The Second Captains Podcast

Eoin is very anxious to tell people that Ireland are going to win handsomely in France this weekend… but he’s having trouble finding anyone with an alternative view to try and convince. All this confidence is good, right? Former Ireland players Reggie Corrigan and Victor Costello are in studio to tell us if we’ve anything to worry about. And in a week where ‘sure things’ are always at a premium, w...

Eoin McDevitt has had a few sleepless nights since O'Driscoll Day, and the only cure is a Six Nations Championship. He talks to Gerry Thornley and Matt Williams about the emotional recovery, creative development under Schmidt, and why France's performances up to now can be ignored. Keith Duggan met and interviewed one of the most interesting men in football, Kerry manager Eamon Fitzmaurice. We tal...

Joe Schmidt has only made one change to his starting XV. We ask Shane Horgan and Bernard Jackman about conservatism, Sexton's form, and what is an acceptable result for Ireland. Managers not having any say over what players their club signs is a growing issue in English football. We talk to Brian Murphy about what has long been an accepted practice in American sport. Office politics, cheap pants,...

It’s a points party and everyone’s invited in the National Football League so far this year, with scoring totals up and open football the order of the day. Is this all the black card’s doing? We ask Anthony Moyles for the defender’s take. Rory McIlroy is back competing for tournaments, but the manner of his meltdown at the Honda Classic last night raises questions about his winning temperament. An...

The NFL Combine is a little like the old TV show ‘Superstars’, where young college American football players perform a series of rigorous calisthenics for the benefit of professional teams seeking to draft them – US Murph tells us about one of the dafter parts of American sporting life. Formula One is an almost exclusively male environment, and author and former ITV pitlane reporter Beverly Turner...

Ireland are still alive, and we’re still fightin’ for this title, as Kevin Keegan would say. We accentuate the positives from our heart-breaking 3 point loss to England with Shane Horgan and Gerry Thornley. Malachy Clerkin was at the Sochi Winter Olympics, and his walk to the Irish Times this morning was the coldest he’s been since he left Dublin. We ask him if it should ever have been given to So...

Eoin, Ken and Murph discuss sycophantic rugby players, the misery of being a sub in bad weather, the death of the granny rule and yokelish Irish fans. We ask Bernard Jackman and Trevor Hogan if England's plan for a long march to Twickenham could backfire, and ask them exactly what Joe Schmidt is scheming up for what the Irish coach describes as his greatest challenge yet. We also have Martin O'Nei...

The world of hurling celebrated Kilkenny’s demise last summer as the end of an era – so why are they favourites for this year’s All-Ireland title? Their 1 point defeat to Clare in the opening round of the league gave us some indication of where they are for 2014. England tight-head prop Dan Cole has been ruled out through injury – former England out-half Paul Grayson surveys the damage that could...

Ireland are the reigning Women's Six Nations Grand Slam champions, and they realise the time is now if they want to grow the popularity of their sport. Their most capped player, Lynne Cantwell talks to us about success on and off the field of play. US Murph on the first gay player to declare himself for the NFL draft, and Malachy Clerkin is in Sochi, for the warmest Winter Olympics in history. Ken...

On Second Captains this week – Gerry Thornley, Malcolm O’Kelly and Liam Toland on Ireland’s 26-3 win over Wales and managing expectations before Twickenham in 2 weeks time. Colin Jackson held a world record for 13 years but never won Olympic gold – he tells us about the pressure of delivering at an Olympics, winter or summer. And we have the solid work of Peter O’Mahony’s PR entourage, the second-...

The Welsh players have been told by Gatland this week to strut around Europe like the champions they are. We ask Welsh legend Jonathan Davies if this suits the Welsh psyche, and we talk to former Ireland coach Eddie O'Sullivan about the D'arcy O'Driscoll axis, and the departure of Rob Penney. The Irish Times' Malachy Clerkin is in Sochi for the Winter Olympics so we talk to our journalistic comrad...

After assessing whether we're tougher than Paul O'Connell we launch straight into Six Nations chat with Shane Horgan and Denis Hickie, asking them if the Scottish game was any sort of a barometer for the Wales game. Paul Galvin has retired from inter-county football, and with him goes another link to the great Kerry team of the last decade. Darragh O Se tells us about his former team-mate, and pas...

On the eve of the Six Nations, we speak to Ronan O'Gara, the top points-scorer in the tournament's history about documentaries, life in Paris, and a first Spring without international rugby. The Superbowl is a ridiculous affair, but we love it. US Murph is covering it from the madness of 'Radio Row' in NYC, while Jerry Izenberg, 14-time Pulitzer Prize nominee and a giant in American sportswriting,...

The week before the 6 Nations might be the most enjoyable week of the entire tournament – before your team starts losing, and before you remember that for all the pageantry, and all the brilliant occasions, the rugby can sometimes be pretty soporific. Shane Horgan and Gerry Thornley are optimistic about Ireland’s chances of sustaining our interest right to the end, and injured lock Donnacha Ryan t...

Manchester United fans have had to experience some pretty low moments this season – we discuss where Phil Jones' purposeful stride towards the penalty spot ranks in the pantheon. After two biting incidents in a year, have Dublin now got an image problem, and with their big sponsorship deals, is there now more pressure on them to keep high standards. Another fan-base discovering that sport can be a...

Cheating in real life really pays off – so why are we so hard on golfers who step on the wrong side of a totally pointless white line? Rory McIlroy saw red last weekend, fouling foul of one of the sport’s more technical rules – Malachy Clerkin of the Irish Times joins us. It could be argued that the relative strengths of Munster, Ulster and Leinster have never been more closely matched – and the i...

A very cosmopolitan edition of Second Captains today – as we traverse the globe from San Francisco, to Sydney and back to New York in search of sporting drama. Is the Australian Open, at the height of the Antipodean summer, now almost an unplayable event? Tennis players have been suffering in the Melbourne heat, our man in Oz Matt Williams tells us how extreme temperatures are a part of Aussie lif...

Leinster, Munster and Ulster are all shaping up well in the Heineken Cup, but have they progressed, and which one of the three is best equipped to go the whole way from here? The Irish Times’ Gerry Thornley and 2-time Heineken Cup winner Shane Horgan cast an optimistic look ahead to Round 6 of the pool stages… and the quarter-finals. Vitali Klitschko was one of the most dominant world heavyweight...

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 watc...

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...

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...

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 sm...

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...

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...

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 Jor...