For professional athletes, retirement doesn’t come in the form of a gradual career peak—it arrives suddenly, often through injury or physical decline. Unlike those in other careers who can steadily build toward financial security, many athletes find themselves facing uncertainty in their early 30s. In this episode of Sports Matters, former rugby players Niall Woods and Marty Moore discuss the challenges of transitioning out of the game, from financial instability to the loss of identity and structure. Speaking to Ian Kehoe, they explore the psychological and practical difficulties of life after professional sport and the importance of preparation for the next chapter. Sports Matters is sponsored by Whitney Moore.
French people are voting this Sunday in the first round of the presidential election, with far-right candidate Marine Le Pen polling higher than ever in her challenge to the incumbent Emmanuel Macron. Dion Fanning asks Paris-based journalist Stephen Carroll and The Currency's French-born senior correspondent Thomas Hubert what is happening in a campaign overshadowed by the war in Ukraine and its consequences on the personal finances of French voters.
The Currency's Gaelic football analyst Paul Flynn and former Kerry great Marc Ó Sé discuss the chances of Kerry claiming their first All Ireland since 2014 and what Jack O'Connor's return - and the addition of critical members of the backroom team - has done for their chances.
Michael Horvath founded Strava in 2009 with his college buddy Mark Gainey. The duo rowed crew together in Harvard in the 1980s and they wanted to recreate the same feeling of community that they had in the Massachusetts boathouse for the wider public. Thirteen years later and Strava has changed the world of amateur sport, allowing casual athletes access to analytics previously only available to the elite. In this podcast, Horvath tells Rosanna Cooney about building the company, his decision to step back in 2014 and to return again in 2019 when Strava was at its lowest ebb, freshly determined to make it profitable and meaningful for athletes.
Johnny O'Reilly talks to Dion Fanning from Kyiv about the city's return to a kind of normality which may reflect some optimism or may simply be a sign that you can get used to anything. Meanwhile, just outside the city, the people of the satellite town of Irpin come to terms with the full horror of war. He also talks about his time among the war correspondents in Ukraine
Vladimir Putin’s war of choice has forced the West to confront questions that it has long avoided about its economic relationship with Russia. Decisions that would have been unthinkable before February 24 have been made at a dizzying speed and scale. The Western sanctions that have been imposed are the harshest ever imposed against a state of Russia’s size and power.
In this podcast, Ed Brophy talks to Nicholas Mulder, assistant professor in the history department of Cornell University in New York and author of the superb recent book “The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War”, about the use of economic sanctions as a form of war and their unintended consequences.
In 2014, drinks entrepreneur Pat Rigney put everything he had saved during his career to launch The Shed Distillery in Drumshanbo, Co Leitrim. Now, the business is turning over more than €15 million in revenues while its Drumshanbo Gunpowder Irish Gin is sold in more than 60 countries. It also produces vodka, whiskey and recently opened a €3 million visitor centre.
In this podcast with Alison Cowzer, Rigney talks about getting the business off the ground and his ambitions for the future. He also talks about his own career – from helping scale Baileys internationally to co-founding – and selling – the company behind Boru Vodka. He also talks about the future of hospitality after the pandemic, the importance of the brand and the secrets to scaling internationally.
The row over expenses between the GPA and the GAA has led to a media blackout as players and managers demonstrate their solidarity with those who aren't getting full expenses, but it underlines, too, the precarious nature of the GAA's most precious asset: its amateurism. As the demands on players grow, how long can the governing myth of the GAA be sustained? Paul Flynn, former Dublin footballer and former GPA CEO, explains the issues to Dion Fanning.
We're building about a quarter of the new homes we'd need to be building in order to fix housing, and we're already running out of sites. We need a new plan. We should make full use of our rail network. With a few investments, one rail line could be moving as many people as a forty lane motorway. We should start with the transport system and work backwards, because it's much harder to build a high-performing transport system in an existing city than it is to build a new neighbourhood around an existing transport system.
John Devitt is the co-founder and chief executive of the anti-corruption campaign group Transparency International Ireland. He tells Thomas Hubert that the invasion of Ukraine was motivated by the Kremlin’s resolve to destroy a model where the elite was subject to increasing public scrutiny, and warns that Ireland will remain complicit in money laundering and sanctions-busting unless a joint effort between the State and concerned citizens tracks suspicious financial flows going through this country.
Professor of Politics at DCU, Gary Murphy and Fintan Drury, who worked with many politicians during a long career in communications, discuss the fall of Fianna Fáil and whether there is any chance of the party achieving relevance in the future.
