Newstalk: Off The Ball

Agree with this! Was only reminiscing about Premier Soccer Saturday with a friend the other day, great show.

Even though Premier League Saturday only finished-up a few years ago, I guess the Premier League was slightly less ubiquitous then compared to now, and we didn't have as much content/coverage. Also, for me, I just find the Premier League less interesting in general now, very few characters, clubs have lost identities, etc. I think that all feeds in to my indifference towards OTB sunday commentary.

Ya I've found myself watching a few LoI games lately, not bad at all.

Also, a Leeds fan for the record! We're maybe even more despondent that Man U fans..

Leeds fan here, as well. There’s, certainly, been highs and lows but that’s all part of it. Last season was tough.

Still, the Championship is a decent slog. You do get some good games. I’ve been keeping an eye on Plymouth a bit, as well. They’ve never been in the “top flight”.

League of Ireland soccer has come on leaps and bounds, the added European tier has helped. I do have a fear that if the new owner of United manages to turn things around and the club start winning again the ex-fans will flock back as if nothing had happened.

Would be great if ‘Off the Ball’ covered more games but you’d have to wonder is there an audience for it for fans who don’t follow the teams playing? Having reporters at the grounds giving detailed updates and goal descriptions during the show is something everyone could get behind.

Lads, I don't know about you but I'd have no interest in listening to 90+ minutes of a commentary of any match. I think live commentary is yesterday's game in general.

If people care enough about the match, they'll see it for the most part.

The problem with Friday is it is a pure dead zone on the radio. Nobody who can do anything else is listening to OTB on a Friday, which is why the likes of racing is covered then - because nobody is listening.

On another note, Richie is no longer going to be doing The Newsround, so those who have been perpetually angry at his mic since Covid times will need to find a new issue to rant about……(I'm sure it won't take long to find it).

Phew, that "find a new issue to rant about" took even less time than I expected! Kudos……

Ya Eoin is decent to be fair. Definitely the best of the rest and far superior to some of the other alternatives who I'm happy didn't get the main gig, i.e. Richie and Shane Hannon

Champions League night and OTB doing deep dives on Kerry Ladies GAA boardroom politics. Are they trying to go out of business?

Why do you hate women's sport so much?

Yes, the fact that it was saturday was a big help, especially in the darker winter months, you could dip in and out as they had the previews from 2-3 and the after match call in from 5-6. Also TodayFM in general was a much better radio station then, there would be a decent music show on at 6 (although PLL ran for almost 20 years so there would have been a variety of shows at 6 in that time). They tried to keep it going with Saturday kicks but eventually just abandoned those interested in sport for more of the same stuff from 7-7. At least we have 2 nights of block rockin beats now.

I wonder if it was also down to the commentors who were excellent - Ron Jones did the last one as far as I recall, and a few still pop up on RTE/Newstalk doing "around the grounds" snippets.

Joe’s new podcast at Irish Independent is pretty good and it’s free, at least for now. He talks about similar topics and similar guests as at OTB, just transplanted to another station. A seamless transition for him.

He also does a version of Slight Tangent called “Bits and bobs”, whereas it appears OTB have binned Slight Tangent.

I cancelled my €10 per month subscription to OTB. I might sign up again in future but want to see how I get on with only free stuff for a while.

And yeah, the constant pushing of the cash machine is starting to annoy me. One of the perks of paying the subscription is supposed to be no ads, but I just see cash machine as an ad within the show.

Might not need to go behind a paywall. The point of newspapers having podcasts is twofold - attract money from ads/sponsorships in the pods themselves, but also to drive readership on their website and get subscriptions there. So if they can take in enough money from ads and can see an uptick in people reading the Indo online, might be good enough to keep it free.

Apart from Joe & Ronan Mullen (not that one), everyone else is already working for the Indo anyway, so it's not going to cost them massive money to run the thing…