Lolley’s signing follows that of 73-time Slovakian international Robert Mak, fresh from winning the Hungarian title with Ferencváros, ex-Western Sydney Wanderers star Jack Rodwell, who has crossed town and will likely be refashioned into a centre-back, and Spanish left- back Diego Caballo.
They should all give the Sky Blues hope for a swift return to title contention, having missed the A-League finals last season for the first time since 2015-16 after their worst campaign in a decade.
Joe Lolley joins an influx of fresh foreign faces at the Sky Blues this season.Credit:Getty
The five-time champions missed out on their primary transfer targets, with ex-Liverpool reject Lazar Markovic deciding to move to Turkey instead of taking up a lucrative designated player contract with Sydney, while fringe Socceroos attackers Brandon Borrello (Wanderers) and Ben Halloran ( Adelaide) both rejected the club’s advances to sign on less money elsewhere, according to well-placed sources.
The defection of Milos Ninkovic to Western Sydney was another sour point during the off-season but coach Steve Corica, who defied growing fan discontent to sign a two-year contract extension earlier this year, is happy with the way his squad has come together, and particularly pleased with the recruitment of Lolley.
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“Joe’s got proven quality at a high level in England. He is the type of player we were targeting and we had to be patient to secure him,” he said.
“He brings a goal threat with his ability to cut inside and can also pick a pass. He’s got great energy, an amazing ability to carry the ball and works hard for the team.
“Fans love him because he gives his all and I know he was hugely popular at Nottingham Forest so I’m sure he will be here.”
Andrew Duggan owns seven homes, but he wants people to know he’s not a bad bloke.
He’s been flipping properties in Queensland from a home office in Sydney for 25 years and seems acutely familiar with the public perception of landlords.
“Landlords are very unpopular people,” Mr Duggan said.
“There’s the perception of the evil landlord, the cinematic slum lord idea.
“And there’s a perception that landlords are sitting on piles of cash and sitting around on our yachts.
“The reality is whilst we have the titles to these properties, they’re very much mortgaged.”
Landlord Andrew Duggan is considering getting out of the property game.(ABCNews/7.30)
He insisted he was not doing an interview to “cry poor”, but despondently declared “the good times for landlords are over”.
A long-time advocate of buying up real estate, he’s considering selling up and getting out of the property game.
Mr Duggan said the decline of his lucrative portfolio began five years ago when he was locked into an excessive interest rate with a major bank.
But he is also critical of tenancy laws and state-based land taxes.
After years of advocacy from housing organisations, the Victorian, Tasmanian and ACT governments have recently banned landlords from evicting tenants without grounds.
Andrew Duggan says he doesn’t want to “profiteer from our tenants.”(ABCNews/7.30)
Queensland, where most of Mr Duggan’s properties are located, also banned the practice, except at the end of a fixed-term rental agreement.
“As far as I can see, landlords have next to no rights and tenants have all the rights. It’s kind of swung a long way in that direction and it’s probably swung too far,” he said.
Mr Duggan said the “default” position of civil courts adjudicating disputes between property owners and their renters was that “the property owner will always lose”.
He said he had increased the rent in at least one of his properties over the last year due to the increase in Queensland’s land tax.
“I’m not a charity, that’s for certain. I think we’re very fair with our tenants. We don’t want to profit from our tenants, but we do want to create an equilibrium between our incomings and outgoings so we’ re not going backwards,” he said.
This couple rent their apartment out for 10 per cent less than it’s worth
“We didn’t want to do what other people had done to us,” landlords Thomas Shafee and Katrina Alcorn say.(ABCNews/7.30)
When Thomas Shafee and Katrina Alcorn bought their own apartment and left the rental market five years ago, the Melbourne-based couple were overwhelmed with relief.
“As tenants [before owning a home] we have been in some situations with great landlords and we’ve been in some situations with terrible landlords,” Mr Shafee said.
“We’ve had uncertain housing in our lives too,” Ms Alcorn added.
With the pair now considering starting a family, they considered their one-bedroom Heidelberg Heights flat too small and have decided to upsize, but said they felt “icky” trying to cash in on the tightening real estate market.
Instead, they’ve offered the property up as an affordable rental and listed it for 10 per cent below what they had been quoted by other agents.
Thomas Shafee and Katrina Alcorn felt strongly about keeping their property affordable.(ABCNews/7.30)
“When there is so much pressure with the prices going up and the supply going down it’s really easy for people to be forced into situations where they are taken advantage of, so it’s nice to be able to do something that avoids some of those ethical pitfalls ,” MrShafee said.
“We didn’t want to do what other people had done to us,” Ms Alcorn said.
“That’s one of the reasons we feel really strongly about this.”
Mr Shafee said he and his partner intended to be “ethical” landlords and employ a hands-off approach to their incoming tenant.
“This is not some investment item that we’re talking about, it’s something that someone is going to live in, so it makes a big difference how [the property] is going to be run,” he said.
Mr Shafee and Ms Alcorn are renting the property through HomeGround Real Estate, an agency that offers affordable rentals and donates the profits it makes from management fees to Launch, a community housing organization.
Problem ‘just going to get worse’
Michele Adair says “renters just haven’t been valued.”(ABC News: Tim Fernandez)
Renters’ advocate and chief executive of the NSW Housing Trust Michele Adair said state laws were still skewed in favor of landlords because property in Australia was seen as a means of wealth creation rather than shelter.
“There are lots of really good private landlords [that] provide affordable rental housing, but the problem that we have is that renters just haven’t been valued,” Ms Adair said.
“One in three people rent a home today and probably nine out of ten rents at some stage, yet we have had decades of government policy which just really disregards the rights of tenants and their safety and security.
“We continue to have this myth and fallacy pushed by private interest groups who, as we have seen, just continue to push the wealth creation and profit motive.”
Ms Adair said the so-called “motive” had led to the current rental crisis.
“There is no end in sight and without urgent action by all levels of government. The problem is just going to get worse for the foreseeable future and I’m afraid that means years and not months.”
What parents in western countries may not be aware of is that Google has a Read Along program for kids to teach them how to read. This is a service that has been available in India since 2019 and was released worldwide in 2020. The app’s reading assistant, Diya, listens to your child as they read aloud in the app and helps them by correcting pronunciation or giving encouragement as they read more .
While the app has been live on Android since 2020, Google has recently announced that the beta website is available for public use. This is in an effort to make everything that is special about the app more readily accessible to users who are using a web browser.
There are lots of benefits to being able to use the website version of Read Along. For example, a bigger screen means that the text can be bigger for those who require additional help, and there are also functions that allow schools to be able to use the tool in classes for free.
Since all of the audio is captured in the browser, none of the data is sent anywhere and remains private at all times.
As the beta becomes fully fleshed out, Google intends on adding more stories to its library and is partnering with kid-focused content creators ChuChu TV and USP Studios to transform their text stories into video. While a partnership with Kutuki will ensure that there are many Hindi and English picture books and phonetic books available and interactive for early readers. Hopefully, the early readers will be getting these releases later this year.
Before Flyin’ Ryan, there was Flyin’ Ryan’s dad and remarkably West Coast star Liam Ryan’s father Darren is still soaring in the Great Northern region.
And even at the age of 48 Ryan Sr, a former Claremont player and twice winner of the Great Northern Football League’s best-and-fairest award, is still adding to a career highlight reel of hangers.
Last week, while playing for Three Springs in the North Midlands Football League, the man known to most as “Snotty” took a classic screamer in a gripping final term.
Not only did it help Three Springs celebrate their first win of the season, he did so on the day of their centenary celebrations and over league-leading Mingenew.
“As you can imagine, it was a pretty exciting occasion to get to 100 years, even moreso after a year of not having a side, so the crowd was larger than usual with locals, past players and life members lining the ground,” photographer Kylie Dennis said.
“The atmosphere around the ground was electric, with everyone hoping the Bombers could hang on and get the win as the icing on the cake.
“Snotty then took an absolute hanger in the fourth quarter, using opponent Brett ‘Beetle’ Broad as a step-ladder as he catapulted into the stratosphere.
“The roar of the crowd was something else and it got people on their feet as the Bombers charged toward the final siren. They pulled off an absolute upset.”
Liam Ryan of the Eagles marks over Tom Langdon of the Magpies during the 2018 AFL Grand Final match between the Collingwood Magpies and the West Coast Eagles at Melbourne Cricket Ground on September 29, 2018 in Melbourne, Australia. Credit: Quinn Rooney/Getty Images
Reports suggested Ryan Sr, fourth all-time on the GNFL goal-kickers list with 618, had some words of consolation for the younger Broad after the big grab, telling him, “Don’t worry young fella, you’re not the first that’s happened to”.
Great Northern football identity Greg “Jock” O’Malley – a former teammate and opponent of Ryan Sr – said it was impossible to pick the best mark of his career. I have liked his longevity to that of East Fremantle legend Brian Peake.
“You could pick any one of 30 … he’s a freak,” O’Malley said. “He’s the Brian Peake of the North Midlands.”
An amateur photographer says she is “stoked” after capturing a photo of a humpback whale breaching close to a boat in Coffs Harbour.
Key points:
Photographer Carly Adams can’t believe her luck, capturing a breaching whale close to a boat
She says it’s the best shot she has ever taken
Experts say whales, especially younger ones, can breach multiple times
Carly Adams, 26, said she had never taken a photo like it in the eight years she had been taking photos of nature.
Ms Adams said she walked along the southern wall at Coffs Harbor each day, especially during the whale season.
“I was going down to see if I could get some shots of the whales and I was stoked when I got that,” she said.
“I was like ‘Oh wow, it’s a shot and a half’. I didn’t think I’d get that shot.”
Ms Adams said she was tracking the whale with her camera just after 11am on Sunday before it suddenly breached four times.
“I just happened to get the shot and I was just so shocked about it,” she said.
Carly Adams captured the whale breaching off the coast of Coffs Harbour.(Supplied: Carly Adams)
“I managed to get a few other shots but that was definitely my great shot.
“It just came out of the blue and I thought the people [on the boat] would have had a massive shock.”
Ms Adams couldn’t say how far the whale was from the boat because she was using a long lens zoom.
“It made it look like it was really close to the boat but it mightn’t have been as close. It definitely looked like it was close.”
Ms Adams was surprised by the interest after she posted it on social media.
“It’s definitely gone viral, people were sharing it and I’m getting interviews, it’s going a bit crazy,” she said.
“I don’t know if it’s just because of the angle or what, but it made the whale look ten times bigger than the boat.”
Breaching multiple times
Jools Farrell, vice-president of the Organization for the Rescue and Research of Cetaceans in Australia, said the best thing to do if a whale breached near a vessel was to stay put.
“Whales breach when they want to breach and they don’t really know that there’s a vessel very close to them or near them,” she said.
She said sometimes whales, especially younger ones, could breach multiple times.
“I’ve seen an adult whale breach three to four times within minutes,” she said.
“You just don’t know. It’s just part of whale behavior and the whale season.”
Ms Farrell said she had also seen footage of whales that had breached and landed on boats, but hadn’t heard of any fatalities from such incidents.
Tower of Fantasy has finally arrived in the West, and players are diving into the futuristic open-world MMORPG en masse. However, they’re sure to encounter more than their fair share of obstacles as they explore the world.
One such obstacle in Tower of Fantasy is cracked stone walls, sometimes referred to as Sanctuary Rocks. Once broken, these walls can occasionally lead to many treasures, which makes them worth breaking.
However, players won’t be removing these cracked walls with their ordinary weapons. They’ll need help from a particular relic obtained through the game’s story.
Destroying Tower of Fantasy rock walls with Missile Barrage
The Missile Barrage prompt in Tower of Fantasy (Image via Perfect World)
To break cracked rock walls in Tower of Fantasy, players will need to use a Super Rare quality relic known as the Missile Barrage. The relic places a launcher behind the player for eight seconds, firing a barrage of missiles to deal damage to enemies.
However, these relics can also be used to shatter cracked walls. Fortunately, players should be able to receive a Missile Barrage relic relatively easily by simply playing the story. To get this relic, players will want to enter Ruin A01.
Doing so should reward players with the Missile Barrage, and eleven players clear the ruin, they can do as they please with the relic. Players can also upgrade the relic to increase its potency. However, no upgrades are required to shatter the rock walls that are encountered throughout the open-world MMO.
Once players have obtained their Missile Barrage, they simply need to search for cracked rock walls. When the wall is encountered, all players need to do is aim the relic and activate it with whatever button or keybind they are using (F is the standard keybind in many circumstances).
The missiles should fly out and impact the wall at multiple points, shattering it and allowing players to uncover what the wall was protecting. In addition to shattering cracked walls, Missile Barrages are quite helpful when taking on opponents. The missiles fired are numerous and deal solid damage, especially when many missiles make contact with their target.
Furthermore, sequential upgrades increase the missile damage, as well as the duration for which missiles are fired. At the five-star upgrade, more missiles are fired from the launcher, making Missile Barrage a deadly relic to keep on hand.
Considering that players can get a free Missile Barrage from Ruin A01, it’s also a great relic for beginners. The ruin is far from difficult, and progressing along the game’s storyline should allow players to become strong enough to tackle any and all challenges they might see inside the ruins. Furthermore, having Missile Barrage available during the run can make things even simpler.
As Daniel Ricciardo fights to keep his place on the Formula 1 grid, pop music icon Harry Styles has thrown his support behind the Australian driver.
Ricciardo became embroiled in F1’s mid-year silly season following reports he will be replaced by young compatriot Oscar Piastri at McLaren next year.
The news erupted last week after Fernando Alonso blindsided the F1 world when he jumped into Sebastian Vettel’s vacated seat at Aston Martin for 2023.
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Alpine then announced Piastri would be the man to replace Alonso, only for the Melburnian to reject the seat — a bold move for a man who is yet to drive in F1.
Now Ricciardo, who has one year remaining on his contract, has reportedly asked for a $21 million payout from McLaren for the early termination of his contract. The eight-figure payout would clear the way for McLaren to sign Piastri.
Australian driver Daniel Ricciardo and McLaren teammate Lando Norris. Photo by Jure Makovec / AFPSource: AFP
Nothing has gone right for Ricciardo this season – the Perth driver accumulated just 19 points before the mid-season break while McLaren teammate Lando Norris has managed 76.
However, Ricciardo has some high-profile celebrities in his corner.
On Sunday, an image of Styles donning a Daniel Ricciardo shirt circulated social media channels, inevitably sending the F1 community into a frenzy.
According to internet sleuths, the Ricciardo shirt went on sale during last October’s United States Grand Prix in Austin.
Earlier this year, Styles released his third full-length solo album “Harry’s House” to critical acclaim. He will also appear in Olivia Wilde’s upcoming psychological thriller “Don’t Worry Darling” alongside Florence Pugh.
Ricciardo has remained tight-lipped about his future in the sport and doesn’t appear bothered by the ongoing saga.
He is clearly enjoying his mid-season break, posting a photo of himself to Instagram smiling in a swimming pool.
If Piastri does indeed take his place at McLaren, Ricciardo’s most likely landing spot would be Alpine, the French team formerly known as Renault where he spent two seasons in 2019 and 2020.
The mother of a cancer patient being treated at Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital said she was blocked by anti-vax protesters from entering the hospital over the weekend.
Karly Kirk, who had to be guided into the hospital, is now backing calls for protest exclusion zones to be implemented around major hospitals.
She was attempting to visit her 11-year-old daughter, Darcy, who is undergoing chemotherapy for a rare blood cancer.
Hundreds of protesters blocked staff, families and patients from entering the hospital over the weekend. (Nine)
“I was nervous and I was scared as I was coming through. It was like a pure rage that then escalated into tears,” Kirk said.
While the protesters claim they didn’t block the entrance to the hospital, videos show police officers having to flag cars through the crowd of around 200 anti-vaxxers.
The Royal Melbourne Hospital and the Royal Women’s Hospital were also targeted.
Emergency physician Dr Stephen Parnis said exclusion zones needed to be created to ban hospital protests.
“State and territory governments around the country need to keep looking at (exclusion zones),” he said.
Karly Kirk was attempting to visit her 11-year-old daughter, Darcy, who is undergoing chemotherapy for a rare blood cancer. (Nine)
“Healthcare workers and indeed our patients, need to have our safety and wellbeing looked after.
“This is one example of where that safety and those interests can be protected.”
Parnis said the protesters “crossed the line.”
“They are a very small minority. They shouldn’t be allowed to compromise the wellbeing of people on often the worst day of their life,” he said.
“There is always the potential that delays or intimidation can make a bad situation worse.
Emergency physician Dr Stephen Parnis said exclusion zones needed to be created to ban hospital protests. (Nine)
“When you have got chaos outside, and noise and difficulty getting through it, there is no good that can come out.”
A Victoria Police spokesperson said they were “extremely disappointed” with the behavior of the protesters choosing to target hospitals.
9News understands no protesters were arrested.
The Royal Children’s Hospital declined to comment on the protests.
Recently a lot of people have been saying that getting back to the office is great for productivity, collaboration, and quality of thinking. All of that may be true. However, there’s a more fundamental reason why I am a huge advocate for people getting back to the office, and having their default set to ”I will work at the office – unless I really really can’t’, and that’s because it makes you happier and more satisfied.
Everyone lauded technology and in particular Zoom and Google Meets during Covid / lockdowns – and remarked how bad Covid would have been just 5 years previously. I don’t think it’s as simple as that… I wonder if these breakthroughs in technology are taking us down a pathway to efficiency, productivity and ease, all of which are deceptively dangerous.
Imagine a single 25 year old who’s just moved out of home into a one bedroom apartment. They work from home using Zoom, they eat at home using home delivery, they do their exercise on a delivered Peloton (paid for by their parents?), and they have relationships at home thanks to social media. There’s little reason for them to leave the couch. Check out this clip from one of the best, and most predictively accurate movies of all time, Wall-e and see what life will (and already is becoming) look like.
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This is an easy lifestyle to exemplify the issues with this increasingly efficient lifestyle, and I can hear you already saying what people who look after kids, what about carers, what about access for those with disability, what about those who have global roles. Yes, yes, yes, they are all reasons why increased flexibility of working conditions can have benefits – but they are not all reasons why we shouldn’t set the default to be work at work – if you can.
There are going to be increasing reasons why going to work will become increasingly difficult whether it be extreme environmental conditions, increased traffic, or having to work in places where one is not physically present. However, this chase for efficiency comes at a cost, and I (admittedly rather dramatically) think that cost is humanity.
Just like the characters in Wall-e (watch the clip) we begin to become less human, less conscious, and less able. The easier things become, the more sanitized our world becomes, the less we are able to build resilience and grow (psychologically and biologically).
We have a big curvy desk that winds its way through the office. The other day I was standing on one side of the desk and someone on the other wanted to show me something – she couldn’t just pass it over and she had to walk right around the office to get to me. In that moment of extreme inefficiency I watched as she had a couple of moments of incidental chats and when she arrived we laughed about how badly designed the office was. However, we also kind of recognized the beauty in the inefficiency (I hope).
So this is an invitation to everyone to get dressed, put up with traffic, get a coffee at the local café, make small talk in a lift, work with people and have conversations, drive home and then do it all again the next day. Now that may or may not sound like much fun, but the alternative looks far worse.
Adam Ferrier is a consumer psychologist, and founder of Thinkerbell
The fishy codenames of AMD’s upcoming RDNA 3 graphics lineup powering the Navi 3x GPUs for Radeon RX 7000 & Ryzen 7000 have been revealed.
AMD continues the aquatic fish codename trend with the next-gen RDNA 3 powered Navi 3x GPUs for Radeon RX 7000 & Ryzen 7000
Today, we find the remainder monikers for the other RDNA 3 architecture GPUs to be released soon. The new names for the soon-to-be-released graphics cards from AMD are:
Pretty Plum (AMD Radeon RX 7900)
Wheat Nas (AMD Radeon RX 7800 and 7700)
Hotpink Bonefish (AMD Radeon RX 7600)
pink sardines (AMD Ryzen 7000 and AMD Radeon 700M)
These will be used internally by the company to assist in tracing the development process of specific architectures, namely the company’s new graphics card products. With the release of the codenames for each model coming out in the following months, it will also be easier for industry insiders, tech websites, enthusiasts, and more to distinguish between the various models released. The codenames AMD uses are not for marketing purposes, as consumers will not see these names printed on boxes of GPUs from the company and partners.
Since May, we have known that AMD’s flagship GPU, Navi 31, was given the moniker “Plum Bonito,” but not one had heard of the company’s remaining GPU names. Navi 32 will carry the nickname “Wheat Nas,” while Navi 33 will be named “Hotpink Bonefish.”
AMD Pink Sardine APU, Source: Freedesktop via VideoCardz
The AMD Ryzen 7000 APU, which initially carried the name “Phoenix,” will now be referred to as “Pink Sardine.” The new APU will be the successor to Yellow Carp (also known as Rembrandt) and Green Sardine (also known as Cezanne).
The VideoCardz website notes that Pink Sardine has the identical PCI Device ID, 0x15E2, to four other codenames — Raven Ridge, Renoir, Van Gogh, and Yellow Carp. The company chooses to differentiate the APUs by PCI revisions instead of creating additional IDs for every APU released.
We have yet to see any other AMD RDNA 3 architecture-based graphics cards mentioned, especially for the company’s future console chips. However, as it is still relatively early in the release of the upcoming lines, it may be a few months before we find out more information from AMD.
