DIVERTED

In the first episode of this series, Eoin takes you to Colombia, where our first destination is the city of Medellin. Here, there are football ultras trying to make the world a better place, and there is a football club trying to get away from the historic association with Pablo Escobar.

There is the national sport of Tejo, where drinking beer is encouraged and making things explode is the aim of the game.

In Bogota, we hear abo...

In the second episode of this series, we get invited to spend an afternoon at the plush environs of the Prince of Wales country club in Santiago, Chile. Here, some of the country’s national rugby players are putting kids through their paces and they themselves prepare for a first ever Rugby World Cup.

A snoop around a flea market, then, tips me off about a storied football club, Club Deportivo Palestino. We meet the fans and those r...

In this episode, we go on a journey into the Bolivian highlands for a completely unique festival called “Tinku.” It takes place in a tiny town called Macha, which is not exactly a tourist hot spot. The aim of the game is to fight thy neighbour in order to spill blood and satisfy the Andean gods, which are all-powerful to the indigenous Aymara community.

We drink with the locals, dance with the locals and some of us fight with the lo...

In 1972, a plane carrying members of the Old Christians rugby team of Montevideo crashed in the Andes, leaving behind a slew of survivors. After 72 days trapped on the mountain, 16 survivors managed to make it home.

In this episode, Eoin visits the home of one of the survivors, Antonio Vizintin, for an extended chat about those 72 days and, indeed, the reaction to the revelations that dead bodies were used for food on the mountain.

W...

In this episode, we take you to Mexico City where Independence Day is in full swing. We use the information provided by the Irish Hooligan to go and spend the day with some lucha libre fighters in a “dangerous part” of Mexico.

For Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), then, we go to San Cristobal de las Casas and we attend a rave in the woods, learn about the Zapatista movement and we meet the people trying to build a gym in order t...

In this episode, Eoin brings you on a sporting tour through three countries in Central America.

We begin in Costa Rica, where we watch their World Cup dreams dying a death, before an unlikely resuscitation allows an entire nation to dream, if only for a brief moment.

We venture to Belize where a small town is looking to recapture past glories in the nation’s Premier League.

And we go to Guatemala, where we take chicken buses up to the...

In this episode, Eoin brings you on an injury-delayed tour of Peru. 

There is the story of mountain climbing in Arequipa and how the political turmoil of 2022/23 affected the nation, while there is also an analysis of the societal divisions in Peru as represented by football.

We traipse up towards the Amazon river, taking in a massive John the Baptist celebration en route to a rickety boat along the river. Cocooned away from the...

In this episode, the hitchhiking narrative converges with our sports narrative. We tell the story of how getting stuck in a Patagonian shack led to the family of Alexis MacAllister, and how the Liverpool midfielder was basically created in a lab.

We then go to the Hurlingham district of Buenos Aires and pay a visit to the Hurling Club, where Dickie MacAllister takes us through the fascinating history of Gaelic games in Argentina.

Fin...

In this episode, we go from South Beach to North Florida to take in a wild range of sporting peculiarities. We begin by visiting a jai-alai fronton in Miami, where players are trying to keep the Basque game alive in the basement of a casino. We swing by Domino Park, where Miami’s elders are hanging out, before checking in on a group of Inter Miami fans who believe that success is close - if they fire Phil Neville.

We take the tri-r...

In the final episode of this series, we bring you inside the towns of Patagonia that have a distinct Welsh falvour. From tea houses to red dragons to an adoration for the game of rugby, we travel to Trelew and Gaiman. 

In Buenos Aires, we sit down with Marcela Mora y Araujo to take one last look back on the 2022 World Cup triumph, and what it's done for a country that is economically on its knees. She also reveals her own story...