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Watch Chad Townsend - In Control from 7.30pm on Fox League

Cowboys halfback Chad Townsend has revealed how the club landed his signature, a signing that was questioned at the time but has proven a masterstroke.

Townsend won a premiership with the Sharks in 2016 and had an option in his favour to play for the club this season.

But the 31-year-old instead opted to leave his comfort zone in the Shire, where he grew up, and move his young family to a steaming hot Townsville last November.

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But Townsend admits he thought hed finish his career at Cronulla and the approach from North Queensland officials came out of the blue.

Yeah its a wild one to be honest, I had my contract status at the Sharks I had an option in my favour to stay at the club, Townsend said on Fox League.

You know I never really entertained the thought of leaving, you know and then all of a sudden Ive got a call from my manager to say the Cowboys want to have a chat to you and what do you think? I was like you know lets go and have a chat and see what they think.

I went to the meeting with my manager in the Shire in the corner of a cafe just to try and not be seen.

I remember going to that meeting with Todd (Payten), Michael Luck our GM of football, Dane, head of recruitment and they kind of pitched to me what they saw in myself and what they would like me to do if I chose to come up here.

It really appealed to me and I left that meeting, went home to my wife and I just said I can do exactly what they want me to do and you know within a week later I signed the contract and declined my option and thats how it played out.

It was such a big decision like I said my home, my family, my friends, my wifes family, my wifes friends theyre all in the Shire and the easy thing for us to do would have been to say no and take up my option in Cronulla I was comfortable, but we chose the hard way, we chose to move.

Townsend left the Sharks halfway through last season for the Warriors before injury cut his loan stint short.

The veteran playmaker said hes spent most of his career pushing himself to become better and the Cowboys move was just the latest chapter.

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Ive got three young children, Im expecting one more in a months time and the easy thing for us would have been to stay and we chose the hard way to relocate our young family and made the decision early in my career to move to New Zealand to challenge myself, to get out of my comfort zone.

I wasnt afraid to put my career first and challenge myself and this was just another example of that.

Townsend has proved the steady hand the Cowboys have needed this season, guiding the club to second on the ladder after 23 rounds.

I think from that first initial meeting, hearing Todd speak and his vision for the club and him speaking about the roster and the youth within that side and the fact that they wanted me to come in and help out with some leadership and experience, that really appealed to me, he said.

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I looked at the roster and I saw some really talented guys like a lot of them, early twenties and a lot of them are still at the very start of their career.

I knew that I could come in and help, I guess guide these guys into the right direction on the field and give them the chance to reach their potential.

Like I said I know who said what and again I understand how the media works and I understand that people they want to create headlines with wanting to pick people to come last but for me it motivated me.

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Its a wild one to be honest: Inside the Cowboys pitch that landed Chad Townsend - Fox Sports

Fox control and trapping works will be rolled out across the Tweed Coast next week after a successful program targeting the local fox population last year.

Camera monitoring has recorded an increase in fox activity in the coastal bushland areas at Hastings Point, Pottsville and Fingal Head recently. This monitoring assisted Council staff to capture 2 foxes at Hastings Point last week.

Fox control and trapping works will start on Monday 22 August and continue until Friday 2 September.

Foxes are an introduced species and have caused major declines in native animal species in Australia. This program aims to reduce fox numbers to protect native fauna, including koalas and threatened birds such as the Bush Stone-curlews. It will also allow for the recovery of Beach Stone-curlew populations at Hastings Point, especially during the breeding season.

A highly-experienced specialist contractor will carry out all works to reduce the overall fox population in the local area.

Councils program leader - pest animals wildlife protection Pamela Gray said Council had expanded its fox control program this year to try tomake a significant difference.

We had success with our fox control program last year and this year we are targeting additional coastal locations where weve seen increased fox activity on monitoring cameras, Ms Gray said.

Its crucial to our native wildlife to reduce fox numbers. Foxes are predators and seek out nests, eggs and attack local wildlife. Its especially important for the Beach Stone-curlews at Hastings Point who are at risk of local extinction.

Signage warning the public about restricted access will be in place at all entrances to trapping and control sites across key locations at Pottsville, Hastings Point, Kingscliff and Fingal Head.

Access to control and trapping sites is prohibited. Please ensure you and your pets do not enter these areas as traps are camouflaged and cannot be seen, Ms Gray said.

Details of fox control locations:

Hastings Point - Pottsville:Monday 22 August - Friday 2 SeptemberCrown reserve coastal bushland areas between Hastings Point and Elfran Ave, Pottsville.

Hastings Point Headland:Wednesday 24 August - Friday 26 August (inclusive) from 7 pm to 5 amYugari Drive will be temporarily closed each evening (3 nights) during this time.

Pottsville Environment Park: Monday 22 August - Friday 2 SeptemberThe park will be temporarily closed from 6 pm to 5 am during this time.

Pottsville Wetland (Kellehers Road and CudgerieCreek Bushland Reserve)Monday 22 August - Friday 2 SeptemberThese areas will be temporarily closed during this time.

Letitia Spit, Fingal Head (northern end):Monday 29 August - Friday 2 SeptemberThis area will be temporarily closed during this time.

Kingscliff (Cudgen Headland/Sutherland Point)Tuesday 30 August - Wednesday 31 August between 7 pm and 5 am.

Public access to all locations is prohibited during the dates and times advised. Penalties apply.

Additional 1080 baiting for foxes will also occur at locations around Pottsville, Cudgera Creek and Round Mountain.

If any domestic pets are caught in traps they will be taken to Councils temporary animal pound. Collection can be organised by calling 02 6670 2400. Impounded animals can be viewed at tweed.nsw.gov.au/tweed-pound.

If you have questions about these works, contact Councils program leader - pest animals wildlife protection on 02 6670 2400.

For more information on the program and to view maps of the affected areas, visit tweed.nsw.gov.au/foxes.

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Fox control to start across the Tweed Coast - Tweed Shire Council

Instagram updated its Sensitive Content Control feature on June 6, and now users can filter out weight loss related ads on their news feeds.

The update widens the feature that Instagram introduced last summer by allowing users to filter content on more than just their Explore page.

"In addition to Explore, you will now be able to control the amount of sensitive content and accounts you see in Search, Reels, Accounts You Might Follow, Hashtag Pages and In-Feed Recommendations," the company wrote in its statement.

The "body weight control" topic is the latest to be included on the list of topics that can be filtered out of users' daily feeds. Other social media apps have made similar decisions in recent years. TikTok banned fasting app ads and restricted advertisements from promoting 'negative body image' in 2020.

It's unclear if Instagram was following TikTok's lead or made its changes as a result of a petition created by body neutral influencer, Katie Budenberg.

Last year, Budenberg created a petition to encourage Instagram to include an option for filtering weight loss ads in its Sensitive Content Control feature. In the petition's description, she wrote, "To some, these ads may be harmless and they can scroll on but for some these ads are triggering and dangerous."

The petition received over 30,000 supporters, and less than a year later, Instagram updated the feature. In a post on the app, Budenberg shared a graphic informing her followers of the change and listed steps for them to take to filter out weight loss content on their news feeds.

"I don't know if it was us, I don't know if Instagram just came to their senses, but most importantly - WE CAN NOW ASK TO NOT SEE WEIGHT LOSS ADS," she wrote in her caption.

If this is a change that you'd like reflected on your personal Instagram account, here are the steps you can take:

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New Instagram feature allows users to remove weight loss and weight control ads from their feeds - CNBC

Almost every social-media platform offers its users an option to privatize their accounta way for people to control who engages with their content, often to avoid the judgment, schadenfreude, bullying, and snark that are ubiquitous online. Many of these options arent terribly helpful, though. Facebook seems to constantly adjust its privacy settings, and it can be difficult to tell what information your friends have access to. On TikTok, unless you want a fully private account, you have to select who can see each and every video before you post. And Twitters protected-Tweets feature isnt ideal if you have a large following; the Retweet button may be disabled, but your followers can still screenshot and share what you post.

Instagram arguably edges out the competition with its Close Friends feature, which allows people to share Stories with a curated list of followers that is stored in their user settings. Though the app, with its recent attempts to mimic TikTok, has bred frustration and seems to be growing irrelevant among Gen Z, Close Friends is a corner of the platform that many still find useful. The features advantage is that it mitigates the effects of what social scientists call context collapsethe idea that on social, theres a flattening of multiple audiences in one space, Elia Powers, an associate professor in the mass-communication department at Towson University, told me. Its akin to being at a wedding and giving a speech to friends, parents, in-laws, and people you dont know. Jokes about your college exploits, for instance, wont necessarily land with your Boomer relatives as they might with your best friends.

Beyond privacy, the feature sometimes has a deeper payoff: It provides an option to be heard and feel validated in a safe yet open space of your own creation. Even on a group of so-called close friends, something feels more public like youre putting views out into the world and taking a stand in a way that feels different than sharing it with a private friend, Adam Kleinbaum, an associate professor at Dartmouth Colleges Tuck School of Business who studies the relationship between social networks and echo chambers, told me. A lot of us feel very strongly about things we see on the news and things we see in the world, and the ability to speak out in a way that feels public, but also safe, is maybe a good thing.

Devra Thomas, a 44-year-old arts administrator in Wake Forest, North Carolina, told me that social media often feels like a performance to her. We have become a world where unless we share it, it didnt necessarily happen, she said. This propensity to share publicly isnt just about vanity, though. People want to believe that their voices resonate, especially when it comes to sensitive issues around politics or shifting cultural norms or even personal struggles. How do we, as a culture, talk about things if were not willing to share those things?

Read: Close Friends, for a monthly fee

In recent years, Thomas has experienced depressive episodes and wanted to talk about it on social media. But when shed previously opened up on Facebook about her mental-health struggles, shed run straight into context collapse. Some followers were supportive but others left comments such as Are you sure you want to be talking about this? and A potential employer could see this. To avoid the pushback, Thomas turned to Close Friends. About 20 people from her follower list of just over 700 now receive monthly updates about her progressand its had the desired impact. Not only does she feel validated and emotionally soothed, but she also feels empowered. I had someone on the Close Friends list let me know they were starting their own therapy journey because Id been so open about my own.

Everyones reason for using Close Friends isnt necessarily as earnest. Some influencers use the feature as a paid VIP room where they offer exclusive content for a monthly fee via sites such as Patreon. Other people use it as a form of social strategy. I talked with the parents of some high schoolers who said that for their kids, getting on a Close Friends list is tied to status. Being removed from a list could be a sign of changing hierarchies.

For the most part, though, people cited trust as the reason they use Close Friends. The Close Friends feature is not for the close friends but for the nonjudgmental ones, Tatiana Dumitru, a 38-year-old branding specialist in Orange County, California, told me. Shes not especially tight with the moms at her kids school, though some of them follow her on Instagram. They only get to see me or know me through what I post, she explained. If they see her Stories of cocktails and nights on the town, she fears theyll jump to conclusions about her parental priorities. Maybe theyll judge me and wont let their kids play with my kids. In the past, she said, people have left snarky comments such as Boy, you go out a lot. And when she posted Stories from a weekend trip to New York without her children, someone responded, I could never leave my kids and go somewhere with my husband. Dumitru knows that people without access to child care might be responding out of frustration or envy. Even so, the comments hurt. As a result, she thinks carefully about what shell post on her general feed, lest she hurt someones feelings or trigger their schadenfreude. Life is easier and less complicated among her 12 Close Friends, she said.

Zongchao Cathy Li, an associate public-relations professor at San Jose State University, told me her research has found that people feel less vulnerable on social media when they experience three things: a sense of control, self-efficacy, and perceived competence. When you really know what you post wont hurt you, or if you have a strong sense of empowerment you can be more authentic, she said. This aspect can be especially attractive for people who use the feature to express political views. Vanessa Mae Rameer, a 25-year-old researcher, had always posted Stories about her ultra-left-wing politics. But as she entered her mid-20s, she began to shift more to the center. On one occasion, after posting a Story that questioned the way critical race theory is taught in schools, one of her friends unfollowed her. Theyve since smoothed things out, but when Rameer has something controversial to explore, she now uses Close Friends.

One possible criticism of Close Friends is that cherry-picking your audience reinforces an echo chamber or what Kleinbaum calls homophily, the tendency to associate with like-minded people. But for Rameer and others, its more complicated. All the people I spoke with intimated that they choose their audience not because of what people think but how they think. For Trisha Christophel, a 41-year-old process engineer from Dunlap, Illinois, Close Friends is a place for people who like to dig into the complexity of an idea instead of simply accepting or dismissing it offhand. On Close Friends, theyll say, Did you ever consider so and so? she told me. If I posted that to a broader audience, people will say Oh my gosh, I cant believe youd say something like that. Kleinbaum has seen people create their lists based on followers receptivity to conversation about specific topics, not necessarily only choosing people who share their views, he told me. We have multifaceted identities and homophily operates on all of them, cutting across race, ethnicity, gender, and political orientation. The essential connection that we share with the friends in our networks, he said, isnt always obvious.

For many people, the ability to just be themselves is the most attractive element of Close Friends. Ill have a slightly raunchy sense of humor, and then speak eloquently about Roe v. Wade and why its important, Christophel told me. Close Friends is a way for me to show them who I am, but without awkwardness. The last thing shed want to do, she said, is walk up to a friend and say, Hey, its Thursday, do you want to talk about Roe v. Wade? And yet, many of the Stories shared between Christophel and her Close Friends become fodder for actual conversation. This happens, she said, because knowing that youre on someones listand in their inner circlecreates a baseline of trust. Its a deeper connection, Christophel told me. Im not just posting my breakfast for the masses to see. The message is more, Hey, Im talking to you.

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Close Friends Is the Last Good Thing on Instagram - The Atlantic

He tweeted: We need to change, especially the Brazilian gamer community, from threatening and trying to make the person on the other side feel afraid to punish something that was done and we dont like it. This in no way reflects our essence as a people.

He wasnt done. While underlining the general warmth and joy Brazilians are known to bring to sport, and life in general, he added: To defend ourselves we dont need to incite fear, violence or punish others for being wrong. We are better than that.

At the heart of the matter that triggered these thoughts were a series of controversial results that occurred in the first half of the VALORANT season this year, where simmering tension between Brazil and North America escalated further in the wake of certain decisions.

Like the one where Riot was accused of lack of consistency in punishing exploits as VKs (the Brazilian outfit) win was overturned to give Ascend a victory. At the time, the organisers said one of the Brazilian players had abused a Cypher cam glitch. Immediately in the aftermath of that result, there was mayhem from the fans on social media.

Prior to VKs reversal, there was another storm when a close affair between Sentinels and FURIA was stopped just when it seemed as if FURIA had seized the advantage. A tech pause over a jump exploit was deemed to be the official reason, but the Brazilian fans were having none of it. They alleged the 15-minute stoppage was the reason for FURIAs loss from there on.

Even if it just ended in a simple warning, the mayhem they caused online was as if the team had been served a ban. Social media profiles of opposition players received plenty of hate, bile, abuse and threats enough to cause grief to the most disconnected of personalities who detach sporting results to the maximum extent possible.

If its grief from the Brazilian fans in VALORANT, the Korean fans have taken it up a notch at League of Legends. They have waged online wars to the extent that superstar mid-laner Lee Faker Sang-hyeok even took fans to court, after being subjected to a barrage of online insults and harassment directed at him and his family. The players lawyers even confirmed there would be no plea nor favourable arrangement deals.

The issue stemmed from slanders towardsFakers mother and obscene drawings that would be considered unspeakably foul. Faker has long accepted assessment of performances and the scrutiny that comes with them are part and parcel of superstardom, but he wasnt going to take such hate lying down.

By extension, the hate that Fakers received has transferred onto T1 too, seemingly because of their unprecedented success in LoL. Their prominence has led to flashpoints and online mobs with fans. Players have in the past spoken about personal attacks while taking it in stride, but that trend is slowly changing.

The overwhelming sentiment now has moved from tolerance and pleas for better behaviour to fighting fire with fire. Players now want to respond to serve a lesson to not indulge in online bullying or cause mental anguish to players and their families.

We would like to ask fans to keep their distance for their safety and their privacy, T1 said in a statement. Please show your respect for the players when they are near HQ, especially before and after the games, as they need to prepare in peace. We ask the fans for your cooperation to protect and respect the players privacy as well as create a safe fan/player culture.

But it isnt just fans who have been at the centre of such abuse. In 2017, a professional League of Legends player in China had been fired from his team, after it had emerged that he had beaten his girlfriend and had inadvertently live-streamed the incident. It emerged later that the trigger for his behaviour was intense competition from a rival he wanted to beat at any cost.

There have been a few cases of physical abuse, as mentioned above, but its mostly online abuse and trolling that has been central to leagues and esports the world over. Theres no denying that social media is a double-edged sword.

Fans are there to cheer and root for their team irrespective of the end result, but a layer of anonymity can at times provide fodder to those with nefarious intentions to abuse players. Its something several organisations have now woken up to, trying to take the matter seriously. Some have appointed mental health experts to chat with their players from time to time, others have tried to deal with it in their own way, like Faker has.

Two superstars in the Overwatch League in America Atlanta Reigns Kai Kai Collins and Toronto Defiants Andreas Logix Berghmans have completely steered clear of social media because its probably the worst place for abuse. Jiri LiNkzr Masalin from the Vancouver Titans believes subjecting oneself to social media after games can be the most depressing feeling, and not a good hobby to have for a pro player because nothing can prepare you for that. Then there are forums like Reddit where abuse has been taken to another level, as Los Angeles Gladiators off-tank Indy SPACE Halpern has experienced.

So how can such issues be tackled? Can rules be tweaked to antagonise fans less? At least VALORANT is looking at options, such as trying to do away with the existing mass reporting system that automatically suspends players. This system has caused numerous false bans and can be infuriating to players and fans alike. Riot, the organisers, can also do well to place more resources in their tribunal department.

The number of reports a player receives should only be a trigger of priority for reviewing manually. This will ensure all reports are reviewed, which would then reduce the likelihood of false bans, which in-turn could lead to fewer flashpoints between fans. Also in VALORANT, the current toxicity detection system is only limited to text chat. But with VALORANT encouraging voice chat, the organisers should look to implement a system that can sift through voice communication upon receiving reports.

Valorant has taken measures to increase communication restrictions, queue bans and account suspension of players indulging in such behaviour. Extending this to fans is easier said than done, and given how access is a lot easier in the online world, a foolproof method to keep serial abusers and trolls away hasnt yet been devised.

If any, the awareness around such behaviour and toxicity has led to more players and teams talking about it openly, which has led to them trying to also address such issues, which may have earlier been brushed under the carpet.

In any case, the bottom line is this. Sport has no place for abuse. Trolls will just be trolls. As long methods are devised to weed out such disruptive forces from games, players and teams can breathe easy knowing theyre on the right track. A full-blown process may take time, but just that its coming up for discussion is a massive leap towards weeding out this problem of plenty.

With esports having been mentioned as a possible Olympic sport it was included as a demonstration event at the 2018 Asian Games this crackdown couldnt have come at a better time.

Read more:
Toxicity in Esports is Out of Control - Hotspawn