Episode 18: The EFL and Football Pyramid - "You don't love the game as much as us".

Football in England runs deep. It lives in the streets where we were raised, in overused but much beloved grassroots pitches, in the terrace chants passed down like heirlooms. It’s stitched into the fabric of families, of towns, of working weeks and weekend rituals.

Before the season begins, there’s always hope - fragile, stubborn, beautiful hope. Some hope for glory. Others just of survival. Some just want to avoid shame. But everyone dares to dream.

There’s always a route to the top - if you build, if you dream, if you refuse to let go. But blink, and you can tumble. Because the pyramid gives, and the pyramid takes away.

This is the story of a game that belongs to everyone. Of Billy Meredith fighting for players’ rights before the game had even found its footing. Of Arthur Wharton sprinting past prejudice in the 19th century. Of Bradford, where lives were lost, and lives rebuilt after tragedy. Of Wrexham and Wimbledon, where community spirit helped build back what seemed lost forever - optimism, pride, hope.

The legends our grandfathers told us about weren’t always paid well in days gone past, they weren't protected or even free to move on should they have wished to. But they played on. Because they wanted to, because they needed to. Because football was, and is, everything to so many people.

This isn’t just sport. It’s who we are, who we were, and who we will always be. This is where football began and where its spirit still burns brightest, even if we can have a funny way of showing it sometimes. Here, it means more.

Episode 17: The All-Ireland Senior Football Championship - "Where We All Belong"

From the muddy fields of Meath to Croke Park's sacred sod, this episode dives into one of the most fiercely loved and proudly Irish sports: Gaelic football. We explore what makes the game so unique - its rules, its roots, and the deep ties it holds to community and identity.

We trace the story back through time: to the birth of the GAA and its fight to preserve native games; to a tragic Sunday in 1920 when a football match became an unforgivable massacre, and another Bloody Sunday played out in blood, grief and inevitable whitewash. Not Ireland’s first such Sunday, and sadly not it's last.

And finally, on lighter grounds, we look at the long-suffering tale of County Mayo. A famed curse that no Mayo team would lift the Sam Maguire again while even one member of their victorious 1951 side still lived - seventy-five years, eleven finals, and a whole lot of heartbreak and ill-luck later... you can be forgiven for thinking there's something to it.

We’ve come away from this one with nothing but admiration for the sport, its history and its heart. Gaelic football is a living thread of Irish identity, with the All-Ireland final it's crowning moment. A sport and a history well worth learning about, wherever you're from.

Episode 16: A Boxing Story - Leen Sanders + Oleksandr Usyk vs. Daniel Dubois.

With Oleksandr Usyk and Daniel Dubois set to put their world titles on the line, we take a look at one of the most compelling heavyweight clashes of the year - two talented fighters, shaped by very different paths, meeting in the ring with everything to prove, to win and to lose.

But this week, we’re doing things a little differently.

Boxing is often called the loneliest sport. There’s nowhere to hide, no one to blame, and every fight has its reasons - some clear, some deeply personal. Some fight for pride, for country, for a way out. And some fight simply to survive.

At the heart of the episode is the story of Leen Sanders, a talented Dutch boxer with a hermetic defence, fighting in the inter-war years and whose career and life took a turn no one could have imagined. His fights weren’t always on canvas, and what was at stake wasn’t just titles. What he endured - and what he refused to give up - speaks to something far deeper than sport.

It's an incredible story that goes from heady heights in the ring to the darkest depths of 20th Century history, with an extraordinary man as its protagonist alongside other boxers of the era.

Come listen, but be warned, this episode hits hard.