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Chapter 1: What recent drama surrounds Tiger Woods?
This is an Irish Independent Podcast.
Hello, everybody, and welcome to this Tuesday episode of Bits and Bobs. And well, there's a new sheriff in town. I'm making some changes today. I've knocked in a few walls. I'm repainting a few rooms. Think of me today as your neighbor who unveils this massive new extension without asking for planning permission. But hopefully it all goes well in the end. Will Slattery here with you.
Delighted to be joined for this maiden voyage of a Will Slattery-helmed Bits and Bobs by Conor McKeown. Should we change the name? Someone said Bills and Bobs, maybe? That's all right.
Yeah.
Yeah. And John Green, the indoor sports editor is also here. How are you, John? Good, Will. It's been an interesting experience sitting in the Joe Malloy role today with all the prep. I have all these sheets, as you can see. I'm often commenting on a number of sheets, Joe has. Now I understand the necessity for it when you were kind of in charge of bits and bobs. It's easy for you to.
You just rock in, you sit down. You just, like Conor's leaning back, you know, his first wisecrack, locked and loaded, ready to go. When you're sitting in this seat, it's very, very different.
He's very edgy, isn't he? He's very, very edgy. I'm on edge. What's going to happen now when you get the Virgin gig if Joe's mopey dick one of the days or something like that?
If it comes with Joe's salary, I'll make it work. Sadly, today I'm unfortunately having to make do with my own. Ireland versus North Macedonia tonight, guys. 7.45pm, the playoff losers friendly. Macedonia got me thinking, do you guys know the name Goran Stravrevski? No. Neither of you remember it. October 9th, 1999. Ireland are leading 1-0. The game goes into injury time.
Euro 2000 place is in our graph. This is the goal scorer? This is the guy who pops up. And I am not trying to age anyone on this podcast here, but as a member of the coveted 18 to 34-year-old demographic just clinging on by my fingernails, October 9, 1999, I was probably playing like Super Mario on the N64 and not glued to this match.
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Chapter 2: How do Ireland fans express their anger after the playoff exit?
They don't make them anymore, do they? They do not.
There's one fan who raises an interesting question with these bonds that we're referring to there. And he said, the subject line is, am I the baddie? And this is from Jimmy. Hi, Joan Coe, love the show. Just wanted to know if it's okay to be dot, dot, dot angry. I came back from a rollercoaster a couple of days in Prague last Friday, and I'm still coming to terms with it all.
The best of crack was had with the best of fans and very sound locals right up until the balloon was burst around midnight on Thursday night. We sang the lads off in an emotional farewell and not one bad word or abuse was shared from our end. But looking back on it now, I'm pissed off. It was a golden opportunity and we threw it away again, as always.
Am I right to be angry or should I get behind the boys again, as suggested by many articles, and go to the game tonight? This puts the onus, I feel, on the fans once again. Can we not be angry this time?
The amount of money we spent, the amount of time we took off to follow this team, and then in the second half, hiding behind the halfway line for 45 minutes plus, giving away a cheap penalty, then being ahead in the shootout and not having the conviction to see it out. I can acknowledge many other elements of the game.
The squad in general did brilliantly and their achievements last November were exceptional. But Jesus, I'm kind of tired of being the nearly man. Should I be ashamed to admit that I'm angry? No, I'm with you. Am I the baddie from Jimmy? I'm with Jimmy.
Yeah. I think they've got off... Lightly. But I think the analysis has been... gentle on some of the things that happened in that game not least that penalty which changed the whole game and that penalty for me is just one of the daftest things I've ever seen at that level in a sporting context no I'm with Jimmy he's dead right to be angry what do you think
I don't know, it comes back to what we expect from the teams that represent us. Do they owe us anything necessarily? But I think the thing that really pisses people off, and maybe this is the reason that the analysis has been a little bit soft or the public reaction has been more charitable, is that for a long time we were really clueless.
It looked like players, not that they didn't care, but you know when the team on the pitch doesn't believe that what they're doing is going to get them anywhere, they sort of, in some ways, give up. Whereas with this team, like they gave it everything that they had and they weren't good enough and they made mistakes.
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Chapter 3: What insights does the Rory McIlroy documentary provide?
As your duty as Sunday in the Sports Editor, how did you not give that to someone, maybe a Conor McKeown who's just starting to move into the kind of swim in those circles? I feel like that was a missed opportunity for someone not to do a good interview.
although we didn't know we were playing them to be fair until Thursday so it would have had to been a very exact turnaround exactly there you go you answered your own question true yeah but I do want to hear from this guy he really broke Irish heart although apparently not given that you guys didn't seem to have too much of a bit there's just been so much as a colleague of ours once wrote water under the fridge that you know we just moved on to the next tragedy yeah
That's the football. Let's move on to Tiger Woods, guys. I know, Conor, you were writing about it over the weekend. So, yeah, he appeared at TGL last week. And again, the Tiger, will he, won't he for the Masters has been talked about a fair bit recently.
We discussed it last week as well on the show, but more from a position of kind of boredom rather than... It now feels almost it was like the wrong conversation we were having. Maybe we should have been discussing something else about his life and how he's going. But...
People probably know by now, but last Friday he was arrested and charged with driving under the influence following a crash in Jupiter near his home. Investigators said the crash happened before 2pm when a truck pulling a trailer was turning into a driveway.
Tiger Woods Land Rover approached from behind at a high rate of speed, attempted to pass the truck, clipped the back of the trailer, tipped onto its side, the driver's side, and slid along the road before coming to a stop. Woods was able to exit the vehicle to the passenger side. No one was injured, either him or the truck driver.
The sheriff said that Tiger Woods exhibited signs of impairment at the scene. He was arrested. He agreed to take a breathalyzer, which was negative for alcohol, but he refused to take a urine test, which is used to detect drugs or medication. Investigators said they believe impairment may have caused... may have been caused, sorry, by medication, though no substance were found in the vehicle.
In addition to driving under the influence of property damage, Woods was charged with refusal to submit to a lawful test. Um...
I actually have a bit of a timeline I've all been in Florida I'm actually just going to read out the timeline before we get into it because it really outlines so this is going back say first going back to June 2008 because I have surgeries and car crashes here in one lengthy timeline June 2008 obviously he wins the US Open infamously on one leg torn ACL a surgery on that flash forward to November 2009
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Chapter 4: How is Eddie Hearn expanding into rugby management?
So this is what happens basically when people are brought up in a way that's really, really artificial and they don't have the normal human experiences of dealing with other people on the level, like genuine human interaction. And it comes across from Woods. He has always used other people around him. That brilliant biography that came out a couple of years ago.
He's always used people as kind of disposable human resources to kind of help him on his way to greatness.
That book makes it seem he's incapable of like interacting on a human level. Like every interaction with the quote unquote, like kind of normal person that he comes across as a... Yeah, well, he had no social skills.
He had no empathy. He probably was borderline sociopathic or, you know, he just didn't seem to be capable of Like what Conor said a few minutes ago about just normal human emotions and interactions. He was denied the opportunity to develop those skills from a very young age.
Chapter 5: Who is Henry Pollock and why is he significant in rugby?
There's only one person in this room who's had a real life interaction with Tiger Woods.
I read your piece with interest when you described going to Augusta National for the first time and Tiger was there at the press conference and you were urged on by a colleague to ask him a question. You didn't reveal what the question was, though. I was crying out as a reader. I thought that was actually... Yeah, John, like you're sitting in those editor hats.
The reader in me was crying out for the answer. That's for the next piece. That's for part two.
I'm always wondering the point at which these things become too self-indulgent.
Well, you'd cost a Rubicon plenty more without giving us the payoff.
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Chapter 6: What challenges do rugby players face in gaining mainstream recognition?
So what did you ask him?
It was something about how his, what do you call it, his strategy around Augusta had changed with the change in the shape of the course and the change in his own game because he's had to change his... That's why he didn't put the question in. Because I wasn't pitying him. But he actually gave quite a long and elaborate answer.
And then there was an American journalist beside me who asked an actually good question and he gave him like... one syllable response. Obviously, what was that question? I can't remember what it was, but I remember thinking, oh, I should have asked that. But I asked a colleague afterwards, I said, what was that about? He goes, oh yeah, see, Tiger doesn't know you. He hates your man.
So like Tiger comes along with all this baggage everywhere he goes all the time. But that point about how kind of enraptured golf remains with Tiger Woods, he hasn't played a competitive round in two years. And yet, as you said, he could be the American Ryder Cup captain in two years' time. He's going to dominate the Masters next week if he shows up in any capacity. He is supposed to be there.
He cannot be there next week. He's supposed to be there to open a golf course. He can't be there.
Surely, even in America, even by the degrading public standards in 2026, if he rocks up to cut a ribbon on some golf course after flipping his car and refusing to take a urine test, like... Well, I wouldn't really.
I would not. I wouldn't be. Well, I think you need to.
I'm too naive. I'm in the 18 to 34-year-old demographic. I haven't seen enough of the world.
That's only the second time you've mentioned that.
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Chapter 7: How does the discussion reflect on the culture of rugby and media?
That TGL thing is his baby. He is the main person at Players Advisory Council. So he is there deciding as to what the new PGA Tour is going to look like. So Tiger Woods' influence on golf. He looms large over the sport regardless of what's been happening.
We'll see if he turns up next week, as we said. That's Tiger Woods. Let's talk Rory McIlroy just after this break. So, guys, the Rory McIlroy documentary has arrived. Rory McIlroy, colon, the master's weight.
Chapter 8: What future opportunities lie ahead for Henry Pollock?
The master's just been nine days away now. Excited with this building. We've all seen it. We discussed it at length when the trailer came out, myself, Joe and Ronan, and had differing opinions. My view of it now, having seen it, is I think a three stars is what I would give it a five. It's not five stars. It doesn't have the revelatory access like The Last Dance.
And it's not four stars for me because I don't think it was as well executed as it could have been. But I did really enjoy revisiting this unbelievable 18 holes of drama. I did think they captured some of it very, very well. Yeah. There was a few insights I thought we were talking to John beforehand about like him and Bryson's standoff on the ninth green. I'd never heard that story, perhaps.
Yeah, I don't know.
I really liked the contributions of his parents. I don't think I'd ever heard his mother speak. I haven't heard his father speak a small bit, but not a huge amount personally. Maybe you guys have probably heard him a bit more than I have.
The mum was in, Rosie was really interesting and was a really good contributor.
Yeah. There was good archival footage used, I thought. I thought there was great montages of certain instances of the press conferences of Augusta again and again being asked all these different questions. So certain parts I did think were brilliant. Like, you know, you had this swing coach, Michael Bannon, JP Fitzgerald, a former caddie, made a very brief appearance as well.
Sean's done it as well. Yeah, Sean O'Flaherty, his manager too.
I thought Harry was kind of a noticeable absentee. No, Harry. Somebody told me that he refused to do the Happy Gilmore too as well. He doesn't like being in the public eye.
He would have been a key component of the documentary just to hear his perspective.
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