The Second Captains Podcast

Should your out-half be the first name on your team-sheet, or does healthy competition in the most important position on the field actually help your team? Shane Horgan and Neil Francis tell us who they think will be first choice in the long term, and why so many outhalves are obsessives. US Murph joins us to talk about the NFL playoffs, the lonely life of a kicker, and we outline how you can watch 26 hours of sport this weekend, if that’s your thing. And we find time to talk about Ric Flair, Victor Hugo, Napoleon, lucky generals, and all the myriad ways you can look forward to a Winter Olympics. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We refuse to be affected by the January blues, so it’s the Love Edition of Second Captains @ The Irish Times as we speak to two young men embarking on their dream coaching jobs.Oisin McConville is now joint-manager of the Crossmaglen team he starred in for 20 years, and Bernard Jackman’s meteoric rise through the ranks of French Top 14 rugby continues, with his appointment from the start of next season as Grenoble head coach. In the interests of journalistic balance, we also discuss David Moyes and how getting his dream job is working out for him. All that plus quitting your job, husky McDevitt, black cards, insulting the ghost of our GAA fore-fathers, and Michael J Fox. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the first Second Captains of 2014, Eoin and Ken react to the news that Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has been confirmed as Cardiff City manager. Will he and Vincent Tan form an unlikely dream team and was he the Smithers to Alex Ferguson's Monty Burns?Shane Horgan and Eddie O'Sullivan believe we need to prepare ourselves for more transfers out of Ireland and that the IRFU should have a plan B in place with the future of Celtic League currently on unsteady ground.Plus tributes to Uncle Phil, Murph's Second Captains suspension, Shredder, and Spurs festive rampage.Download it here, follow the lads on twitter @SecondCaptains and on facebook.com/secondcaptains. Email the show at secondcaptains@irishtimes.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Eoin and Murph perform a small fireworks show in studio and share an emotional embrace before wading in to their favourite moments of the year with Derval O'Rourke and Malachy Clerkin.Derval experienced the European indoors as an enthused athlete and a member of a fickle media pack, and explains the difference between male and female attitudes to mental preparation. Malachy Clerkin talks about small county celebrations, and the joy of watching Colm Cooper take on the Dublin football team. All this plus Murph explains why, for the ninth year in a row, he chose the All-Ireland hurling final as his sporting highlight, why Nicky English is hurling's soothsayer, savouring BOD, McDevitt's Murray amnesia, Lance drama, and learning to love Ireland New Zealand. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We've headed off together on our clydesdales to our Second Captains rural retreat, as we do every year. Normally its just the five of us, but this year Mariah Carey joins the gang around an open fire to discuss Vincent Browne, Pierse Brosnan, Kevin Pietersen and our favourite Lansdowne Road moments. We also have one of our best interviews of the year, Eamon Dunphy on the history of Ireland-England games, and we end the sports pudding with a very special Second Captains audio gift - Ken Early sings out the show... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

To tie in with today's Irish Times Sports Woman of the Year awards we're releasing a special edition of the show, which includes an interview with the legendary Rosemary Smith, winner of this year's Lifetime Achievement Award, and Melissa Ludtke, an American journalist who changed things for all that followed in her path.Rosemary joins Eoin and Murph in studio to discuss how she went from being a dress designer in Ireland to competing with and beating the world's best male rally drivers, what attitudes pervaded at the time, and the incredible story of how she survived land slides, bandits and cactus flies in a race from London to Mexico.Melissa Ludtke was one of the first female sports journalists in America. She explains how tough it was to make it in the industry, and why she had to take a law suit against the commissioner of Major league Baseball to ensure she could do her job. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ireland in the November Series, Ireland in RWC 2011, Leinster and Northampton and Toulouse in recent weeks - how can teams' performances fluctuate so much from week to week - we try and figure out if rugby is more susceptible than most sports to ridiculous turnarounds with Eddie O'Sullivan and Emmett Byrne... and whether Munster showed us something new this weekend. Last week a pair of Michael Jordan's basekball shoes sold for over 100,000 dollars. We ask Brian Murphy about the US phenomenon of sports memorabilia and why the Flu Game in the 1997 NBA finals further burnished the Jordan legend. Ken hates SPOTY, autographs are pointless, grown men shouldn't fight 10 year olds, Millennium 50p coins and other nonsense all included. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Two clean sweeps in a row for the Irish provinces in the Heineken Cup - can we take all the credit or have the English clubs sub-consciously filed out of this year’s competition already… Shane Horgan, Trevor Hogan and an England Grand Slam winner tell us what we can expect this weekend. Thermo-nuclear war appears to be the only thing that will stop an NFL match – as a couple of snow-addled games on the East Coast showed last week. We go back to the NFL championship game played in wind chill conditions of -40 degrees with US Murph. Plus we have Ken’s thoughts on Connemara vs Kerry in the ‘rugged, unspoilt beauty stakes, some unbelievably bullish rugby predictions, God narrator, and the really famous Christmas movie we’ve never heard of. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The festive season is a time for giving… and most of the time, the giving usually includes some pretty lacklustre sports books. So we have taken it upon ourselves to draw up a list of the very best books of this year, and of all time, to guide you through the season.We have enlisted some high quality help – Keith Duggan (author of the Lifelong Season and House of Pain) and Donald McRae, two time William Hill Sports Book of the Year award winner - tell us about what they look for in a great sports book, and what it takes to write one. And the learned Malachy Clerkin of the Irish Times is on hand to help us pick our top 5 books of the year… and the one to avoid like the plague.All this plus why bombast and arrogance makes for a great autobiography, the slow emergence of the inner Dunphy, how Gorgeous George begat Ali who begat Zlatan and why its therefore important to 'always be outrageous'. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We ask Shane Horgan and Liam Toland should a proposed extension to Rob Penney's contract be judged on the two Perpignan games. Meanwhile Matt Connor faces his biggest challenge to date away to Northampton, and we debate what changes he has made since the Schmidt era. An entire sport turning a blind eye to cheating is something we’ve sadly grown used to over the last decade or so, but has the multi-million dollar horse-racing industry got the will or the want to change its ways after recent scandals. Plus there’s watching Match of the Day without knowing the scores, Chekov's gun, a very special mile high mascot-based PBESO, apologetic managers and Tony the chimp. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.