分类： sports

One month after surviving a catastrophic, near-fatal truck crash sparked by severe weather near Victor Harbor, Australian Football League (AFL) icon Tony Modra has given supporters across the country a hopeful, heartwarming update on his road to recovery.

The 57-year-old former star, who earned two All-Australian selections during his illustrious career, was left in critical condition last month when an out-of-control tree branch crashed through the windshield of his moving truck during a period of bad weather on June 18. Labeled a freak accident by emergency responders, the impact left Modra with life-threatening injuries that required immediate intensive care admission, leading many fans and fellow football figures to fear the worst for the sports legend.

Now, in an Instagram post that has delighted the global AFL community, Modra has shared new photos of himself posing alongside his wife Erica, son Luke and daughter Hayley, looking alert and steadily recovering just four weeks after emergency facial surgery. He was discharged from the hospital earlier this June, and said he is already beginning to resume small daily activities.

In his touching social media update, Modra expressed profound gratitude for the life-saving care he received from three South Australian medical and emergency response teams: SA Ambulance Service, South Coast District Hospital, and Flinders Medical Centre. “Saved my life, put me back together with a few titanium plates, got me home,” he wrote of the teams’ work. “I’m getting out and about a bit now, and slowly catching up on everything I missed over the last month.”

Modra added that he has been deeply moved by the outpouring of support from the football community and general public over the past month. “I’m so humbled to learn how many people were cheering these incredible medical teams on … and our family too. I’ll never be able to thank everyone enough.”

Modra remains one of the Adelaide Crows’ most celebrated forwards, holding a franchise record for five consecutive seasons as the club’s leading goal-kicker across his 118 appearances for the team. He also notched 47 appearances during a stint with the Fremantle Dockers, and represented his state in State of Origin football, cementing his legacy as one of Australian rules football’s most recognizable figures.

The South Sydney Rabbitohs’ bid to secure a spot in the NRL finals has been hit by a devastating triple setback, just days out from their critical round clash against the Melbourne Storm. The biggest blow came Tuesday night, when experienced starting forward David Fifita saw his appeal against a dangerous contact charge dismissed by the NRL judiciary, resulting in a two-match suspension that rules him out of Friday’s high-stakes game. The roster crisis deepens with two more key back-row forwards already sidelined by injury: Tallis Duncan is out with a hamstring strain, while captain Cameron Murray will miss the encounter with a calf injury. Young forward Thomas Fletcher is now the leading candidate to step into Fifita’s starting edge position, leaving the Rabbitohs severely depleted in one of their most impactful position groups.

The charge against Fifita stems from an incident during the Rabbitohs’ recent clash with the Canberra Raiders, early in the second half. While tackling Raiders forward Hudson Young, Fifita made contact with the back of Young’s head with his foot. The contact was not penalized by on-field officials at the time, but the match review panel later issued a Grade 2 dangerous contact charge. Had Fifita accepted an early guilty plea, he would have received a one-match suspension. Instead, he entered a guilty plea but contested the grading, launching an appeal at Rugby League Central to reduce the charge’s severity.

Fifita’s legal team, led by experienced sports defense counsel Nick Ghabar, argued that the incident was not a deliberate dangerous action. Ghabar told the judiciary panel, made up of former NRL players Tony Puletua and Paul Simpkins, that Young had pushed himself upward off the tackle, which exaggerated the extent of the contact. He emphasized there was no deliberate, separate kicking movement: Fifita had no planted foot to generate a conventional kicking action, no intentional movement to strike Young, and no follow-through after the contact, he claimed. Ghabar also noted that both the on-field referee and touch judge had an unobstructed view of the incident and chose not to issue a penalty, and drew a comparison to a 2024 Grade 1 charge involving St George Illawarra Dragons winger Tyrell Sloan, who kicked Sydney Roosters playmaker Sam Walker in the head during a match.

NRL counsel Lachlan Gyles pushed back against the comparison, arguing that the 2024 incident was a fundamentally different scenario. Gyles noted that Sloan had been trapped in a tackle and was attempting to free himself to play the ball, a common in-game scenario that amounted to a lower level of carelessness. By contrast, Gyles argued, the momentum of the tackle involving Fifita and Young had already come to a complete stop before the contact occurred, eliminating any mitigating context. He told the panel the contact created an unreasonable risk of serious injury to Young, the level of Fifita’s carelessness was far higher than the 2024 case, and there were no mitigating factors to justify a lower grading. “It’s very hard to justify a movement that shows what you can see on that still. It has to be more than a low level of carelessness,” Gyles stated.

After deliberation, the two-person panel unanimously rejected Fifita’s appeal to downgrade the charge, upholding the Grade 2 ruling that brings an automatic two-match suspension. The suspension comes at a critical time for the Rabbitohs, who are fighting to secure a top-eight finish and a spot in the 2024 NRL finals. With three of their top four back-row options all sidelined for Friday’s clash against a premiership-contending Storm side, coach Wayne Bennett — who appeared in support of Fifita at the judiciary hearing alongside South Sydney football manager Jason Clark — will now be forced to field a much-changed forward pack in one of the team’s most important matches of the regular season.

As the Parramatta Eels prepare to take on the red-hot Penrith Panthers this Thursday, all eyes have been on veteran halfback Mitchell Moses for more than just his on-field performance. Last week, the NRL club made a high-profile announcement: star five-eighth Jarome Luai will join the Eels on a one-year deal in 2027, before moving to Papua New Guinea to take up a marquee spot with the newly established PNG Chiefs for their inaugural Super Rugby Pacific campaign. However, when reporters pressed Moses on Luai’s impending arrival during a Tuesday media briefing, the Eels skipper repeatedly shut down all inquiries, emphasizing his immediate focus rests solely on the upcoming match.

Moses and Luai already share experience as halves partners for the New South Wales Blues in State of Origin, having lined up together for three matches with a solid 2-1 win record that includes a decisive victory in the 2024 Origin decider. Despite this existing on-field chemistry, Moses remained tight-lipped about what the pairing will look like at club level when Luai joins Parramatta. “It’s exciting for next year, but that’s next year. We’ve got a job to do this week,” Moses told reporters. “We haven’t been up to scratch lately, so we’ve got to be better against a Penrith side that’s in outstanding form right now.”

Pressed on what Luai will bring to the Eels’ squad, Moses added: “He’s not here yet, so I’m not too sure about at clubland what he brings. It was good in the Origin arena, but we’ll have to worry about that next year. I’m not sure why we gelled so well there – you’re playing with quality players in that environment, you do your job, and everything else sorts itself out.” The Eels captain also refused to engage in playful speculation about which of the two star playmakers would take the leading “Batman” role and which would serve as the supporting “Robin” in their 2027 partnership.

Moses also pushed back on suggestions that the Eels have become a temporary “halfway house” for playmakers, pointing to the club’s recent signing of Jonah Pezet, who will also spend one season at Parramatta before moving to the Brisbane Broncos. When reporters continued to press for more details on Luai’s signing and the upcoming partnership, Moses held firm to his focus on the immediate match. “That’s next year, we’ll worry about that next year. We’ve got a job to do this week, and all the Jarome stuff, that’ll be happening next year. You can start talking about that November 1, guys. You’re not going to get much more out of me here. If you want to go again, you can go again and ask again, and I’ll say the same thing.”

Thursday’s match will mark Moses’ first game since the Blues’ shock Origin decider victory, and he will go head-to-head against his NSW Origin halves partner Nathan Cleary, who currently plays for Penrith. The two could reunite as teammates later this year for the Rugby League World Cup, and Moses was full of praise for Cleary, who silenced widespread critics with a standout performance in the 2024 Origin decider. “He’s probably the best player in the comp right around at the moment,” Moses said. “To go up against him will be special and a great test for us as a group. We’ve just got to put an 80-minute performance in. I don’t think we’ve really done that this year, and we’ll be looking to do that this week.”

Moses also expressed his support for Cleary amid the pre-decider criticism. “I was rapt for him. He copped a lot of abuse, which was unwarranted, and he just put that to bed. I was really happy for him, he was outstanding in that game three.”

In a display of unwavering national pride that defied wet, frigid weather and the bitter disappointment of a World Cup final defeat, thousands of Argentine supporters turned out in force on Monday to greet their returning national football team – a squad that arrived without their legendary captain Lionel Messi.

Four years after millions of Argentines flooded city streets to celebrate the team’s historic 2022 World Cup title, this homecoming was never supposed to end this way. Yet even with a 1-0 final loss to Spain denying Argentina a rare back-to-back championship, celebrations erupted across Buenos Aires, where fans danced, sang traditional chants, and set off fireworks to honor the players’ run to the final.

The Argentine Football Association had pre-warned that several squad members would not be on the inbound flight, and local television footage confirmed Messi was not among the players who disembarked. When head coach Lionel Scaloni and the rest of the roster stepped off the plane, they were greeted by a red carpet welcome and a performance from a military band, before boarding an open-top bus that paraded through crowds of cheering, frenzied fans lining the route.

For many fans, the final result did nothing to erode their support for the team and its iconic skipper. “Argentines will celebrate anyway,” said Marga Ledezma, a 36-year-old housewife. Ledezma thanked Messi for decades of joy he brought to the nation, and pleaded with him not to retire from international football, even as she acknowledged that the 39-year-old’s body may no longer allow him to continue competing at the highest level. Responding to international criticism of Argentina’s physical play and accusations of poor sportsmanship during the final, Ledezma pushed back: “I think they criticize us because we know what it’s like to suffer, that we get up, we fall down again, and we keep going.”

Many supporters pointed to the team’s 2-1 semi-final victory over England as the real highlight of their tournament, a win that carried extra political weight amid the long-running, unresolved sovereignty dispute between Argentina and the United Kingdom over the Falkland Islands. Some fans carried banners reading “The Falklands are Argentine” during Monday’s welcome, and FIFA has already launched an investigation into the Argentine squad for displaying the same slogan on a banner immediately after their semi-final win, a move that sparked sharp condemnation from British officials.

Across the crowd, fans echoed the sentiment that the team’s achievements deserved celebration regardless of the final outcome. “This team united us all, and we should be grateful for that. We will always be there for them, rain or shine. I would say thank you to Messi and that he gave it his all,” said Leonardo Barrientos, a 36-year-old textile workshop employee. Maria Ortiz, a 28-year-old who brought her two-year-old child to the welcome, acknowledged that Spain earned the title, but said she remained grateful for the joy the Argentine team delivered throughout the tournament.

Messi, for his part, opened up about his heartbreak in an Instagram post Monday. “The pain is immense and it’s going to take a long time for this wound to heal,” he wrote, alongside a personal photo. Still, he acknowledged the squad’s historic achievement: “I’ll also hold on to all the good memories. Today it’s hard to appreciate what we achieved, but this squad reached two consecutive World Cup finals.”

Argentine President Javier MileI has moved to honor the team’s run, announcing that a future public holiday will be declared on a date agreed with the squad to celebrate their World Cup performance, though no further details on the timing have been released.

Even before the team landed back in Buenos Aires, thousands of crestfallen but dedicated fans gathered at the Obelisco, the capital’s iconic traditional celebration hub, for hours of gatherings Sunday night. The event mostly remained peaceful, but late in the evening brief clashes broke out, prompting police to deploy water cannons, tear gas, and rubber bullets to disperse crowds. Police sources confirmed that 15 people were taken into custody following the unrest.

After 12 weeks of steady on-field improvement as an interim leader, Dean Young has been named the full-time head coach of the St. George Illawarra Dragons, earning a two-year contract that will lead the club’s multi-year rebuild to reverse years of underperformance. Young stepped into the interim role earlier this season when the club cut ties with previous head coach Shane Flanagan mid-campaign, and his tenure got off to a rocky start with a lopsided 62-16 defeat on Anzac Day that left many questioning his ability to turn the struggling side around.