OTB Football
WORD ON THE STREET Ep.33 'Lights, Camera, Action' | What makes a good sports doc? | Flops and success stories | Off The Ball
15 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What sports documentaries do fans love and why?
Off the ball. GAA. This was a game where, like, there's a seven-day turnaround for these All-Ireland Junior Intermediate Finals. It's so tight. Oh, Tommy, there was bodies everywhere. Like a war zone. It was amazing. Join in the obsession. Subscribe now at offtheball.com forward slash join.
I think they'll go all the way to the final, to be honest. Yeah? Yeah. I believe in my county and I suppose they're good at football, they just have to believe in themselves. I love playing 12, I love playing 10, I love being on the pitch, to be honest. Are you confident?
Absolutely not. Thank you for all the supporters, thank you for the team, thank you France. Merci la France, merci les baguettes, merci les croissants. Je vous aime, I love you.
Hello, hello, and welcome to Word on the Street. I'm Susannah, and it feels so good to be sat back in here. Happy 2026, to be honest. I know for the listeners, you won't have had a kind of break from Word on the Street, but we haven't actually been in here altogether since last year. So I'm so happy to say, Eve, Rachel, we're back in studio. How are we feeling? I'm feeling good.
I'm feeling like I missed it, you know? Yeah, it's a much less pressurised situation than we were here for the Nullargan Man episode last week where everything was live. Big shout out to Eve as well who did the Sunday paper review and her own football slot all live on national radio. And to you too, Susanna.
Three and a half hours did you do in the end? I did three and a half hours, but only an hour and a half of that was live. Or I did four hours and only an hour and a half was live. I did a lot. Yeah, a lot.
Which was scary. But it was also the debut of our first full, I think our first full Word on the Street episode going out on national radio. Oh, that was nice. I didn't know it was our first. Whoop.
snaps all around um but this week we're also back to our traditional format which is fun um of going out and talking to people on the street about some sort of sporting topic and then bringing all those voices back into the studio so this week it's episode 33 which is mental in itself um and it's called lights camera action and basically it all kicked off when rachel was at an event during the week and had a a brilliant idea as they do sometimes come yeah
Sometimes. All right. OK, I'll ignore that shade. So tell us, tell us, what were you at? So on Tuesday, I was at the launch of Lake Regale. I don't know if listeners are familiar with it, but it's a documentary series ran by T.G. Cahir. This year's its 24th season, which is outrageous. They do eight players, eight lakes. Lake is the Irish word for hero, in case you're wondering. 24th season?
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Chapter 2: How does trust between players and documentary makers impact storytelling?
One was the Jim McGuinness one a couple of years back. I think that was maybe 10, 15 years. That was fantastic. I watched that and that was like the whole behind the scenes. That was brilliant.
It's funny, he talks about Last Dance. That was the one with Michael Jordan, wasn't it? I watched that. That was incredible. I feel like that reached so many people that weren't basketball fans, which is, I suppose, the point of it, as he said.
But then they had, I think it was recently announced as well, Rachel, you brought to my attention, they had another basketball docuseries on Netflix, which premiered last year. And there was meant to be a second season set to be released in early 2026. And that was also NBA-focused, and it basically followed five... kind of stars around the place. And they were big names.
They had LeBron James in season one, Jimmy Butler, Anthony Edwards. And that has been cancelled. Season two. The thing about The Last Dance, did you watch it as well, Eve? I actually missed that somehow. Oh, you should go back and watch that. It's actually fantastic. It's brilliant. I think the circumstances...
into how it was delivered like it was COVID they were like separated out you couldn't binge watch it so you couldn't it's like normal people you know the settings had you on the edge of your seat every week waiting for the next one and like no one had anything else to do but it's still it's still an unbelievable documentary and yeah I couldn't wait to watch the starting five
Basketball documentary. I enjoyed the first one. Like, I'm not a huge NBA fan, so I was more coming into the, like, oh, I can't wait to see what, like, LeBron James is like as a person. And the first season was fine. Usually, if I'm watching a sports documentary, like, I'm locking in. But this is one, like, you'd keep one eye on it. And the second season, I finished it there the other day.
So boring. Oh, yeah. Like, is it Tyrese Alliburton? His girlfriend features in it a lot. And it's, like, they spend an entire episode on... of her just being like, please propose to me soon. And he's like winking at the camera because he's got all of these secret plans to propose to her in Paris. And like, if that was a tiny bit of a story, maybe it'd be fine.
But it just took over and it was so cheesy. I didn't actually, I didn't finish it, which is unheard of, really. Yeah, that's almost a little bit too personal. Like, yes, we want the personal stories, but they still have to be related to the sport, right?
we're watching it for i think like if it's a completely random like oh i'm waiting for this proposal like i could watch that from an influencer on tiktok like i don't need to watch a full episode yeah it's so cringe it's imbalanced it's not i'm not surprised to hear that it's been well cancelled or it's not coming back for a third season yeah like top players in the game like it's they should have done so much better with it but it was boring that raises an interesting question that i know we're gonna get to in a second but um
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