Best GAA Podcasts

GalwayLurker

If the GAA Hour want to keep the following they built up when Parkinson was presenting they have a funny way of going about it, no preview show for this weekend, the penultimate round of the league.

KerryM9

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118809876#Comment_118809876

This is one toxic pile of crap, and no surprise you click with Wooly given the nonsense he comes out with

PeggyShippen

What's 'toxic'about it. Wooly leaves his politics at the door. The boys on Off The Ball don't. They think they speak for 'Ireland' ..It couldn't be further from the truth. Lots of podcasts out there for politics.

Mantis Toboggan

Will sign upto small Fish and Our Game for the championship months.

JustJoe7240

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118812669#Comment_118812669

To be fair about it, that's not really true, a la Conor Meyler and his stance on the LGFA

Large bottle small glass

Some great podcasts on the GAA social, a few with Tyrone lads, Gooch one is great, Graham Geragthy after his illness.

Oisin McConville surprised me, some great questions, a complete sports fanatic, especially GAA.

quidel7

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118812715#Comment_118812715

The Smaller Fish is well worth it. The Sunday night release of a podcast is a great job and gets the jump on all of the other podcasts released Ona Monday afternoon.

Billy Ocean

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118815747#Comment_118815747

Think that's targeting Monday morning commuters too so its smart.

quidel7

Listened to ‘The GAA Hour’ with O’Sullivan and McGee. It was an OK start but they’ve some work to do to to gain traction in the market I’d say.

PTH2009

Anthony Dalys podcast wasn't bad this week. Liam Sheedy on it

So much 'talking down' of certain teams esp Limerick

ATR72

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118809263#Comment_118809263

RTE podcast is fine. Some of your comments here are just vile.

ATR72

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118812669#Comment_118812669

Don't care if he leaves his politics at the door on the podcast. His behavior on Twitter was enough for me. Not to mention dappling in conspiracy theories. His treatment of Tom Parsons when the GPA supported the Green Proposal was disgraceful. Kept shouting over him when he disagreed. Wasn't professional at all.

PeggyShippen

I didnt hear Parkinsons interview with Parsons. I ll take your word for it. When he loses his cool he sounds screechy. I wouldnt accept any of my contributions to be 'vile'. That's just you losing your cool and its wrong for you to go down that route. Focus on the point. Its a genuinely held opinion. That's what this forum is for. Seems like politics is ok in sport for some as long as it follows a certain left wing narrative. If someone's politics isn't woke or progressive or just left wing then their opinion is 'wrong'. So it's better to leave politics at the door. There's no need for it in sport. There's plenty of Conservatives out there who are sick of being preached to by lads on sports podcasts .

ATR72

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118822128#Comment_118822128

Didn't lose my cool. You resorted to insults rather than actual criticism. Stop trying to turn this into a left wing v right issue.

spakman

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118825942#Comment_118825942

He's right though. the lads on OTB would give you a pain in your hole at times. The Djokovic Aussie open thing being a case in point.

Billy Ocean

James O'Donoghue has been a good addition to the football pod.

Mantis Toboggan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118825974#Comment_118825974

Would have to agree with this, they're insufferable at times.

westsidestory

Very entertaining post! Agree on OTB being up it's own hole, the 7 - 7:30 live bit is just mouthy lads rambling on...one lad in particular some boy for yapping.

Wooly being a "humble guy" made me laugh! I subscribe to the Smaller Fish podcast and it's based on him having good guests & analysts, he struggles with basic English at times and his pronouncing any Irish location other than the 32 counties and a few cities is cat altogether - but worth the €6.25/month!

The 1st GAA hour with Darren O'Sullivan was good enough, no harm having a slightly different one with new voices.

The Examiner football and hurling podcasts are very good, Oisin McConville a gas man but bit of a bluffer IMO.

Agree 100% on Rory O'Neill being a hard listen and the tired old RTE approach, do we need to hear any more of Pat Spillane & Co?

Your comments on Verney sound like a personal issue, he's played bit of county and with successful Birr teams so worth listening to I'd say. His accent is genuine midlands, better than most!!

ATR72

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118825974#Comment_118825974

I can agree about the two lads in the morning but they generally have good content and guests on.

ATR72

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118828403#Comment_118828403

I think Verney is good. He'll actually make an effort to look up what is going on in other counties for hurling whereas other podcasts just ignore everything outside the top 10.

Deskjockey

I like Verney as well, think he has a good knack of explaining what's going on, and has a different take on things. Skehill is good also on the off the ball podcast

Billy Ocean

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118831478#Comment_118831478

Skehill and Paul Murphy are good, agree on Verney dont get the poster constantly giving out about him tbh.

Mantis Toboggan

Not a big fan of skehill, was hard enough watch him on gogglebox.

PeggyShippen

It's becoming a crowded field now. Alot of people are trying to make money. I think 'smaller fish ' will survive . Its got a good structure . The OTB and RTE and Independent.ie and Irish examiner will survive . The Irish Times is poor outside of Sean Moran .They sometimes have hurling articles under a Gaelic Football heading. It's those small things that annoy people. Maybe I'm over critical of some journalists but Irish journalists and in particular GAA journalists never get criticised enough. It's too parochial.

callaway92

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118833034#Comment_118833034

and that's not even taking into account the 'fan' podcasts/Youtube channels etc.

It's very saturated, but like most things, when something gets popular, everyone wants to try it. Ideally, something different would be a Twitch stream or something but footage rights and all can kill those.

I still think a data driven podcast would be beneficial to get away from the usual 'arrah they didn't turn up on the day' type stuff, but there's no real interest in that from the usual shows (have reached out to a few of them with the product the company I'm with does)

Mantis Toboggan

When you say data, what types are you talking about?

callaway92

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118833415#Comment_118833415

Performance Data - For teams: Productivity, Scoring Efficiency, Fouls in Defensive/Middle Third, Turnovers, Puckout Retention Rate/Lineball Retention Rate/Placed Ball (non-shot) Retention Rate. I get that without visuals, some stuff can't be explained fully (ie shot locations), but there is still a good story that can be told rather than: 'Tipp had 15 wides. That's not good enough to win any game'...and not have the context behind it. Who took the shot, where they took it from, scoreline when it was taken etc

Player data (rather than team data) then would be the specifics - Pass success rate, turnovers per player (how they were turned over), possessions per player, Intensity events (block attempts, hook attempts, tackle attempts). Fouls won/conceded per player. Opponent take-ons

I think that having that data on the shows etc. can give a better story of a match rather than the usual stuff we see everywhere. Who'd be into it is another thing, but at least it would be a USP compared to all shows doing the same thing (giving their own thoughts on a match)

Having trends build up over weeks can be interesting where you can really spot some interesting stuff compared to one-off matches

That's my own thoughts though

Mantis Toboggan

I'm surprised that the TV coverage channels like Sky, RTE and TG4 wouldn't be interested in some of that. Probably alot of time needed to make sense of the numbers.

I'd imagine the teams themselves would be recording alot of that already.

callaway92

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118834481#Comment_118834481

TG4 in fairness have increased their live data recently in some testing.

Spoke to RTE before (over a year ago so opinion might have changed now) and they didn’t want it as it didn’t appeal to a casual fan.

You’d be surprised at how basic some teams own analysis is, hence why so many use external providers now because with that they’d get opposition matches too, rather than their own guy or freelancer doing their game with his/her own definitions etc.

Like other sports (soccer, rugby, basketball etc), a small bit of live analysis themselves is fine, but in all major sports, teams are now using external providers. This allows their analyst to analyse the data rather than recording, coding and then transcribing

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118834692#Comment_118834692

Excuse my ignorance here, but how is the data typically acquired by a inter-county team ? Either they do it themselves or get an external company? Does this mean that of those that do use an external company, the company used may differ from team to team and as a result the type of data acquired may differ with each team? I assume then that there is no centralised provider of the data/analysis.

The reason I ask is that it would be great if individual player data aggregated to a championship/year/years etc. could be made available to supporters for analysing performance over time, comparing with other players etc.

callaway92

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118835408#Comment_118835408

Up to the team really. Some teams still do their own analysis (which is fine)

They’d be using a coding software then like NacSport or something and then either just either take the main data points away (scores/scorers) and accumulate them or else use it properly for video analysis (coded events = clips for them)

There is currently no official data provider to the GAA, so everyone would therefore have their own definitions of what is a tackle etc. Difference there compared to Premier League for example is they use Opta data. Google also use Opta data for soccer as do most teams. The ideal thing about this is the data is consistent everywhere.

Ya you’re right about different companies/freelancers. If person A and person B coded a match this weekend, they would almost certainly have a different tackle/turnover count.

Agree on the need for something like you’ve mentioned. It’s obviously too much work for one website to take up, but a proper data provider selling it to numerous media outlets etc (ie having the data on their API) would be the ideal scenario for the average person.

There’s so many sources for soccer now (ie sofascore, transfermarkt) and the majority of them use Opta data. There’s nothing decent in GAA currently. There are analysis companies (generally most are useless but I won’t make them) but no data providers

grbear

The new GAA Hour is definitely drier than it was under Parkinson but I think it's good that they went in a different direction. No point doing a Chris Evans Top Gear and trying to reproduce what went before you. I think a more pared back intro would suit the show a bit better, current one is a bit drawn out.

Mantis Toboggan

Is the GAA hour going to even cover hurling or are they half arseing it?

C4000

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118842013#Comment_118842013

I'd say they might be short on funding. Parkinson had mentioned that they were planning to go to a subscription model before he left as they hadn't had a sponsor in two years.

jeff bingham

Would love to see Tommy Walsh do something, i know he does bits and pieces on OTB but could listen to him talk hurling all day long.

Mantis Toboggan

Signed up with Our Game and Small Fish for the championship months.

PeggyShippen

Tommy Walsh is a top class pundit. Id like to see him on smaller fish.

I think people should support the likes of Woolie all year around and not just the championship months. The guy has to live all year

spakman

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118866622#Comment_118866622

Then he has to get creative. People aren't obliged to pay him if there's no content or they're not interested in the content he releases.

ATR72

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118866622#Comment_118866622

Then he should get another job. That's what the other GAA pundits do.

PeggyShippen

I think Woolie offers enough output in the busy months for people to support him all year. Why are people so tight? Its 6 or 7 quid a month. I wouldnt dream of just signing uk for a few months and then cancelling. It's an individuals decision. I get that but these are the same type of people that don't tip at restaurants or get the calculator out on their phone dividing up bills. Can't stand em

GoldFour4

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118869616#Comment_118869616

I probably won’t bother cancelling in quiet months but I think you’re being unfair there.

If Wooly isn’t providing a good output in the winter then people should have no obligation to keep paying. It’s completely different to not tipping at a restaurant (ie when you’ve already been provided with a nice mail).

For the record I’m sure he’s thought of this and has shows in mind.

PeggyShippen

Yeah I think he has a plan for the winter but it certainly won't be as good as now. Yeah im being a bit unfair. I was out for dinner with work on Thursday. My God paying for it was a disaster. Phones out ...'you had this ,oh i had that' fine but round up . And no one tipped..sorry 2 of us did. There was 2 men out of 7....Who Tipped.??

Mantis Toboggan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118869616#Comment_118869616

Plenty of online content apart from woolie and they all need to live as you said, have you subscribed to those ones also?

PeggyShippen

No I subscribe to the Irish examiner for Dalys podcast and a rugby podcast ,being from Limerick. And a few regular podcasts from the US like 'get off my Lawn'.

ATR72

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118869898#Comment_118869898

Then don't criticise people who choose not to subscribe when there's no intercounty on. I'll stick with local media for club championships.

keeponhurling

Our Game read out user comments a lot, more then the others.

In a way it’s the easiest thing for a presenter, just reading stuff out, but I think it works very well. Often the listeners raise great points.

C4000

Excellent county-by-county championship previews on Our Game this week......format worked very well.

Mantis Toboggan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118908162#Comment_118908162

Agreed, fantastic detail.

Billy Ocean

Rory O'Neill kicking the boot into the split season before its even started on the RTE podcast stinks of self interest.

PARlance

Got a good laugh reading the OTB comments there. Have to agree, and I've more or less crossed them off my list for the last year and a bit.

Threw them on a few weeks ago and they were talking rugby. I'm convinced that Joe thinks his analysis plays a vital role in the outcome of upcoming matches... If. He. Can. Just. put together an incredible and thought provoking analysis, it'll be key to unlocking the oppositions defence or getting our backs to play with freedom.

Serious doses all around in the Tower.