Podcast Corner: Football shows to get you through Euro 2020
Chris Kamara presents Kammy Supporters Club.
Rory Smith’s column is always essential reading in the Irish Examiner’s Weekend Sport and we’ll always seek him out for his various podcast appearances, from Second Captains to the Anfield Wrap. He’s also one part of the superlative Set Piece Menu podcast, alongside BT Sport commentator Steve Wyeth, BBC Sport’s Hugh Ferris, and Sky Sports pundit Andy Hinchcliffe.
Their repartee is reminiscent of Adam Buxton and Joe Cornish’s BBC 6 Music breakfast show, Adam and Joe - insider jokes and playful prodding abound. They eschew the weekly discourse and tackle more long-standing ideas like the value of trophies, how squads are built, and the arc of players’ careers and what drives them.
Set Piece Menu has been running for almost five years, but despite over 230 episodes to date, it’s easy to jump in to whatever takes your fancy. Because it’s not about the happenings of the weekend results, it’s easy to listen back to the older shows to find out how aforementioned insider jokes came to be.
King of Bantz Chris Kamara hosts a new Desert Island Discs-esque show in which he talks to famous football fans about their favourite songs they associate with their clubs. Kammy’s former Goals on Sunday co-host Ben Shephard, a West Ham fan, is perhaps the perfect first guest as he jabs and goads the host, who considering the content, doesn’t seem to have a particular interest in music - he doesn’t know Britney Spears’ ‘Toxic’ or the Kill Bill theme. So it’s an odd mix, but easy listening nonetheless.
Watching Ian Wright’s rise in the past few years, both as a pundit and a darling of the public’s consciousness, has been heart-warming and welcome. Every Wednesday since last October, he hosts Wrighty’s House as part of the Ringer FC feed. In last week’s Euros preview, which began with unrepentant excitement at the incoming Marvel series Loki, Wright talked about what it’s like in the ITV studio, where he sits alongside former rivals Roy Keane and Patrick Vieira.
“When they sat down, the smile that the both of them had, there’s a bit when it’s really uncomfortable,” he reveals. “You see them not looking each other in the eye for a bit.”
