AFL premiership pair play in “epic” and “crazy” local flag as Cats great loses car tyres - SEN

AFL premiership players Josh Kennedy and Harry Taylor combined to help Western Australian country club Northampton break a 19-year premiership drought on the weekend.

The West Coast champion and Geelong great both played their junior footy for the Rams and have since returned following their AFL careers to pull off a crazy win in an epic Grand Final against Railways.

When the final siren sounded, the Railways players and most onlookers thought they had won by a single point, but upon further inspection it turned out that a behind had gone unregistered and a score check deemed the game a draw.

After 10 minutes of extra-time, the Rams came out on top by three goals to claim the Great Northern Football League (GNFL) premiership in dramatic circumstances after Railways had seemingly lobbed narrowly.

The Rams turned it on late to claim their first flag since 2004, a game which Kennedy was overlooked for prior to his move to WAFL club East Fremantle.

Almost 20 years later and after almost 300 games with Carlton and the Eagles, ‘JK’ was back to pick up that elusive local flag.

He described how a point kicked by Taylor, which wasn’t logged on the scoreboard, ended up saving the day for the desperate Rams.

“It was epic, momentum swings from both teams,” he said on SEN WA Mornings.

“There was a bit of a breeze and there one was one scoring end. We ended up kicking the first five goals and Railways missed a few.

“They kept pegging back and pegging back and it was a really tight game the whole way through. It came down to the last few minutes, we were a couple of goals up, Harry kicked a point which didn’t register on the scoreboard.

“The siren went and Railways celebrated, we all thought we lost for a good three minutes. Then the officials were saying it was a draw, the score was checked and they hadn’t registered that point, so it was a draw.

“We had overtime. An unbelievable feeling going from losing a Grand Final to have 10 minutes to play.

“I’m so glad we won but just a real weird and crazy ending.”

Kennedy admitted he was “pretty average” and “couldn’t mark it” despite booting three early goals.

Two-time premiership player Taylor, apart from his point, didn’t have much scoreboard impact but did do his job, according to his Rams teammate.

Taylor’s game awareness in voicing his concerns about the unregistered point proved pivotal.

“He goes alright, he takes some good clunks,” Kennedy said of Taylor.

“He needs to work on his goal kicking, he’s pretty average with that, but he’s still so switched on.

“He knew the point hadn’t counted so as soon as the siren went he went straight to the umpires. He was onto it.

“When we all dropped and thought we lost, he was off telling the officials it didn’t register.”

Cue the raucous after events which included the Rams players and staff nicking the wheels and tyres off Taylor’s car as he rested at home, dreaming of his statue on the main street of Northampton.

Rams coach Grady Tomelty gave some insight into the aftermath of the remarkable season decider.

“We had a team meeting at about 4:30 on Sunday morning, I said, ‘boys, Harry has gone home, his car is still here, we’re going to take his wheels off but we need JK to give us the all clear,” Tomelty said on Sportsday’s SEN WA.

“After some brief discussions we all said, ‘yep, we’re doing it’, so we ripped his tyres off, put them sideways and dropped the car back down.

“The funny thing was that we saw some footage of him doing a parade up the main street on Sunday morning, showing his medal, hanging on his statue, and then he comes up the footy club to see that we’ve taken his wheels off.

“What a way to humble him. He actually turned up to Mad Monday wearing a jumpsuit, with soot all over his face, and a jack with a wheel on it. He found the funny side.”

Tomelty also tipped his hat to both Kennedy and Taylor who didn’t just show up for the glory, yet instilled their wisdom and experience into the playing group as returning hometown heroes.

“Harry has been back for two or three years and ‘JK’ has always shown his face around the club,” he said further.

“People are saying we just got these guys in to win a Grand Final, but what they’ve given back to the footy club and the community over their whole career.

“There was never any doubt that we’d welcome them back in straight away. It’s not every day you get people of their calibre that want to play footy for a small footy club.

“Everyone knows them personally, it’s not like they’re these big superstars coming in and just playing footy. It’s actual mates and family and friends.

“They’ve really embraced what we’ve built as a football club and then added to it so much more.”

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AFL premiership pair play in “epic” and “crazy” local flag as Cats great loses car tyres - SEN
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Former AFL player arrested over alleged attack at local footy game in Malvern East - 7NEWS

A former AFL player has been arrested over an alleged attack at a local football game in Melbourne’s southeast.

Former Hawthorn rookie and NRL player Shem Tatupu was a spectator at Waverley Oval in Malvern East on Saturday, watching the Division 3 amateur football game between Hawthorn and Elsternwick.

He is accused of punching one of the Hawthorn players minutes after the game, allegedly as the man was walking to the changerooms at about 2.30pm.

Analysis, local footy and the biggest moments, Seven and 7plus are the home of footy shows for every fan. Stream them all for free on 7plus >>

7NEWS were told up to 30 footy fans were forced to intervene during the alleged incident to keep Tatupu at the ground until police arrived.

Former Hawthorn rookie and NRL player Shem Tatupu. Credit: 7NEWS

Paramedics were called, but the man aged in his 30s was assessed at the scene and did not require emergency treatment.

Police have confirmed they are investigating the alleged assault and arrested the 27-year-old.

He was interviewed and released pending further inquiries.

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Former AFL player arrested over alleged attack at local footy game in Malvern East - 7NEWS
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Former AFL player arrested over alleged attack at local footy game in Malvern East - 7NEWS

A former AFL player has been arrested over an alleged attack at a local football game in Melbourne’s southeast.

Former Hawthorn rookie and NRL player Shem Tatupu was a spectator at Waverley Oval in Malvern East on Saturday, watching the Division 3 amateur football game between Hawthorn and Elsternwick.

He is accused of punching one of the Hawthorn players minutes after the game, allegedly as the man was walking to the changerooms at about 2.30pm.

Analysis, local footy and the biggest moments, Seven and 7plus are the home of footy shows for every fan. Stream them all for free on 7plus >>

7NEWS were told up to 30 footy fans were forced to intervene during the alleged incident to keep Tatupu at the ground until police arrived.

Former Hawthorn rookie and NRL player Shem Tatupu. Credit: 7NEWS

Paramedics were called, but the man aged in his 30s was assessed at the scene and did not require emergency treatment.

Police have confirmed they are investigating the alleged assault and arrested the 27-year-old.

He was interviewed and released pending further inquiries.

If you’d like to view this content, please adjust your .

To find out more about how we use cookies, please see our Cookie Guide.

Two teens dead, children seriously injured in horrific crash

Former Magpies star as Sydney burn GWS for maiden AFLW victory

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Former AFL player arrested over alleged attack at local footy game in Malvern East - 7NEWS
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Nicole da Silva talks about One Night as streamers ramp up local competition - The New Daily

Nicole da Silva is no stranger to original local drama series, having clocked up hundreds of hours of television viewing on shows including Rush, Doctor Doctor and Wentworth.

She’s a familiar face on our TV sets and is about to embark on what could be her biggest project to date.

Speaking at a beachside hotel near Wollongong, New South Wales, for the launch of original scripted Paramount+ drama series One Night, da Silva, 41, says it’s a project that will resonate globally.

“It’s very much a global story set locally,” the 2015 Logie-nominated actor tells The New Daily.

“Those are always my favourite kind because they have the specificity of a local environment but they have a universal appeal.

“I am hoping Australian audiences will gravitate towards it because we can see ourselves in a global sense … we don’t have that idea of cultural cringe that we do know who we are and that our work resonates on a global scale,” she says of the series, written by Australian-American poet, novelist and screenwriter Emily Ballou (The Slap).

“And it has the sophistication of a European show.”

Jodie Whittaker, Yael Stone and da Silva in a scene from One Night. Photo: Paramount+

Whose right is it to tell a story?

One Night deals with the traumatic sexual assault of one of three friends 20 years earlier, the adults played by da Silva, Jodie Whittaker (Dr Who) and Yael Stone (Orange is the New Black).

Its complex subject matter deals with the issue of memory, recollection … or no memory at all.

Ballou, who travelled to the NSW south coast from Sydney in the early 2000s, tells the audience the story “encapsulated a time in her life”, about her younger self.

“The landscape leant itself to the kind of story I was trying to tell, that entanglement of beauty and poison and the memory of forgetting,” says Ballou, whose second novel Aphelion (Picador, 2007) was set in Adaminaby in NSW during the Snowy Mountains Scheme and spans four generations of women.

“One Night is about three friends, as teenagers, experience a traumatic event and then decades later, my character Simone decides to write a book about it,” da Silva said.

“It explores the shift of memory over years and decades and the shift of relationships and it looks at who has the right to tell a story.

“She writes a novel, presents it as fictionalised, and although what happened is a thread in the story, she doesn’t feel like it’s the only thread.

“She approaches it from an esoteric point of view and feels like it’s not only [her friend Tess’s] story but it’s every woman’s story.

“Hat, played by Yael and Tess, played by Jodie, beg to differ.

Paramount+ leads the streaming pack

Before the premiere screening at the ornate, 1925 Anita’s Theatre up the road, Paramount+’s drama and comedy boss Sophia Mogford told a packed crowd of entertainment industry types and Screen Illawarra staffers that local productions are a “priority” for the streamer.

This will be their ninth locally commissioned series, competing with Stan – which has just announced investment in three local productions – and Prime Video’s The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, which they say “is the most successful Australian original worldwide with the biggest opening weekend viewership globally for any Australian launch”.

According to data analysis by Finder, Paramount+ “claimed top honours” in the August Australian Streaming TV Charts, making it the streaming app’s eighth consecutive month in the top spot.

Binge is in second spot and Prime came in third.

Entertainment expert Chris Stead said the streamer “continues to find success through its mix of affordability and volume of in-demand programming” as Prime and Netflix “are on the rebound” after a series of poor months.

Da Silva joins so many in the industry here who say investment – not only by federal government funding body Screen Australia, but the streamers – in local productions is crucial.

“It would be remiss of me to say quotas and subsidies didn’t make a difference, because they absolutely do. They are necessary to set the tone and pace of what our local industry can do.

“If we don’t have the support, we can’t produce the product. It’s as simple as that. We do create content, and we do create stories that have impact globally, and do put us on the map.

“It elevates us from any ideas that we had from what it is to be Australian from the past. It’s showcasing who we are as contemporary Australians.”

Local flavour, global appeal

Importantly, One Night is an original scripted series and it was made here.

“Emily writes amazing scripts so when I read them I jumped at the chance … to set this story on the south coast, and Emily knows it intimately, she was here in her university days … she knows this area.

“So to have this area as the backdrop to this story really created this pressure-cooker environment where the crime happens.”

Da Silva’s character Simone still lives locally (and sees one of the adult men who was involved), has to deal with her father who has early onset dementia, and has issues with alcohol most likely a legacy of what she witnessed years earlier.

In the first episode, she has last-minute nerves about pressing the publish button, playing with that ever-present conflict about whether telling someone else’s story is OK, and whether memories are the same for everyone.

Fact or fiction.

Looks like she didn’t run it by her friends first.

Always good to fact-check, as it’s a tragedy that also happened to Tess and Hat, and the book brings back old traumas.

The perpetrators also still linger in the area – one has even gone on to get married and have two kids and Simone bumps into him, while another is in prison.

One Night is not for the faint-hearted … like The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, starring Sigourney Weaver, Leah Purcell and Asher Keddie, which deals with horrific domestic abuse.

In the hands of an experienced small-screen professional, da Silva carries the storyline with care, integrity and balance.

Above all, she says taking local stories “to the rest of the world is highly important”.

“From those who have watched it, there’s an excited buzz about what this show offers, and what it brings to the Australian story landscape.”

One Night premieres on Paramount+ on September 1

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How the Nepali Community Celebrates Father's Day: Embracing Cultural and Local Traditions - SBS

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How the Nepali Community Celebrates Father's Day: Embracing Cultural and Local Traditions  SBS
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Starfield's Local Planet Map Is Horrible - Kotaku Australia

You’ve probably heard this before, but Starfield, Bethesda’s latest open-world RPG, is very, very big. The new game, out now in “early access” on Xbox and PC, spans multiple solar systems and hundreds of planets. And when exploring that vast digital galaxy, the in-game maps are fine. But once you land on a planet or land in a city, the in-game map system goes from fine to awful.

Bethesda’s Starfield launched early for deep-pocketed players on Thursday after years of hype and following some sneaky leaks. The massive space RPG lets players explore a digital galaxy filled with hundreds of planets and quests. And early on, I only used the maps in-game to fast-travel to new planets. But once I landed in the first big city, New Atlantis, I opened up the surface map and set my eyes upon the horrible blue mess that is Starfield’s local “map.”

Calling the blue-and-white grid of floating icons and featureless void a “map” feels generous. Maps, even the worst of them, are useful to some degree. The local planet map in Starfield isn’t useful at all. Not in the slightest. Look at this and try to figure out…anything!

A zoomed-in screenshot of Starfield’s in-game map does not impress.

Screenshot: Bethesda / Kotaku

Fans jumping into the game are complaining on Reddit about the map and also comparing it unfavorably to past Bethesda town maps, like the ones in The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim. And it’s true, comparing them directly, it’s frustrating to see Bethesda take such a backward step on such an important feature. Being able to pop open a map and look around the area for a shop or quest is very handy in a massive RPG. Yet, this horrible blue nightmare gives you no real context—like hills, roads, etc—for where these places actually are, or how to get to them.

Instead of the local map, use the scanner

I’ve given up trying to use this map and have mainly relied on the scanner tool in Starfield. This feature lets you pop open an augmented reality-like HUD that lets you see where shops, quests, and other important places are in the world by just looking around. It also draws a path on the ground for you to follow to reach your objective and lets you fast-travel to locations you’ve visited simply by aiming at them and clicking a button. It’s not a replacement for a local map, but considering the awful blue void Starfield considers a map, it’s the best option at the moment.

It’s odd because I find the game’s galaxy and space maps pretty dang good, for the most part. Sure, I wish space travel was a bit more “traveling” and less just menu hopping, but when I need to look at planets and solar systems in Starfield, the maps are good. They feature textured planets and recognizable recreations of the areas you want to visit. You know, like a map!

But land on one of those planets or cities and you’ll be stuck using that horrendous floating grid of icons.

I assume that in the next few days and weeks, Starfield modders will quickly add local town and planet maps, as this is quickly becoming one of the biggest complaints I’ve seen from fans. Even people who are enjoying the game immensely, like myself, are struggling with the awful excuse of a local map that currently exists in the game.

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