irish Examiner
19-05-2025
- Sport
- Irish Examiner
The Lion In Winter backed to bare teeth in Derby
The Lion In Winter has reclaimed his position at the head of the Betfred Derby betting after coming in for sustained support. Having drifted out to as big as 6-1 following his first career defeat in the Dante at York, he was replaced as favourite by stablemate Delacroix. However, on Monday all major bookmakers reported support for the son of Sea The Stars and he is as short as 2-1 in some places, with punters clearly anticipating a Lazarus-like recovery that saw Auguste Rodin and City Of Troy win the Derby having been well beaten in the Guineas. Betfred spokesman Matt Hulmes said: "We have had an ever-changing market for the Betfred Derby throughout the trials over the last fortnight, but the most significant period has been the last 24 hours. "The Lion In Winter has halved in price from 5-1 to 5-2 after sustained support on Monday. "Punters are putting their faith in Aidan O'Brien to once again work his magic, after Auguste Rodin and City Of Troy bounced back from below-par efforts on seasonal debuts to land the greatest prize — they are hoping for lightning to strike thrice!" Paddy Power make him their 5-2 favourite, with Delacroix now 9-2 and Guineas winner Ruling Court a 4-1 chance. "He spoilt his otherwise unblemished curriculum vitae on the Knavesmire, but Aidan was his usual ultra-calm persona afterwards and indicated there wasn't just going to be improvement, there would be a lot of improvement," said Paddy Power's Paul Binfield. "We pushed him out to 5-1 after the reversal but started seeing support for him yesterday and that has very much continued today and he's once again become favourite, with punters keeping the faith in the master of Ballydoyle being able to emulate his achievements with the last two Epsom winners Auguste Rodin and City Of Troy, who both suffered shock defeats before coming up trumps where it matters most." Speaking at Naas on Sunday, O'Brien said: "We always thought what happened at York could happen but he needed to run if he was going to go to the Derby. "We were very happy with the run (from The Lion In Winter), he did exactly what we thought could happen. He jumped, he was fresh and things didn't work. "He got stopped halfway down the straight and he would have been probably a good third easily. If he hadn't jumped into the bridle and wanted to tear off early, that would have been another couple of lengths. "Ryan (Moore) did the right thing, he said 'come back and do this right, this is a trial today'."
The Age
29-04-2025
- Business
- The Age
Dan Murphy's owner needs a rescue but can its new boss deliver?
Few Australian captains of industry play 'hrdball' like Australia's highest profile female executive - the recently departed Virgin Australia boss Jayne Hrdlicka. Few are as accomplished in the science of networking, the art of the business turnaround, and even fewer are more controversial. Having accepted a new challenge to revive the fortunes of Endeavour, the company that owns the big box booze barns – Dan Murphy's, BWS – and a portfolio of 350 pubs, her focus now turns from getting customers onto Virgin's planes to having them fill bars and/or their trolleys with beer, bourbon and Bordeaux. Hrdlicka was privy to a masterclass in the art of corporate ruthlessness by her former boss at Qantas, Alan Joyce. Credited as being part-architect of the airline's 2011 decision to ground the airline as part of the nuclear-level move against the company's unions, Hrdlicka has seemingly learnt her lessons well and certainly proved her chops by resuscitating Virgin Australia. Hrdlicka's announcement to move to Virgin's departure lounge certainly caught most by surprise. The airline's Lazarus-like revival from administration appeared to be a textbook restructuring, and its current earnings profile is more positive than it has been for a decade or more. Despite years of industrial relations education at the feet of Joyce, Hrdlicka also managed to establish a workable relationship with Virgin's unions. Her tenure handed a magnificent return to Virgin's owner, Bain, and assuming we escape a Trump-induced global recession, the airline's prospects look rosy in the short to medium term. Hrdlicka is considered tough, ruthless and polarising to her critics and fans alike, so there is little doubt that the under-performing Endeavour is in for radical change. Having worked in the cutthroat world of private equity, reigned over infant formula group A2, run the discount airline Jetstar, and then its mid-tier competitor Virgin while holding court as head of Tennis Australia, Hrdlicka appears as energetic as she is industry-agnostic.
Sydney Morning Herald
29-04-2025
- Business
- Sydney Morning Herald
Dan Murphy's owner needs a rescue but can its new boss deliver?
Few Australian captains of industry play 'hrdball' like Australia's highest profile female executive - the recently departed Virgin Australia boss Jayne Hrdlicka. Few are as accomplished in the science of networking, the art of the business turnaround, and even fewer are more controversial. Having accepted a new challenge to revive the fortunes of Endeavour, the company that owns the big box booze barns – Dan Murphy's, BWS – and a portfolio of 350 pubs, her focus now turns from getting customers onto Virgin's planes to having them fill bars and/or their trolleys with beer, bourbon and Bordeaux. Hrdlicka was privy to a masterclass in the art of corporate ruthlessness by her former boss at Qantas, Alan Joyce. Credited as being part-architect of the airline's 2011 decision to ground the airline as part of the nuclear-level move against the company's unions, Hrdlicka has seemingly learnt her lessons well and certainly proved her chops by resuscitating Virgin Australia. Hrdlicka's announcement to move to Virgin's departure lounge certainly caught most by surprise. The airline's Lazarus-like revival from administration appeared to be a textbook restructuring, and its current earnings profile is more positive than it has been for a decade or more. Despite years of industrial relations education at the feet of Joyce, Hrdlicka also managed to establish a workable relationship with Virgin's unions. Her tenure handed a magnificent return to Virgin's owner, Bain, and assuming we escape a Trump-induced global recession, the airline's prospects look rosy in the short to medium term. Hrdlicka is considered tough, ruthless and polarising to her critics and fans alike, so there is little doubt that the under-performing Endeavour is in for radical change. Having worked in the cutthroat world of private equity, reigned over infant formula group A2, run the discount airline Jetstar, and then its mid-tier competitor Virgin while holding court as head of Tennis Australia, Hrdlicka appears as energetic as she is industry-agnostic.
Irish Daily Mirror
22-04-2025
- Sport
- Irish Daily Mirror
Bohs have a new hero as Easter Monday rising is written into Gypsies folklore
An Easter Monday rising saw Rhys Brennan write himself into Bohs folklore as the Gypsies staged a timely resurrection against the old enemy. Brennan, 18, was sprung from the bench in the 52nd minute as a replacement for Connor Parsons, who had suffered a head injury. Bohs boss Alan Reynolds had quite a headache himself by then having watched his side compete well with Shamrock Rovers but go in at the break 2-0 down. Another teenager, Michael Noonan, had been given the freedom of Tallaght to score the Hoops' second in the 41st minute - his first ever League goal in a brilliant breakthrough season for the 16-year-old. That came just two minutes after Josh Honohan opened the scoring and comfortable Rovers looked destined to extend their unbeaten run to eight games - and top the Premier Division table for the first time since winning the title in 2023. But Dawson Devoy handed Bohs a 70th minute lifeline and, as the Hoops' rearguard went into meltdown, Ross Tierney - who scored the winner when the sides met in the Aviva Stadium in February - dragged the visitors level 11 minutes later. Then, in the sixth minute of injury time, it was Brennan - whose industry had opened the door for Devoy's goal - who buried the rebound from his first shot to complete a Lazarus-like revival that Reynolds later dedicated to club legend Billy Young, who died last Thursday. Remarkably, the last time that Bohs came back from at least two goals down in the League to win away from home was against the same opponents in that remarkable 2001 encounter at Morton Stadium, when the Gypsies were 4-1 down at the break. "Unbelievable," said Reynolds later. "You're hoping the lads will believe you, you'll get one goal and it changes." Bohs reverted to a four-man defence and pushed up, taking the risk that they could concede more. "I felt after 55 minutes, it started to swing," recalled the Bohs boss. "We started to get control and obviously got the outstanding goal at the right time with Dawson. "We looked fit and strong, when we got to 2-2, you're probably thinking take the draw and get out of here but Rhys Brennan comes up with a great goal at the end. We stuck to it and the rest is history. "You can see the celebration from all the players and all the staff, we're in this together. We know there is noise outside but it's irrelevant to us. We know we're tight and strong and that will help." Reynolds has been under pressure from the Bohs faithful and, at 2-0 down and the Rovers fans singing 'You're getting sacked in the morning', there would have been plenty in the away end agreeing with their bitter rivals. "Ah look, it's not nice, is it? It's something that I suppose both sets of fans joined in on, so it's not nice to get," claimed Reynolds. "I've been around it long enough and as long as they're with me, the players and the staff, I'll get on with it. "I have to win supporters over, that's clear, and it's a fight. But I've been fighting all my life so I'll keep fighting with this. The main thing is the players. Delighted for them, and for Rhys Brennan. You've got to be brave as a manager as well throwing him in and you could be reluctant at times, but in training he's been outstanding. "You've got to come into a team that's kind of playing OK and the crowd...I don't want him to come in where it's real hostile and tough going. Now, you could say 'what are you doing putting him on there today' but he's an exciting talent. To beat these at Tallaght, I don't think it's been done since 2019, so to do so is great." For Rovers boss Stephen Bradley, there was real frustration in giving up winning positions in Dublin derbies in less than 72 hours - taking one point from six, with Shelbourne to come to Tallaght on Friday. "We need to address it," said Bradley. "On Friday and today, decisions in possession and really basic defensive decisions. We've not made those decisions in really high pressure games. We can't do that. It's not just the defenders. We're all accountable, players and staff. We need to understand why it went wrong, making basic errors. "The goals were so soft. It can't happen. We've been on a good run. We're all hurting. But these players always move on and refocus really quickly."
The Independent
10-03-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
How low must Donald Trump sink before adoring Tories call him out?
Almost a decade ago, when his first campaign for the presidency was a mere publicity stunt, Donald Trump amused his audience at a meeting at Dordt College, Sioux Center, Iowa with a rather prescient quip: 'I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK? It's, like, incredible." Well, despite the Supreme Court's foolhardy decision to grant him blanket presidential immunity, things haven't yet quite deteriorated that far. But recent, ever-more dictatorial behaviour on the part of Trump brings his 'joke' to mind again. It illuminates a question that becomes more pressing, more puzzling and more depressing with every passing day of the second Trump presidency. Exactly what does this despot have to do for some people to call him out? Hopefully, not a homicide in cold blood in New York City – but still… Some prominent commentators sympathetic to the Trump project have had the integrity and self-pride to re-examine their previous conditional support for him. Andrew Neil, for example, declares that the president is an 'unprincipled, narcissistic charlatan who doesn't give a damn about democracy'. Never a Trump fanboy, Neil admits he gave him the benefit of the doubt over the 'vacuous' Kamala Harris, but his worst fears have now been exceeded. Neil's apostasy was greeted online with plenty of comments along the lines of 'what took you so long, Andrew?' Fair comment, especially after a whole four years of the previous Trump presidency, the Project 2025 unofficial manifesto and, most graphically, the attempted insurrection on 6 January 2021 should all have left no doubt about Trump's malevolent intentions. And yet Neil has the self-pride to admit his misjudgment. Others, however, are clinging to an increasingly absurd belief that Trump is a force for good, a peacemaker and a man who can be relied upon. In Britain, the likes of Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Nigel Farage are high-profile victims of what we may term 'Trump Delusion Syndrome' – a reluctance to accept the reality of the man and a cause they've invested so much political capital in. Perhaps, Liz and Boris see in Trump's Lazarus-like resurrection a model for their own return to front-line politics, his Maga movement a vehicle for their own careers. Or maybe they just want to grift around the lucrative Maga speaking circuit. In any case, they have gone a bit quiet about the man they claimed, despite all evidence to the contrary, was the saviour of the free world. Truss and Johnson, unwisely as it turned out, enthusiastically endorsed Trump for the presidency, and now that he is smashing up the Atlantic Alliance and toying with the idea of withdrawing America from Nato, they find it difficult to unleash themselves from their ties of loyalty to the monster. Disgracefully, they have signally failed to support their 'friend' Volodymyr Zelensky, even as he was publicly humiliated in the Oval Office. The silence of Johnson and Truss on social media has been deafening. Although it feels a bygone age, it is not so very long ago, we may recall, that Johnson was prime minister and Truss his foreign secretary, and neither was preaching appeasement of Putin. Quite the opposite: they wanted the West to help Ukraine take back all the lands occupied by Russia since 2014 – not just since the 2022 invasion. Yet, only a few weeks ago, Johnson maintained: 'No – I see no sign whatever that he [Trump] will betray the Ukrainians.' Yet even now, when Trump realigns America towards Russia, idolises Putin, betrays Ukraine, demeans America's allies, starts a global trade war and openly advocates territorial aggression towards Canada, Panama and Greenland, Johnson cannot find the gumption to give up his delusions about Trump. Others are in an even trickier position. When Trump won the election last November, the current leader of opposition, Kemi Badenoch, teased Keir Starmer for past remarks by the foreign secretary, David Lammy, who once called Trump a 'neo-Nazi sympathising sociopath". Right first time, David, we may think now. It would probably be just as well if Badenoch adopted a more critical approach to Trump, and dropped some of her equivocations about his foreign policy and despotic ways. Of course, the real resistance to Trump can only be in America itself, and, crucially, in the Republican Party that Trump has parasitically preyed upon. Like one of those insects that eats its host from within, Maga has turned the party of Reagan into the party of Putin, and too many have supinely gone along with it. Vice-president JD Vance once called Trump 'Hitler', but now he is mimicking Rudolf Hess. When he was a senator, Marco Rubio ran against Trump and called Putin a gangster, thug and war criminal. Now he is secretary of state, he sits there in the Oval Office while his once-hero Zelensky gets abused, impassively, gradually sinking deeper into the sofa like Homer Simpson retreats into a hedge in a popular social media meme, paralysed by embarrassment. Elon Musk once judged Trump – the president he now serves with wanting abandon – a 'f***ing moron'. We can already hear the clattering of scales falling from some people's eyes as they process exactly what Trump is doing. The resistance to him is stirring. The worry is that Trump has got such a grip on the Republican Party, and thus on Congress, the Supreme Court and the independent agencies and leadership of the armed forces (recently purged), as well as vast sections of the media, that he will soon be in a similar position to, say, Viktor Orban in Hungary. This is what the academics call 'competitive authoritarianism' – a regime that retains some of the usual features of a free, democratic society, such as media critics and periodic elections, but which is tightly controlled and strictly authoritarian in nature, continually pressing against and breaching conventions, constitutional guardrails and international obligations. Trump isn't another Hitler, complete with death camps and a Gestapo; but he is the nearest thing America has ever come to such a fate – and that's bad for the whole world.
