Donnacha O'Callaghan and Tommy Bowe on retirement and embracing vulnerability

As Donncha O’Callaghan and Tommy Bowe bring their podcast The Offload on the road, they chat to Colin Sheridan about resisting the safest post-retirement path, bringing 'the craic' back to rugby punditry and learning to embrace vulnerability

Tommy Bowe, Television presenter and former professional rugby player

Tommy Bowe is on a journey. Not a metaphorical one. He is in a car, somewhere between his work as presenter of Ireland AM, and home, where he is a husband and a dad. We spend the early exchanges apologising for each other’s connection, but Bowe is relaxed and unperturbed by the things he can’t control: the weather, the bounce of a ball, the camera angle that catches you blinking at precisely the wrong moment. The conversation begins with the small chaos of modern life — microphones echoing, Zoom links misbehaving — and that, in a way, is the point.

Because The Offload — the hit podcast Bowe shares with Donncha O’Callaghan, now touring as a live stage show and soon to be in Cork — is built on the premise that polished isn’t the same as honest. And honesty, as both men have learned the hard way, is rarely tidy.