Newstalk: Off The Ball

I wonder were the OTB lads watching the documentary on RTE last night about the Olympic athletes. Specifically when they followed Kellie Harrington in the aftermath of the ambush on OTB. She spoke of the mental health issues she suffered after that interview, how she withdrew in herself and reached a very low point.

Ive been thinking about that Kellie Harrington interview the last while with the pending Olympics - Kellie was media friendly for the previous Olympics, doing loads of interviews. So what will OTB do - will she do another interview with them on the Olympics?

Also was she treated unfairly? She was on to talk about her sponsorship deal with Spar at the time, to promote what Spar were doing in the community (can't remember all the details)

But Shane was probing her regarding her tweet (it wasn't X yet) - should he? Would any of the other interviewers had done the same, how would Joe have dealt with her insisting she didn't want to discuss it.

As OTB talk a lot about mental health etc - should they address this, either with or without Kellie's input?

Can they be all about mental health & discussing all things in it & then ignore the fact that the interview on their show caused Kellie such turmoil?

Or is this Kellie's fault - she tweeted it & should be able to take it

I don't have answers but wonder what others think - is it all OTBs fault? And what should they now do, leave it?

personally I think it was a cheap shot by them. The interview was set up as a fluff piece about the community @ spar. Dropping that in and pushing it over and over, then doing the rounds defending yourself on the network.

Everyones entitled to their opinion on it but I'll always think of it as a cheap shot for easy controversy / publicity from OTB

And did the fella who asked the question stand over his sexist, racist and anti disability posts?

https://www.independent.ie/podcasts/joe-molloy-joins-the-irish-independent-to-present-new-daily-sports-podcast/a361331281.html

Wonder will this effect his Off the ball commitments.

I called this in a post recently. He has come across as increasingly disinterested which is unusual for him as he was by far the most talented member of the staff.

Kind of feels like OTB is dying. The gamble to go subscription model by Ger has backfired.

Stick a fork in it. Was a good run.

Disastrous for the show. He is a vastly superior presenter than anyone else there, and one of the main reasons I tune in. He did seem to be on less and less recently.

Disaster for OTB, be like Kerry losing the Clifford's to Aussie Rules. Not surprising though when you factor in his work with Virgin Media and a young family, I'd say it's a long slog roughly 1-10 for the lads working on the evening show.

Big loss to OTB. Hopefully the new pod with the Indo will be free when it launches (I assume it will?)

I did say a while ago that I reckoned Joe Molloy would eventually go solo and do his own stuff. He is by a country mile their best presenter and a huge loss to Off The Ball. Only himself and Will O'Callaghan are real "presenters" in my view. The rest are the sort of lads who would be selling wellies at the Ploughing Championships.

With a young family being away every evening must be very tough so no surprise this has happened.

His ambitions surely extend beyond Off The Ball and sports chatter in general so this is probably his first sojourn onto more mainstream radio. The likes of Pat Kenny will be retiring in a few years so there's loads of opportunities out there. He did well on The Hard Shoulder lately and quite frankly he is too good for a 7-10pm slot when numbers are probably small compared to many other shows.

I remember someone sent me this exact message when the Second Captains left.

I'd imagine it will like the rugby and GAA pods they already have.

Hopefully!

But how do podcasts without a paywall get by ?

Surely they either need subscription money or need to play a lot of ads. Is there another option ? Like would the Indo do them as publicity for the newspaper or something

Sponsorship, ads or else the podcast itself is used to drive traffic to the paper.

Joe will be massive loss

He is very good