Latest news with #Voss
Perth Now
2 hours ago
- Sport
- Perth Now
Fremantle pull off season-defining result to pip Pies
Fremantle have significantly boosted their AFL finals prospects after stunning premiership favourites Collingwood with a classic one-point win at the MCG. Down by 22 points early in the final quarter, the Dockers surged home with the last four goals of the game to win 12.7 (79) to 11.12 (78) in a Sunday special. After ruckman Luke Jackson slotted a long-range set shot to put Fremantle in front, Collingwood star Jamie Elliott had an opportunity to regain the lead with two minutes remaining. Usually the ultimate clutch player, Elliott missed the shot from 40m out, levelling the game 78-78. The Dockers were able to force the ball down the other end, with Fremantle ace Shai Bolton awarded a free kick inside 50. The former Richmond player missed the shot, but it put Fremantle up again by one point. Collingwood entered inside 50, but Fremantle forward Josh Treacy pushed back to take a game-saving mark in front of the Magpies' goal with just seconds left. Treacy also received a 50m penalty, giving the Dockers enough of a buffer to hang on for what could be a season-defining win. The result puts Fremantle into seventh spot, crucially two games clear of the ninth-placed Western Bulldogs. It was Collingwood's second straight loss, after falling to Gold Coast last week to end their eight-game winning streak. Fremantle forward Patrick Voss enjoyed a career-best day, finishing with six goals. Matched up on Darcy Moore, Voss torched the Collingwood captain with three first-quarter goals. The Magpies moved enforcer Brayden Maynard on to Voss in the second-half, helping curb his influence. But Fremantle's forwards were starved of opportunities as the Dockers went inside 50 just 40 times to Collingwood's 63. Fremantle wingman Matthew Johnson awkwardly twisted his foot in a contest with Steele Sidebottom in the final quarter and was assisted from the field by medical staff. Dockers gun Hayden Young made a successful return from a long-term absence with a hamstring injury, coming on as the sub in the third term. Collingwood superstar Nick Daicos, who started off half-back, was typically prolific with 43 disposals and a goal. But Dockers midfielder Caleb Serong went close to him, gathering 37 touches and nine clearances of his own.
Daily Mirror
2 days ago
- Lifestyle
- Daily Mirror
Shoppers rave these ‘super comfy' Dr Martens sandals ‘feel like walking on clouds'
Secure your new staple sandals for summer that don't sacrifice style for comfort and practicality, these Dr Martens sandals that shoppers have hailed 'super comfy for all day wear' Fashion-forward shoppers have gone wild for a pair of "super comfy" sandals from the cult-favourite brand Dr Martens. The sandals have been praised for their fast break-in, all-day comfort, and cool style. These Voss Hydro Leather Strap DM Sandals currently boast an impressive 4.6 out of 5-star rating with nearly 1000 reviews, with a majority declaring these a staple in their spring and summer wardrobes. Boasting a contemporary style that Dr. Martens has become infamous for, these sandals maintain an edgier aesthetic while promising to deliver all of the support and durability you'd expect from a pair of Dr. Martens boots or shoes, but with the added bonus of keeping your feet cool in summer temperatures. These Voss Hydro Leather Strap Sandals are touted as having tons of attitude, toughness, and the unmistakable Dr. Martens signature style. The Voss has all that, plus the brand's signature comfort. Armed with two adjustable straps, a super-lightweight sole with a ripple tread, and an ultra-sturdy Goodyear welt, these sandals are perfect for trekking over all terrain, whether you're heading out on a date, walking along the coast or just running errands. Plus, these beauties now come in various colourways, including pastel pink and butter-yellow. These sandals feature a slight wedge for additional height and a dramatic finish. They also feature an adjustable ankle strap that promises to keep them secure and supportive throughout the day. The shoes also feature a soft, breathable lining that prioritises your comfort while you walk, while the other super-lightweight EVA sole ensures these must-have sandals don't weigh you down. Available for £66 in some sizes at Allsole or from The Hut, these summer-ready sandals are available in all sizes from 3 through to 9 for £100 at Dr. Martens' own store. Shoppers who have picked up these shoes can't stop raving about them. One thrilled customer gushes: "Fantastic sandals. My feet are so comfortable in them. Best of all , no blisters. Amazing as I normally get blisters when I put on new sandals but even with my bare feet there was not a problem." Another buyer beams: " These sandals are like walking on clouds they are so comfy I can wear them all day while I'm at work." And a third chimes in: "Lovely comfy, chunky sandals. Wore them all day as soon as they arrive with none of my usual 'new shoe' discomfort. No rubbing anywhere. They look great with jeans, shorts and dresses. Great quality." This shopper day said, "Great sandals. I thought they might be a bit stiff to start with, but they were actually really comfy from day 1. The sole is really bouncy, so they're very comfy. I bought them in the sale, too, so I'm very pleased."
Perth Now
2 days ago
- Sport
- Perth Now
Protect the father-son rule, Carlton's Voss says
Carlton coach Michael Voss has urged the AFL to protect the father-son rule after talented teenager Cody Walker nominated the Blues a year before he is eligible to be drafted. As they prepare to miss finals for the first time since 2022, Carlton were given a huge boost when Walker informed them he intended to join the club via the 2026 draft. His father, Andrew, played 202 games for Carlton between 2004 and 2016. But Cody was also eligible to join Richmond as part of their Next Generation Academy due to his Indigenous heritage. The 184cm midfielder has starred for Vic Country in this year's national championships, pushing his case to be a potential No.1 pick next year. Walker will join Ben and Lucas Camporeale, the sons of premiership player Scott, on Carlton's list for 2027. "The father-son rule should stay with how it currently sits," Voss said on Friday. "There's some things that we need to continue around the history of the game and the traditions of the game, and this is one of them. "I'd understand if there's probably a further conversation around what academies look like in general. "But when it comes to the father and sons, that's been a tradition that's stood the test of time, and should continue to do so. "Whether that evolves over time and what you ultimately end up paying for that, probably is a continued conversation, but where teams can get and clubs get access to their father-son, father-daughters, should always be made available." Father-son access has caused significant debate between the 18 clubs, with some teams more fortunate than others. Geelong have had an excellent track record with the rule, helping set up their three premiership between 2007 and 2011. Collingwood superstar Nick Daicos is arguably the best player in the AFL, while his brother Josh is a premiership gun in his own right. Reigning premiers Brisbane have three father-sons - Will Ashcroft, Levi Ashcroft and Jaspa Fletcher - in their best team. But less established clubs like Gold Coast, GWS and Fremantle are naturally less likely to produce sons of guns. Even foundation club St Kilda are yet to benefit from the rule, with president Andrew Bassat leading the charge on overhauling Northern Academies. Voss will be hoping the news of Walker's arrival at the end of 2026 can inspire Carlton to snap a four-game losing streak when they face Melbourne at the MCG on Saturday night. The 6-11 Blues are out of finals contention, but an encouraging end to the season could help Voss save his job. Voss downplayed concerns of Tom De Koning's form, as the mobile ruckman is weighing up a monster offer to join St Kilda. De Koning is yet to make a decision, publicly, but it is expected he will accept the mammoth contract with the Saints. The 26-year-old has played more forward in recent weeks in the absence of Harry McKay, with Marc Pittonet being the No.1 ruck. "I think you're reading a little bit too much into it," Voss said of De Koning's form dipping amid the contract decision. "Even with the discussion around him and the combination (with Pittonet), it's black and white for us. There's a role to play. "We need it played, and he's really determined to be able to get that done. "The discussion around it is for other people to talk about."
Newsroom
12-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Newsroom
Short story: Collective Tissue, by Craig Cliff
Terry Voss (born 1975) is the author of the story collection The Boring Aurora, which was shortlisted for the Sunday Supplement's best first book award in 2001. His poems and stories have been published in many print and online journals, including Visigoths, 2B/X2B, Sundown and Herringbone. He is currently working on an as-yet-untitled novel about Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web. Voss lives in West Tapping with his wife, K.M. Kildare, author of three highly acclaimed novels, and their two young children. Terry Voss is a writer and failed home handyman. Prior to becoming a full-time writer, he worked as a filleter on a fishing ship, a milliner's assistant, a sandwich artist and a sock model. On his blog, Aurora, Aurora, Voss has described the decision he and his wife made to both become full-time writers: It was bonkers. We'd both sold our first books but the advances were meagre. We had two other mouths to feed, but we were so open to the idea of success. I shudder to think what would have happened if Katie didn't have The Ontologist's Niece in her bottom drawer.' Terry Voss is an author and birdwatcher. Gianni Hill, his companion on many twitches and the author of the Booker shortlisted Far Flies the Dunlin, has called Voss 'quietly brilliant and brilliantly quiet.' Terry Voss is a fiction writer and film reviewer ( His favourite film is the woefully underappreciated The Last Valley (1971), starring Michael Caine and Omar Sharif. He lives in West Tapping with his wife, K.M. Kildare, the author of six highly acclaimed adult novels and the bestselling High Salvage young adult series, and their own young adults, Dulcie and Cody. Terry Voss is a proud father of two. 'Cody and I are incredibly lucky to be surrounded by brilliant, original and driven women,' he said during his speech at the launch of Dulcie Kildare-Voss's debut novel, Quintessence. 'As Katie, Gianni and Ms Mackenzie have said, this book is all Dulcie. It's thrillingly honest about life as a teenager in the first decade of this new millennium.' Terry Voss is the author of The Boring Aurora, described by the West Tapping Courier as 'a promising debut from a local scribe'. His novel-in-progress, Connective Tissue, is a fictional account of Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the internet, during a zombie apocalypse. Dulcie Kildare-Voss, Terry's daughter and the author of Quintessence and Aftermathematics, recently described her father's project while onstage at the Hay Literary Festival: 'It sounds bonkers. I guess that's where I get that strain in my own writing from. The bonkers gene. A computer nerd battling zombies—I know! But he's actually very good at the sentence level. He does a wonderful line edit, if you catch him in the right mood.' Terry Voss was born and raised in West Tapping, a small town notable for the preponderance of published authors. 'It's worse than bloody Iceland,' he recently told the Observer, although the paper attributed the quotation to Terry Moss. Terry Moss is a brave new voice in English letters. The well-respected social commentator's first book, Connective Tissue, is the kind of debut you can't believe is from a first-time author. Terry Voss is a short story writer and the husband of K.M. Kildare. In an interview with the Guardian, Kildare described life in the Voss/Kildare household: 'Oh, it's a finely oiled machine. Terry's a great father. He always proofreads the kids' work and attends all their book launches. And mine, of course. When Cody got his deal with Bantam last autumn, Terry went out and bought champagne, proper French champagne, even though Cody was only fifteen at the time.' What Wisdom Could This Head Contain, Cody Kildare-Voss's first novel, has been described by Adam Mars-Jones as 'self-assured yet sweetly vulnerable and utterly, utterly compelling'. According to Michiko Katukani, 'Kildare-Voss, whose elder sister and mother are also writers, casts no shadow but his own.' Terry Voss ( writer, father, vegetarian. Terry Voss was the proofreader of the Fury's Reach trilogy by Dulcie Kildare-Voss. He is credited with questioning the decision to set all three books on a spaceship travelling to a distant planet without ever reaching that destination, and coining the phrase 'a claustrophobic space opera', which appears on the covers of each book in the bestselling series and the recently released posters for the Hollywood adaptation. Voss admitted on his blog that the full sentence was: 'A claustrophobic space opera without aliens or ray-guns is a recipe for sedation,' though he later claimed on Ms Kildare-Voss's Facebook page that it was an extended joke he shared with his daughter. Terry Voss is the author of the story collection The Boring Aurora, which was out of print until the author figured out how to use Amazon Kindle Direct. He is married to K.M. Kildare. In a recent interview with Radio 4, Kildare described life in the Kildare-Voss household: 'It's no picnic in a house full of writers. No one ever wants to do the dishes. And don't get me started on the Green-Eyed Monster.' Terry Voss was born in West Tapping in the mid-1970s and raised by his mother, memoirist Anita Custer. To friends and even his wife he claimed to have never met his father, but as Custer explains in her memoir, The Ship We Built at Sea, she regularly took Voss to see his father in London. 'Terry was always a bit of a cold fish. He never warmed to Reinier. Maybe it was the age difference, or Reinier's bohemian lifestyle. I gave Terry every chance to know his father but as soon as he was old enough to make his own way in the world, he broke off all contact. I don't think he's read a single one of Reinier's books.' Terry Voss has a foldout bed in his office, which comes in handy when progress on his novel, Connective Tissue, is slow, or when close friends or family publish memoirs disclosing his deepest secrets to his wife, the publishing phenomenon K.M. Kildare. Terry Voss is so fucking tired. Terry Voss is the son of the poet Reinier Voss (1929–1994). As a child, once a month he would be dropped off at his father's house in North London, which backed onto the grounds of Friern Hospital. Voss Senior liked to talk about his 'neighbour', previously known as Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum, during rambling summer evenings as he and his guests drank dandelion wine. The main asylum building was famous for having the longest corridor in Europe. Terry Voss never drank the dandelion wine on offer, nor set foot inside the asylum, missing the chance to walk the nine kilometres of corridors before the facility was converted to luxury apartments for footballers' ex-wives and reality TV elites. Terry Voss is taking a break from fiction after two decades of toil. He is not writing a revenge memoir. Terry Voss is the new treasurer of the Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum Historical Society. He admits he was never that good with money, but his recent return to bachelorhood has shown him the importance of careful financial management. Growing up in a single-parent family, he took for granted the scrimping, saving and sacrifices on the part of his mother, perhaps because his father never seemed to work a day in his life. That house in Friern Barnet was forever filled with a revolving cast of blurry-eyed men in cardigans, incense-burning, barefooted women, and cloth-nappied toddlers at home in ambiguity. A proper-seeming woman, Mrs King, came and cleaned the house and cooked one-pot-wonder meals for whoever was around. As she worked, she sang one of three songs: 'Doo Wah Diddy Diddy', 'Da Doo Ron Ron' and, when she was feeling more eloquent, Bowie's 'Let's Spend the Night Together'. Terry Voss finally broke the back of his Tim-Berners-Lee-faces-the-zombie-apocalypse novel when he decided to set the majority of the action in and around Princess Park Manor, on the site of the former Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum. 'I became interested in the old asylum when I returned to that part of London after several decades away,' he wrote on his blog in September. 'I joined the Colney Hatch Historical Society pretty soon after and feel more than a little dense that it's taken me twelve months to see what is now blindingly obvious. My father wrote a sequence of poems about the fire at the asylum in 1903, in which at least 50 female patient-inmates perished—the worst peacetime fire in London since the medieval period. Now it is a site of pilgrimage for One Direction fans, as members of the pop group lived there for a time. Disaster, insanity, the ephemeral, young blood—it writes itself.' Voss hopes to complete his novel before Christmas. Terry Voss (@Terryvoss75) was the first person to see a wild Scopus umbretta, otherwise known as hamerkop, hamerkopf, umbrette or anvilbird, on UK soil. He was birdwatching in the wetlands south of West Tapping with his friend, Gianni Hill, whose play, A Feather for My Aunt, remains the number one non-musical production on the West End. 'Gianni and I have been to that marsh dozens of times, but not since I moved down to London a couple of years ago,' Voss told BBC World News. 'I rang Gianni to discuss a tricky section of my novel, which asks what if Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the world wide web, and the members of One Direction were the only ones who could stop a zombie apocalypse? Gianni suggested a spot of birdwatching to clear my head and I drove up Saturday morning. About three minutes after we settled into the hide, poor Gianni, he gets a call from his agent. I know, poor form having his phone on in the hide, but he had a film script that was going to auction. Anyway, he leaves the hide and heads back to his Land Rover to get better reception, and not five minutes later I see this self-assured brown wader walk right past me, so close I could probably touch it. I noticed its bill, its head—how could you not? That hammer shape. It's like nothing I'd seen before. I turned on my phone and in a few seconds I had identified it, tweeted, and here we are.' Voss's photos of the hamerkop have been hailed as 'historic' and 'not that shaky, given the circumstances'. Terry Voss does not know what a hamerkop was doing in the wetlands south of West Tapping, when the territory for this non-migratory bird typically does not extend north of Mecca. He does not know whether climate change, creeping urbanisation, deforestation, salination of waterways or any other Anthropocene horror is to blame. He still holds that it could be an escapee from a nearby bird park, though it wasn't tagged and no operator ever came forward. Yes, he has been told the various myths about the hamerkop. If you look into the water at the same time as a hamerkop, someone you love will die. If you disturb a hamerkop nest you'll develop leprosy. If you steal its eggs you'll be struck by lightning. Voss did none of these things. He simply took a couple of photos, shared them via social media, gave a few interviews with carefully deployed plugs for his novel-in-progress, and went back to his quirky bedsit in North London to knock the bastard off. He hasn't been struck by lightning. His kids are returning his texts. His ex-wife and mother are not, but they have both tweeted within the last twelve hours. His fingers are not about to fall off, though maybe that would be for the best. Terry Voss foresaw his own death. Before passing, he made sure both of his kids still had the playlist for his funeral he had emailed them a couple of years ago. It read: Waiting music: 'Da Doo Ron Ron' (The Crystals), 'Sigourney Weaver' (John Grant), 'Vein of Stars' (The Flaming Lips), 'There is a Valley' (Bill Fay). In lieu of a hymn: 'More Than This' (Roxy Music). For when you walk the coffin out: 'Don't Let it Bring You Down' (Neil Young). Terry Voss is prone to bouts of melodrama. He blames his childhood. Terry Voss woke one night when he was seven or eight. He called for his mother but she didn't come. He called long enough to forget for all time the content of the nightmare that had woken him. He got up and walked to his mother's room. He switched on the light. The bed was still made, but several dresses, scarves and jackets lay on the quilt. In the kitchen, dishes were stacked in the wire drying rack. His mother's keys weren't by the telephone. The clock showed quarter to twelve, not nearly as late as he had supposed. She was out—somewhere—safely betraying him. He flicked off the light and fumbled his way into the living room to turn on the television. He slid the volume down so he could hear it but if his mother returned home, unscathed and unaware, she would not be able to before he could leap up, switch off the set and slink down the dark hall and back to bed. On screen: the late film, part-way through. 'The next time I see you, Vogel,' shouted a man leaning against a tree, 'I'll cut out your eyes.' The other man, Vogel, ran to comfort a young blonde woman on her haunches. She was dressed, young Terry thought, like a milkmaid. Before he could get any further bearings, the film cut to a different man and woman lying in bed, a bearskin for a blanket. The man's torso was bare. Only her head was showing, but that was enough to be striking. Tanned skin, sharp features—the black-haired temptress to the innocent milkmaid. They were interrupted by a knock at the door. The man rose, pulled on a shirt and gestured for the woman to hide in the next room. She sat, facing away from the camera, allowing a second-long glimpse of her bare back. Terry sat down, cross-legged, two paces from the TV. The village, apparently under the protection of this man—the Captain—was being attacked by thirty men with swords, axes, a mace, bows and arrows, but also guns. Horses hurtled their riders into wooden spikes. A man licked another man's blood from his knife. It was a gift, all of it. A reward for conquering his fear. After the carnage, a priest threatened the Captain with an eternity in Hell. 'There is no Hell,' the Captain shouted. 'Don't you understand? Because there is no God. There never was.' Terry Voss, who still believed in the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus and the Heavenly Father, but was beginning to question practical aspects of their feats, received what felt like definitive proof of an adult conspiracy. There was no God. This heroic Captain knew the truth and wasn't afraid to speak it. But then the priest found Erica, the dark-featured woman, praying to Satan—Satan!—to protect the Captain and she was swiftly thrown on a pyre. When the Captain returned, mortally wounded from an extraneous battle, he mistook Inge, the blonde milkmaid, for his dark-haired lover. Young Terry could not quite fathom this. Inge and Erica had already become the two poles between which all alluring women must sit. But sweet, compliant Inge, encouraged by the other men, pretended to be fierce and fiery Erica and comforted the Captain as he expired. After the credits: the weather forecast. Terry Voss, aged seven or eight, pushed the on/off button of the boxy TV set and found his way back to his bed in darkness. The next morning he looked up the name of the movie in the Radio Times. The Last Valley. Already a dozen years old and relegated to late-night screenings. A commercial flop despite the star power of Michael Caine (the Captain) and Omar Sharif (Vogel). But The Last Valley was a place his imagination returned to again and again over the next weeks and months. He defended the valley from invaders. He convinced Erica there was no God and, therefore, no Satan. That it was better to lie in bed with him than be accused of witchcraft and burnt on a pyre. He started staying awake at night, waiting for the phone to ring and his mother to be invited somewhere so that he could watch the late movie. It happened once or twice a month. Sometimes he'd turn the set on before the late film had even started and catch the end of the news headlines or Wogan. He soon learnt that they didn't play late films on school nights, just Fridays and Saturdays, and, though it was still thrilling to rise once his mother had left, turn on the TV and position the volume slider just so, after a couple of minutes of Question Time or Italian language programming, he was completely deflated. As far as he knows, his mother never learnt of his late-night viewing sessions. She certainly has not mentioned it in the first two volumes of her memoirs. When he met Katie Kildare at university, he was struck by her resemblance to actress Madeleine Hinde, who played Inge. The straight blonde hair, the narrow nose, the slightest dimple in her chin. He was confounded, however, to learn by degrees that her personality was much more closely aligned to Erica. Not that he ever caught her praying to Satan, but she loved fiercely. There was something carnivorous about her approach to life and to writing. She would not abide the word 'something', for example. Early on in their courtship, Voss rented The Last Valley and watched it with Katie at her flat. She criticised the lengths the filmmakers went to make Omar Sharif's skin appear more pale. 'He's suffering from suspected plague,' he said. 'A convenient device,' she replied. She could not believe the scene in the first half of the movie where the Captain and Gruber, the town's de facto mayor, roll dice to decide who will get Erica. The Captain rolls a three but Erica announces 'Eleven', a winning score. 'Not only have we been given no reason for her to prefer Michael Caine over Gruber,' she said, 'but there's no way she'd be willing to risk everything she has to betray the most powerful man in the valley.' 'I guess,' he replied, though in the years to come he'd often find himself feeling his beloved had acted on similar hunches to Erica. That night back in Katie's flat, she announced the plot was confusing, the pacing poor. He did not agree, could not. He did concede that perhaps the first hour was not as striking or memorable as the second, and that he may have felt differently about the film if he'd seen it in full that first time, but he hadn't and he'd love the film forever as a result. This made her smile and lick her lips. They never made it to the end of The Last Valley, retiring to Katie's bedroom somewhere around the time Captain announced there was no God. The marriage of Terry Voss and Katie Kildare lasted thirteen books (one for him, twelve for her) and nineteen years. Terry Voss's Connective Tissue took nineteen years to write and was rejected by seven publishers (not such a large number when he started the project, but there are so few of the buggers left these days) before he decided to selfpublish. For legal matters, Mr Voss first asks lawyers for Mr Berners-Lee, Mr Styles, Mr Malik, Mr Horan, Mr Tomlinson and/or the estate of Liam Payne to consider the minimal financial gain likely to accrue as a result of this book's publication. Failing this, enquiries can be made via email: terryvoss@ Taken with kind permission from Landfall 249: Autumn 2025 edited by Lynley Edmeades (Otago University Press, $30), the latest issue of New Zealand's premiere literary journal, which includes new writing by Elizabeth Smither and James Pasley, a long, outstanding review by David Eggleton of CK Stead's collection of reviews and assorted prose, Table Talk (the best line in it is by Stead, when Eggleton quotes him saying of Maurice Shadbolt, 'Maurice could be good company, but he seemed to be constantly on the brink of hysteria'), and the winner of the Landfall young writers essay competition, Ava Reid (Te Ātiawa, Pākehā), who is studying anthropology at Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka. The issue is dedicated to the great Brian Turner (1944-2025). It's also the last issue that the journal will be known as Landfall. To mark its historic 250th issue later this year, it will be renamed Landfall Tauraka. The new name has been gifted by Te Irika o Wharawhara Te Raki, the Office of Māori Development t the University of Otago.
Sydney Morning Herald
11-07-2025
- Sydney Morning Herald
AFL turned a lame attempt at humour into a death threat
You've got to love a dumb criminal. There was the bank robber who phoned ahead to let them know he was coming, so they could have the money ready. There was the car thief who tried to steal a manual vehicle but couldn't get it into first gear. When I was at school, a guy got hot and sweaty while burgling a house and took his jumper off. He left it at the scene, not realising that his mum had sewn his name tag into the collar. This week's addition to 'Wanted: Dumb or Alive' is the football supporter who apparently made a 'death threat' against Carlton coach Michael Voss, but sent it to the Melbourne Cricket Ground's own anti-social hotline. The person was identified as quickly as the geniuses who post footage of themselves stealing cars on TikTok, and has been given a five-year ban from attending AFL games or any sport at the MCG. Voss, a much-admired man who has been under heavy criticism for Carlton's performance, said he was 'dismissive [of the message] at first', but felt he should draw attention to 'the dark side of football, where we blame, we become victims and it's this environment where things are quite toxic. We think by showing passion is about anger – and it's not about that at all.' As for the miscreant, he said, 'I'm sorry, you don't belong here.' The AFL's head of security and integrity, Tony Keane, made a statement: 'We understand there is passion in the game, however the text message in question sent to the MCG hotline on Friday crossed the line. Regardless of the intent, no coach, player, official, staff member or fan deserves to be threatened in such a way, and now that patron has lost the privilege of attending the footy.' The Collingwood Football Club also banned the person 'following their misuse of the MCG's anti-social behaviour hotline'. The club said, 'Collingwood will not tolerate any threats to officials, supporters or individuals involved in our great game – such conduct is unacceptable and not representative of the club or its values.' Wait, what? Back up a moment. Was is just stupidity that caused the 'threat' to be sent to the hotline? The initial assumption was that the 'threat' came from an angry or disappointed Carlton fan. But that wasn't what happened. Instead, a Collingwood supporter was making a 'death threat' against the coach of Carlton – a team on the way to a 56-point loss. Collingwood are leading the AFL table, while Carlton are 12th. Now, we all understand how upset some fans get, and coaches receive a disproportionate share of abuse. Sometimes supporters take their anger too far. Plenty of NSW Origin fans might want to cook a beef Wellington for Laurie Daley, but to offer it in writing would violate the rules of social decency and maybe the law, not to mention basic intelligence. But if the abuse for Daley came from a Queensland fan, wouldn't you be wondering if something was amiss? So it turned out. While every distinguished AFL voice rallied around Voss and unleashed their frustration at the social media abuse that they have suffered, a different picture emerged when News Ltd found the actual message. It said, 'I'd like to report 23 missing persons and pre-emptively report the murder of Michael Voss.'
