Newstalk: Off The Ball

Sport impacts, and is impacted by all of these in some way or another (well the Vaccine, covid and racism anyway that is. The virtue signaling and self hatred only exists in the mind of some of the listeners).

Any show discussing sports events without reference to items which are relevant to them is only giving half the picture.

Some people are.

But the issue I have with that is that in relation to this thread it just starts and ends with the complaint. I don't understand why topics like that which are discussed on the show cannot be discussed on this or other threads in the context of how they are impacting or should or shouldn't impact sport. But, certainly on this thread, we never get any discussion/debate about the topic really, just condemnation for them having discussed it or held a particular view on it.

Covid/Vaccines/racism are high interest topics the likes of which often have their own threads, but specific conversation about them in relation to sport generally gets lost in the bigger conversation and so there doesn't really end up being any debate about the topic focused in relation to sport.

OTB frequently get contributors on who are well worth listening to or the topics is worth discussing, and we don't see a conversation arising out of that on here, they're generally not mentioned at all, but we had several posts about a tennis contributor focused only on her having the nerve to dislike Djokovic.

Guests and presenters always drive the narrative. It's the same on Monday night Football on Sky, TalkSport Radio and Second Captains. If Wooly was still on OTB and had said that he though Djpokovic should be let play and everyone should mind their own business, would you be annoyed if he expressed such an opinion.

This whole paragraph is just you presuming to know Joe's motivation for saying something that he didn't actually say.

The reality is that the amount of evidence with respect to athletics and the Olympics is very much that if someone comes out of nowhere, they are more likely to be doing something illegal than not. Jamie Vardy is not really a fair comparison given the raw talent in football is not limited to fitness/aerobic capacity/stamina as much as it is in athletics or swimming for example. We have our own evidence of that from the 96 Olympics.

Even if you look at Jamie Vardy, and as you rightly pointed out, he came from nowhere (to some degree) But he's a pretty isolated case is he not, the amount of footballers like him who go from non-League to Premiership winners medal and top scorer are very very rare. Would it be fair to give equal weight to the likelihood of that happening elsewhere when it is so very rare?

That's exactly what I expected.

You guys, well definitely you, don't have an issue with people having or expressing an opinion.

Your issue is that their opinion is different to yours.

When you don't agree with it, you call it a woke agenda and virtue signaling, when you do it's someone finally not being politicallycorrect, and just calling it as they see it.

The interesting thing with this approach you take, going on social media saying they should just stick to sports and stop with that other stuff, is that because you only do it when they have an opinion you don't like. What you're doing is the definition of cancel culture. But I'm willing to bet you definitely don't see it that way and cancel culture is only something people losers on the left do.

When Woolys giving an opinion, he's way more set in stone and agenda driven than any of the OTB staff, compare Twitter accounts for example, In fact so much so that I finally muted him on there. But his message is one you agree with, isn't it? I suppose I could have just gone on Boards every day and complained about this person having an opinion I don't agree with and yet choose to keep hearing, but probably then would be called permanently outraged, and a snowflake, wouldn't I?

Lol.

Been reading you here for too long to buy that line.

think you zigged when you should have zagged

The last Sunday paper review never came up on iTunes? Any other ways to hear it?

Ugh! Anyone else listening to this “piece” on, 1 day, England cricket captain, Eoin Morgan, saying he feels more English than Irish?

Why can’t they just stick to just talking about events on the pitch and reading out scores? More WOKE (all caps) bullplop. BullPLOP!!

Women contributors are bashed for apparently knowing too little, male for appearing like they know too much....

There's no pleasing some people.

Bizarre response.

Am I not allowed to criticise the show? I suppose it caters to a certain audience to an extent - the ‘pub chat’ audience. But I’m not going to get anything in depth from it.

I'm not upset, I'm just pointing out that there's never any shortage of complaints about the show. That has always intrigued me.

Maybe if you hadn't switched off you'd have heard the piece about the olympics and enjoyed it.

Show ended at 5pm. I gave it two hours in my defence.

Seriously?

You got 2 hours out of the show and then come on here painting the picture that you had to switch off immediately.

That's why all this complaining annoys me. What is it that motivates people so much to focus on the negative?

There should be 2 threads, one for moaning, one for discussing the show and it's content.

Best suggestion I've seen in a long time.