Our inaugural guest on Behind The Lines is Malachy Clerkin of the Irish Times.

We talk about he got he broke into journalism, what makes a great intro, the “insane discipline” of live reporting, the best piece of advice he has been given and the cliché he avoids like the, er, plague.

The pieces Malachy brought along were: an interview with Daniel Timofte by Paul Howard of The Sunday Tribune that, sadly, is not available online; Rick Reilly’s 1994 piece for Sports Illustrated called When Your Dream Dies; and Denis Walsh’s report of the 2018 All-Ireland hurling championship final for The Sunday Times.

If you’d like to get in touch with the show, email behindthelines@the42.ie.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our second guest is Rory Smith, soccer correspondent for the New York Times.

We talk about what readers want from good sportswriting, profile writing, chasing Pete Doherty through London on a moped, Djibril Cisse and finding a zombie in Russia.

The pieces Rory brought along were: Robert Andrew Powell’s book, This Love is Not For Cowards; Ken Early’s Irish Times column on how quickly football has changed; and the broader notion of ‘David Remnick on Boxing’, with reference to his 1997 profile of Mike Tyson.

If you’d like to get in touch with the show, email behindthelines@the42.ie.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times’ award-winning journalist and author Michael Foley is our latest guest, and we spoke, among other things, about poetry written by Kieran McGeeney’s Da, his favourite interviewee, and how he became the second-most famous Mick Foley on Twitter.

His nominated pieces were: Hugh McIlvanney’s iconic report from the Rumble in the Jungle; a remarkable 1997 All-Ireland hurling final preview by Denis Walsh for The Sunday Times; David Halberstam’s short piece on the traditions of baseball’s opening night; and Jimmy Breslin’s famous column about the death of John Lennon.

If you’d like to get in touch with the show, or want help in sourcing the pieces we spoke about, email behindthelines@the42.ie.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.