Move over Lineker and Neville, rugby podcast wars are here

Telegraph

17-02-2025

You may have reached a point in the past couple of years where you wondered how there could possibly be any more new rugby podcasts. And I say this as someone who is currently part of a rugby podcast run by this newspaper (please subscribe).
It turns out there is room for a couple more. Big hitters, too, because in the run-up to the Six Nations came the debuts of two new podcasts. Stick to Rugby is part of YouTube series The Overlap launched by Gary Neville in 2021, and a sister podcast to the popular Stick to Football, featuring Neville, Roy Keane, Jamie Carragher, Jill Scott and Ian Wright.
The rugby version, featuring David Flatman, Lawrence Dallaglio, Tom Shanklin and Katy Daley-Mclean, has kicked off with Martin Johnson and Eddie Jones as guests, with Dallaglio featuring on a recent Stick to Football episode to help promote the new show. He had barely settled into his seat before Scott remarked, 'God, you make Roy look tiny', prompting a quiet smirk on Keane's face.
At the very same time Who Gives A Ruck was also launched with bona-fide rugby legends from the good old days, Will Carling, Jonathan 'Jiffy' Davies and Dean Richards forming the hosting triumvirate.
There was a time around five to 10 years ago when sports podcasts were viewed rather quizzically compared to TV broadcasting, but that has now long gone. They mean big business.
In football, Gary Lineker's The Rest is Football – which he hosts alongside Alan Shearer and Micah Richards – battles with Stick to Football for prominence. It was most notable during last summer's European Championship, when both played a part in setting the agenda.
' Stick to Football is a massive success. I looked at the panel [for Stick to Rugby ] and thought, 'well, we've got two World Cup winners [Dallaglio and Daley-Mclean] and we've got two blokes that are pretty good at just chatting s---, basically,' Shanklin tells Telegraph Sport, noting that Dallaglio is like 'the king, the alpha', while adding that 'it's very difficult to chat as much as Flats and Lawrence'.
Shanklin continues: 'It's not a podcast where we're going to analyse every single game. We will touch upon big issues, but it's more experiences, which guests can we get on. My favourite part is when we get in the Defender at the start, Flats and I are riding shotgun, and the two World Cup winners are in the back. We just have a chat ourselves.'
The early signs are promising, with Stick to Rugby currently top of Apple's podcast charts for sport ahead of The Sports Agents, Global's sport version of The News Agents presented by Gabby Logan and Mark Chapman, and Stick to Football.
Carving out a niche in a fairly saturated market is therefore not easy, which is where Who Gives A Ruck comes in. Carling, Jiffy and Richards have more than 150 Tests caps between them and probably even more stories.
Three episodes in – 'Having played in the centre, you can't even find the centre of the camera,' was an early Jiffy comment to Carling, setting the tone – the group have covered pre-match scraps in Paris, Richards being punched by an opponent's wife and, yes, even Bloodgate. You can hear the Zoom-esque nature of the production but there is a charm to that, like three old friends catching up every week. The brief is straightforward; touch on the modern game while recalling the great days on – and especially off – the field. 'It's like sitting in the pub but with three absolute legends of rugby and getting to hear what they really think about,' is one early review, which should appeal to many people.
Both new podcasts are entering into a crowded field. Ben Youngs and Dan Cole's For The Love Of Rugby podcast, launched by Crowd Network at the start of last year, has been insightful in recent weeks given their close links with the England squad (Cole was playing for the national side as recently as November).
When Rugby Football Union chief executive Bill Sweeney decided to break cover following the bonus-payment fallout it was not in front of a packed room full of journalists, but on The Good, The Bad & The Rugby podcast fronted by Alex Payne, James Haskell and Mike Tindall, a long-running production which has led to numerous live shows and even books.
Jim Hamilton and Andy Goode's The Rugby Pod has similarly become an institution, and is now part of the enormously successful podcast network run by Bill Simmons, of The Ringer, which was acquired by Spotify in 2020. One of their bonus episodes this week had Dan Biggar interviewing Jonny Wilkinson.
Not to forget the BBC's Rugby Union Weekly, hosted by the excellent Chris Jones alongside Ugo Monye, Danny Care and Chris Ashton, offering a forensic breakdown of each weekend's matches, or another long-running show in The EggChasers Podcast.
At a time when Netflix has pulled the plug on its Full Contact series and the television rights for the Six Nations are up in the air, podcasts are one area of the media where rugby is thriving, and notably backed financially by big corporations. That spike in competition also means a greater range in terms of output for listeners to find which podcast is right for them, whether it is technical breakdowns or yearning for nostalgic tales of punch-ups and boozy post-match sessions.
Did I already suggest subscribing to the Telegraph Rugby Podcast? Yes, I did. Well listen, do it anyway. Everyone else is.