The Sporting Almanac Podcast

Episode 28: Super League Grand Final - Men of Steel

“For me, it’s the hardest sport in the world. It takes dedication, discipline and mental strength. You accept constant physical punishment. You push your body right to the limit... It’s too tough for me. Deep down, I would love to be a rugby league player.” - 2012 Tour de France winner and 5-time Olympic gold medallist Sir Bradley Wiggins

Some say it's the last true working class sp...

Episode 27: Major League Baseball Postseason - One, Two, Three Times You're Out...

"Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball." ~ American historian Jacques Barzun.

Baseball is more than a game.

It's memories, individual and collective. It's culture, consciousness and being. America's favourite pastime has been filling stadia for a century and a half, can boast the oldest professional sports league ...

Episode 26: The Ryder Cup - Golf Like No Other

"When you play for so many, it makes you strong." - Seve Ballesteros, Ryder Cup legend.

Team golf hits hard. The roar of a partisan crowd, fists pumping against chests of blue or red, the one shot that changes the momentum and turns the contest on its head, the final putt it comes down to that can win or lose it all. The Ryder Cup is truly golf at its very finest, the best 24 players on ...

Episode 25: The Australian Football League - Making Its Mark Since 1858

Aussie Rules football is old. In fact, it could stake a claim to being the oldest continually existing code of football in the world, and in the Melbourne Football Club boasts the oldest professional football team of any code of football on the planet, predating association football's oldest pro club Notts County by four years.

But the history of similar ball gam...

Episode 24: The Volleyball World Championships - Serve, Pass, Set, Spike, Defend, Rotate, Repeat

At the Sporting Almanac, more often than not we talk about sports invented in Britain and perfected elsewhere, with common threads and familiarity throughout. Not today.

We don't really do Volleyball in the UK, but we are very much the exception. This is a global sport, followed and played by nearly a billion people worldwide and can boas...

Episode 23: The World Athletics Championships - Every Second, SUGOI

"It feels good to be one of the greatest sprinters. You can’t explain what it feels like to get up in the morning knowing you’re one of the best ever."

Usain St. Leo Bolt, 11-time World Championship Gold Medallist and Men's 100m World Record Holder

It’s easy to be cynical about athletics, as you watch human beings push the boundaries of what should be possible. The Wo...

Episode 22: The NFL Regular Season - Madden's Game

"The only yardstick for success our society has is being a champion. No one remembers anything else."

John Madden, Super Bowl XI winning coach, broadcaster and Pro Football Hall of Famer

The richest sports league on the planet, the most elite group of athletic talent in any sport, anywhere, and a competition never far away from controversy or legend.

There are over a million High Schoo...

Episode 21: The US Open Tennis - Arthur Ashe, Althea Gibson and the Power of Tennis

"From what we get, we can make a living; what we give, however, makes a life."

Arthur Ashe, 1968 US Open Champion and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient.

The US Open can be more than just a great sporting occasion. Arthur Ashe became its first men’s champion in the Open Era as an amateur amongst professionals, using his voice and his platform to c...

Episode 20: The Rugby Championship and Women's World Cup

How did Rugby Union make its way to the southern hemisphere? How does the game down south differ from the bruising northern style? And why, exactly, are New Zealand so damn good at it?

This week, we’re serving up a double helping of rugby. With the Rugby Championship kicking off this weekend and the Red Roses gearing up for their date with destiny next Friday, Ben dives headfir...

Episode 19: The Premier League - The Greatest Show on Earth

What made the Premier League the biggest and best football league in the world? Why did English football's top clubs break away in 1992 - and what happened to the teams they left behind? And how on earth did Leicester City go from relegation certainties to champions of England?

In this episode of The Sporting Almanac, we chart the story of the Premier League - from its murky...

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. Som...

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 p...

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 ...

Episode 15: The UEFA European Women’s Championship – “Women’s Football Confuses Men”

It’s a story almost as old as football itself: women start playing. People notice. They’re good - really good. Crowds grow, praise swells, more girls join in… and just as momentum builds, the men in suits step in.

With furrowed brows and dubious “health concerns”, they declare the game unfit for women - too rough, too unfeminine, too dangerous for th...

Episode 14: The Tour de France – More than a race. Less than the truth.

“You can't ride the Tour de France on mineral water. You would have to be an imbecile or a crook to imagine that a pro-cyclist who races for 235 days a year can hold the pace without stimulants.”

Jacques Anquetil, five-time Tour de France winner

It is without doubt the greatest cycling race in the world – just don’t ask what’s in the water bottles. Legends are ev...

Episode 13: The Wimbledon Championships - The Noble Pursuit of Immortality

Tennis is a game like no other. With origins in palaces and prisons alike, brought together by good marketing and better timing and allowing women earlier participation than Victorian Britain was famed for, it took only three years from the game being invented for a South-West London croquet club to stake their future on it - and 148 years later, that future ...

Episode 12: The British & Irish Lions - The Power of Four

"Let's be the best at everything that requires no talent."

Paul O'Connell, 2009 Lions Captain.

Enemies in March. Teammates in June.

Once every four years, the British & Irish Lions unite four fierce rivals from two nations under a single red jersey. They set aside history, pride and borders to become something greater - and take that fight across the globe in pursuit of ...

Episode 11: The 24 Hours of Le Mans - Triomphe et Désastre

The history of Le Mans is the history of motor racing. From hosting the first Grand Prix in 1906 to creating the world’s greatest endurance race in 1923, the 24 Hours of Le Mans has been run 92 times over 102 years - and in that time, it has showcased the cutting edge of automotive technology, the sport’s most iconic drivers, and seen some of the greatest races ever.

But it h...

Episode 10: The NBA Finals - Dynasty and Legacy

"I used to joke that if you could bottle all the emotion in a basketball game, you'd have enough hate to fight a war, and enough joy to prevent one."

Bill Russell

Jack and Ben crossover the Atlantic once more to talk about some people even taller than they are. Ahead of next week's NBA Finals, they dive into the stories of legendary ballers, iconic matchups, and how the NBA grew into the...