Podcast Corner: Second Captains mark 10 years in fine style at Olympia
George Hamilton gets the crowd singing along at the Second Captains gig at the Olympia.
Podcast live shows are big business. A couple weeks removed from Cork Podcast Festival, where I’m Grand Mam and Blindboy sold out the Opera House, and My Therapist Ghosted Me doing five (5!) nights at the 3Arena, the sports-focused Second Captains celebrated their 10th anniversary at a long-sold-out Olympia Theatre on Thursday.
Paul Kimmage, their first guest of the evening, says what we’re all thinking: Fair play to the fivesome - Eoin McDevitt, Ciarán Murphy, Ken Early, Simon Hick, and Mark Horgan - for trying something new, and finding a new path when they left Off the Ball and Newstalk in acrimonious circumstances in early 2013.
For the live show, Second Captains sticks to its regular formula: Some light banter, idiosyncratic audio clips and recurring bits (Synth Week finale!), and interviews led by McDevitt.
Regulars Sinead Carroll, Shane Horgan, and Richie Sadlier come out for an old feature of the Second Captains TV show, adding - and subtracting - some names to ‘The Wall’, trying to ascertain the greatest Irish sportspeople of all time.
Not to judge, but Horgan choosing David Clifford seems premature, at best, while Sadlier replacing Paul McGrath with Stephen Cluxton is actually shocking. At least Carroll makes a good call in adding rower Paul O’Donovan to the list of 10.
Kimmage and Graeme Souness are the interviewees on the night, the former predictably combative when McDevitt pushes a Doping v Sportswashing debate, and emotional when talking about his late younger brother Raphael.
Souness, meanwhile, says he also gets emotional when talking about Isla Grist, a teenage girl with a rare skin condition, for whom he completed a charity swim of the Channel recently. He then gives the fans what they want: A couple digs at Manchester United, some titbits about why he left his Sky Sports punditry job (“It wasn’t voluntary”) and his former (unnamed) colleagues whom he dubs the Chuckle Brothers, and how he’s been vindicated for his critical views of Paul Pogba.
He also suggests Alex Ferguson wasn’t best pleased at the midfielder’s return to Old Trafford in 2016, claiming Fergie told Souness: “They never even asked me if I wanted him back.”
With a majority of the audience (which, yes, skews extremely male) likely listening to all of Second Captains’ six episodes a week, there’s simply not enough of the hosts in the live show. For their 10th anniversary celebration, McDevitt, Early, and Murphy should have indulged in a victory lap. They deserve it.
They finish with a bit any listeners might have suspected, as RTÉ commentator George Hamilton comes out to sing a couple songs. He looks like he’s having the time of his life performing the Beatles’ 'I Saw Her Standing There' with the house band, before sending the crowd home happy with Billy Joel’s 'The Piano Man' ringing around. Here's to 10 more years of Second Captains!
