Indo Sport
Bits & Bobs | St Patrick's Day plans | Will's brand blunder | Chelsea's huddle nonsense
17 Mar 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is an Irish Independent Podcast. Welcome, everyone. Happy St. Patrick's Day. We are coming at you... Sorry, I don't even know what I'm saying. I'll keep running.
Chapter 2: What are the St. Patrick's Day plans discussed in the episode?
Will, hi. Are we really going to go with that? It's fine. Lala Padraic. And Conor, hello. We're recording on a Monday for Tuesday, so I just got my wires crossed. I didn't know where I was going. Welcome on a Monday for you on a Tuesday... It's a mess. It's usually, you can say a pre-candidation, but this is too early in the week for that.
So yesterday, today for us, you would have heard rugby and we're recording Bits and Bobs to go out on Tuesday. Will has this weird thing of like, we have to put out a show every weekday. It's like a streak. It's like when someone comes off the bench for one minute just to preserve this kind of appearance streak or something like that.
We technically could have put this out on Monday afternoon and had nothing on Tuesday, but that just didn't feel right. Christmas Day is the only day we take off. The United have had match day squads with an academy player for, 20-something years, is it? This is our very podcast. Rugby, like I said yesterday, Rob Carney saved the day.
Ian Madigan had to cry off late and Rob came in and was brilliant alongside Rory O'Connor. Lots of emails in on the rugby about different things. Dr. Jim says, we are back. We are back. Sincerely, Crushers on Crowley. We're back, Will. Do you agree? I'm very surprised at the extent to which I do feel very positive about things, yes. It's a doom and gloom post-Paris.
Infamously, you were very steadfast in your refusal. Farrell out, I think. No, that was one thing I was never thinking. Farrell was always in. It was just I thought he had a job of work to do. Everyone was a bit worried then. It was looking incredibly stale off November, so... Yeah, I'm a little bit surprised about the upturn. You?
My only two notes of caution about this were back, because undoubtedly the team played a lot better in the back half of the Six Nations. New players came in and there's definitely a sense of positivity, but still haven't beaten New Zealand, France, South Africa in quite some time.
So I'll be fascinated to see this summer when they play the All Blacks in Eden Park, this November when they play South Africa, how they match up with them. They definitely seem to be firmly in that top four, but we still don't know how they match up with the very, very best. Yeah. No, agreed.
Hi Joe, disappointed you jumped on the Murray bandwagon, even though you spent all day with Conor Murray. What did he make of it? I say Conor Murray's thinking what's happened here. I didn't know about this until somebody said it to me the other day. Murray? Yeah. And like that's been checked out. That's the way they... Oh yeah. That's how they say it in Roscommon.
I must tell all the Murrays that don't. How do we feel about like...
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Chapter 3: What are the insights on the Six Nations finale and Ireland's victory?
Like against Aston Villa. a couple of weeks ago, which is when the original athletic piece was written. That really annoyed Villa because they don't just do it at the start of the game. They do it at the start of each half. That's the stupidity. And Villa were 2-1 down, half time. They get back out there. They're ready to go. Chelsea are doing a huddle around the ball and it's like Villa's tip.
Chapter 4: How did Will's premature tweet impact the Six Nations conversation?
Like Ollie Watkins is like tearing his hair out to the referee going, what? Why is this? They did it against Wrexham. They're getting booed now when they do it all the time. Lemur Sr. was giving out an Arsenal game because he said one of the coaching staff there had disrespected the team by encroaching Chelsea at their halftime huddle. I'm pretty ambivalent about Premier League managers.
Glenn Messina very quickly is top of my list or close to top of the sports people that you come across that you just think are absolute gobshites. Like everything that he does now is utterly performative. I saw that night against Arsenal in the Carabao Cup. where he was making a big song and dance.
And I saw a video of him the other night roaring and shouting at a Chelsea fan in the crowd, looking like he was trying to act a hard man on the line. And what's worse than that is his performative press conferences where, you know, his goalkeeper throws four into the net and he starts saying, you know, this is on me, this is on me. You know, this whole... Everything he does is so...
And this thing of he wants to talk to the PJMOL because the referee happened to be in the middle of this ridiculous huddle. It just goes to show you... Yeah, so it's not that they're having a huddle, obviously... Both halves. It's that they're insisting on doing it around the football. And the referee, Paul Tierney... By the way, they lost this game, we should say, for all their huddling.
Their record since they started doing this in Napoli has been terrible. Like, it's the worst superstition ever. If they were on a run of... And they haven't been beaten since they started this. Yeah, it's not some lengthy unbeaten run. No, their record at the moment is so bang average. So Paul Tierney is standing by the football, ready to go. And Chelsea players want to stand around the football.
And so Tierney doesn't move. And the team go around him. Initially, Cole Palmer gives him a hug. And then Cole Palmer, instead of listening to what Cucurella is saying, is just looking at Tierney, knowing that this is a viral moment. You know, he's had a taste of this with Donald Trump. I think he's like, I know how the world works. This is going to be a meme.
This is the way I think it's working in Cole Palmer's head. But look at Paul Tierney. I challenge anyone to watch it again. Initially, when the Chelsea players gather around Paul Tierney, there's a smile. Because he knows, you know, Mark Clattenburg style, he's going to be on the podcast circuit for 10 years. Or he's going to have a book to write and he's going to be like, lovely.
That'll be a great story. You know the way they, they're the worst. Referees are the worst when they do podcast interviews and every interaction, you know. And I told Klopp, maybe if your team played better, you know, all this nonsense. So Tierney smiles initially and then senses the camera coming on him and goes deadpan, like serious face. Yeah. They're all, it's all just, it's silliness.
I'm with Conor though. Liam Rossini is the person to blame here. From the moment I saw that aging men clip and we played it before he even took charge of a game, I just knew he was going to bring all sorts of kind of buffoonery footages. The worst line he had, obviously. So people are saying, we don't care if you're doing a huddle. We think it's weird you're doing both halves. Huddles are fine.
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Chapter 5: What controversial incidents occurred in horse racing recently?
Yeah. To score in the Premier League? Yeah, no question. What age is Milner? I mean, 38 or 39? Giggs would have scored at 40. Yeah, Giggs would have scored at 40, yeah. Liverpool, meanwhile, to round off Premier League action. Eight times this season they've conceded a goal 90th minute or later, which is record-breaking. You have to go back. I mean, they've broken their 2011 record of seven.
Dominic Sabazlai, Again, he should be at the World Cup. I feel flat, he said. Poor man. He's still nursing it, isn't he? Oh, yeah. You felt the cornrows were a cry for help the other week. Oh, definitely. That's a man going through a breakup and he's kind of taking it out in different ways, acting out. Just don't shave your head, Dominic. Nothing drastic.
We have to wake up because if we carry on like this, we'll be in the Conference League. I don't know why this is happening. I honestly don't know. I don't think it helps us either that after 80 minutes people start to go home. Doesn't help us at all. Stick with us, he said. The least inspiring rally call I've ever heard. I'd be going home in the 78th minute after that. Please don't go home.
Stick with us. It's an incredible sort of fall. Not just like, I know teams win the league and then they don't have good seasons the following league. Liverpool tend to do that a lot, Roy Keane likes to point out. Yeah, but they are utterly sort of rudderless. Like there's no energy about them at all. It's hard. Like I remember after they won the league under Klopp.
You know, a lot of the think pieces that came out around the time was about how they played and the amount of kind of physical toll that it had taken on the players because they pressed so high and they'd all be doing it for three or four years of playing whatever, 60-something games.
But they were just so composed and like thorough and they looked really fresh in how they won the league last year. It's mad, like it would be mad to know because like It looks like an energy thing as much as anything else, or a confidence thing, or just a lack of purpose. And they had such a great transfer window, seemingly. Yeah, what was that about?
But it does look like the slot thing is... I mean, he looks like a broken man now at this stage. He looks done. Slot looks done. You see, it's been a really strange... follow-up to winning the league. He said, like, you know, they've made loads of signings, probably an unprecedented number of signings for a team that had won the league.
None of them... Although people felt it was appropriate at the end of last season that they needed surgery. Yeah, and obviously there was various departures, like Luis Diaz going, Nuno's going, obviously the tragedy with Diogo Jota bringing in a lot of players, some of whom were injured, some of whom didn't gel. Diaz going was a bad idea.
And you can't hammer home enough, even though it's very obvious to say, the decline in Mo Salah's output in goals and assists is huge. It's monumental, yeah. He scored, what, high 20s goals last year and mid-20s in the assists. Like, he has about five or six goals this year and probably the same in assists.
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Chapter 6: What is the significance of Chelsea's centre-circle huddle?
taking part in all these other sports are so easy to master I played football growing up played GAA growing up played tennis growing up like all to good levels you never go out in any of those sports and you're like Jesus I just can't kick a ball today you go out and golf all the time Conor plays off single figures I've played off single figures you go out and golf and you're like I can't hit you to have a rope today
Because it's so tricky. Could you imagine, could you imagine David Beckham on the range like Scotty Sheffler going, yeah, I can't really kick the ball where I'm aiming. It would never happen. Whereas in golf, it happens all the time. Scotty Sheffler is the most metronomic golfer, maybe like of the last 30 years, because he's more metronomic than Tiger Woods.
Tiger used to spray the ball off the tee. Sheffler is just repeatable, repeatable, repeatable. And the big thing that they were talking about on Thursday, and again, the nuances of this are way over my head, but his miss is always right. He never misses left. That's his swing. So when he's like a fraction of a millimetre off, when he comes down, the ball goes right.
And he was missing, sorry, the other way around. He was missing right and his miss is always left. And I think in his, in 11 games, full swings and 11 drives that he took on the Friday, he missed seven of them into the rough on the right. And two of them, one of them kicked off a tree on the right and ended up on the fairway. And the other one was right beside it.
And this for a guy of his level and a fella who's so comfortable in being repeatable, like this is kind of on the verge of, it gets into your head then and it manifests and kind of curdles into something far more damaging. And before, because the golf exceptionalism point I take, I'm not saying it requires the most the greatest athletes in the world are not playing golf.
Like I accept that, you know what I mean? The fact that Rory can do it and Ernie Els can do it, all these different body shapes can do it. Vijay Singh, of course. Vijay Singh, of course. But, but, but, but, the precision point I think does stand. I really do. And that's why the choking comes into it.
and like that's we've got to wind it up like but even when you see I just want a wheel there to go okay I concede everything I agree when you go back through it even like the Masters there's a reason they say the tournament doesn't start until the second night on the Sunday because look at the amount of movement on the scoreboard the pins are set up to be scoring pins but then you have like everybody going into the water twice on 12 like even last night watching the players the movement on the leaderboard like Bob McIntyre one stage looked like he was nearly going to win it then he finished further down the field um
That's why it's so compelling. It's that the margins between sort of disaster and perfection are quite... I'm not disagreeing that the Masters isn't compelling. I like watching golf. I'm just disagreeing with the notion that I think you're just downplaying the high level execution that goes on under sports and pressure moments and waving it away off kicking a football.
Like David Clifford just before halftime on the loop banging that over a two-pointer. That's not as easy as you're making it out to be. Maybe, is it easier than hitting a drive down the 18th in Sawgrass? I don't know. I think Clifford finds that much easier than a drive down Sawgrass, water on the left, on the 18th.
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