Marauding Blues hold off luckless Maroons to take Women’s Origin series lead
In the end, it had to be Jesse Southwell,The Blues halfback may have chosen to leave her home town club Newcastle for Brisbane this year, but in familiar surrounds at McDonald Jones Stadium in front of 20,000 fans on Thursday it was her who proved coolest as New South Wales won the opening Women’s State of Origin game, 11-6,Her field goal with seven minutes to go stole the glory from a valiant Queensland, who went close to the winning try before Blues centre Jess Sergis scored a sealer on the whistle,Southwell described it as “probably the fastest” and “definitely the toughest” game she had ever played,“It was end-to-end and Queensland never let up,” she said.
“It just goes to show what the women’s game is doing,”The result hung in the balance until the very end, and with scores locked at 6-6 Lauren Brown – who kicked the Maroons to victory two years ago on this ground – hit her field goal attempt left of the posts,Earlier, Southwell had a one-pointer blocked by prop Destiny Brill, who was only brought on late after the Maroons lost two players to head impacts,The result could have been reversed however with just three minutes left on the clock,The Maroons looked certain to score when hooker Jada Ferguson darted out of dummy half metres out from the try-line.
But Blues fullback Abbi Church and Millie Elliott – playing her first top-level match in more than a year after becoming a mother and just seven months after giving birth – managed to keep the ball off the white chalk.It was a heartbreaking near-miss given Queensland’s effort throughout the evening.The visitors held a surprise 6-0 lead at half-time.Southwell, however, said her side didn’t doubt they would come back.“We knew within ourselves that we were going to be sweet,” she said.
“Coaching staff at half-time were so calm, our leaders were so calm, so we knew we just had to hold on to the ball and keep doing what we’re doing.”In the end, the revamped Maroons held out the marauding Blues for 45 minutes.They had defended smartly, desperately, and everything in between, but the pressure took its toll.The crack was found by Ellie Johnston, the imposing prop whose momentum is kryptonite for even the most heroic defensive lines, who jumpstarted the Blues’ shield defence.NSW had been dominant in the two opening matches last year, running up an aggregate score of 58-18 before the Maroons claimed a consolation in Game 3.
That was the swansong of longtime coach Tahnee Norris, and former assistant and current Dragons NRLW coach Nathan Cross stepped in this year.The new era of the Maroons couldn’t have started any worse.In the very first hit up of the match, Makenzie Weale was driven back by a mass of three Blues and hit her head on the hard Hunter turf.She was ordered from the field and wasn’t to return.This was a team with three debutants, and no Ali Brigginshaw to steady the ship against the heavily favoured home side bursting with Jillaroos.
But those three debutants stood up to the challenge.New Zealand international Otesa Pule, called in thanks to tweaked eligibility rules, came on for Weale and crashed over to put her side ahead in only the fourth minute.From five-eighth, Chantay Kiria-Ratu bombarded the Blues back three with towering kicks that almost created two tries.And on the wing, teenager Phoenix-Raine Hippi showed masterful instincts, jamming NSW fullback Abbi Church one moment and then standing up to Isabelle Kelly the next.But in an arm-wrestle of a first half, the standouts were the forwards.
None was better than the Maroons’ Keilee Joseph, who had accrued 24 tackles by half-time, including two front-on marvels.With 12 minutes to ago, she had 32 – more than any other player – but in attempting the 33rd her head collected the hip of Tiana Penitani Gray and she was taken from the field on a medicab.The long delay gave the players a moment of rest, and marked the start of the game’s final act.It offered plenty of drama, but for the Maroons players, no fairytale.Now they must go to Queensland for matches two and three, and show – like Southwell – there’s no place like home.
Calls grow to ban Palantir in Australia after manifesto described by UK MP as ‘ramblings of a supervillain’
Just weeks after it implied some cultures are inferior to others in a manifesto described by one UK MP as the “ramblings of a supervillain”, the US spy tech company Palantir says it is just “a software company” amid calls for Australian government agencies to ban any new contracts with the controversial company.In Australia, state and federal contracts with Palantir have reached nearly $80m, and federal investment in the company is reportedly more than $160m.Palantir, a Trump-aligned company that was co-founded by billionaire Peter Thiel, develops software for companies and government agencies to analyse vast amounts of data.Earlier this month, Palantir published a manifesto on X, arguing the benefits of American power and implying some cultures are inferior to others.“Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive,” Palantir wrote in the post
Galaxy S26 review: Samsung’s still-compact flagship Android
Samsung’s compact flagship phone hasn’t changed much in a year, but the S26 is still one of the best smaller handsets available as rivals grow larger and larger.The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more.The S26 is the cheapest and smallest of this year’s top Samsungs, dwarfed by the top-of-the-line S26 Ultra in size and price
‘Your questions are designed to trick me’: combative Musk grilled over battle with Sam Altman
After a dramatic first day of opening statements and testimony from Elon Musk in his case against Sam Altman and OpenAI, the trial continued on Wednesday with a cross-examination of the Tesla CEO. Musk began his second day of on the stand by repeating the accusation that Altman “stole a charity” and would endanger humanity with AI multiple times. OpenAI’s attorneys pressed the world’s richest man on his allegations, resulting in testy exchanges and multiple interventions from the judge.Musk often refused to answer questions as instructed, and the judge interjected several times to tell Musk to simply give a yes-or-no response. At various points, Musk told OpenAI’s counsel, “You’re being misleading with your question,” and “Your questions are not simple, they are designed to trick me, essentially
Maryland becomes first state to ban surveillance pricing in grocery stores
Maryland has become the first state in the US to ban surveillance pricing in grocery stores.Maryland’s law bans grocers and third-party delivery services from using a person’s personal data to set higher prices. Wes Moore, the governor, signed the measure into law on Tuesday. “At a time when technology can predict what we need, when we need it, when we’ll pay for it and also – when we’ll pay more for it, and at a time when we’re watching how big companies are then using these analytics against us to make record profits, Maryland is not just pushing back. Maryland is pushing forward because we are going to protect our people,” Moore said at the bill signing ceremony
Tech giants’ results show rosy outlook for AI boom and US stock market
Unusual simultaneous reports of financial results by several of the US’s largest tech companies gave positive indications for the stock market despite widespread fears of an AI bubble on Wednesday.Four of the so-called Magnificent Seven tech stocks, the most valuable publicly traded companies in the world, reported their quarterly financial results on Wednesday. The cluster is not typical, as these disclosures do not often occur on the same day, and provides a snapshot of how the tech industry is faring as it rides the AI boom. Amazon, Alphabet and Microsoft all revealed double-digit gains in their cloud computing units, which have seen supercharged growth thanks to increasing adoption of AI. Meta, not in the business of cloud computing, failed to meet Wall Street expectations
Claude-powered AI agent’s confession after deleting a firm’s entire database: ‘I violated every principle I was given’
It only took nine seconds for an AI coding agent gone rogue to delete a company’s entire production database and its backups, according to its founder. PocketOS, which sells software that car rental businesses rely on, descended into chaos after its databases were wiped, the company’s founder Jeremy Crane said.The culprit was Cursor, an AI agent powered by Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.6 model, which is one of the AI industry’s flagship models. As more industries embrace AI in an attempt to automate tasks and even replace workers, the chaos at PocketOS is a reminder of what could go wrong
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