\u201cNo,\u201d says Gilroy with a smile. \u201cMy wife made me cut my hair.\u201d <\/p>\n
After 24\u00bd years at the helm of Off the Ball on Newstalk<\/a>, Gilroy has jumped to RT\u00c9 to present a new daily sports podcast, Howler. Gilroy built a sports broadcasting juggernaut at Newstalk virtually from scratch and remained its sole consistent voice from its founding, so his move made waves within Irish media circles and ripples of disquiet within RT\u00c9 itself. He insists he has not exchanged the insurgent, bustling energy of commercial media for the staid etiquette of the national broadcaster.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s the energy of being a start-up again,\u201d says Gilroy when I ask what most excites him about his move. \u201cNewstalk was a start-up in 2002, and then in 2017 we built the [Off the Ball] studio as it is now, and that was a start-up. There\u2019s something magic about it.\u201d <\/p>\n The start-up\u2019s scene is the RT\u00c9 administration building, a drab office block that stands beside the canteen and around halfway between the radio centre and the television studios. RT\u00c9 has inaugurated a new podcast department and housed it within this building, on a floor recently vacated by the finance department. <\/p>\n The clerical greys and deep-blues of the office decor are interrupted by a trio of pop-up podcast studios that are scattered across the floor. Howler\u2019s is the largest, with leather chairs arranged around a large desk in front of a brick-effect wall on which the podcast title is graffitied.<\/p>\n Despite this time of retrenchment, RT\u00c9 is investing in a podcast department because it believes it will help capture a younger audience. This is why Gilroy has been hired: RT\u00c9 believes its best avenue to the attention of young men is through sport. Gilroy has signed up a series of recurring pundits, including Diarmuid Connolly (Gaelic football), Austin Gleeson (hurling), Noel McNamara (rugby) and Kevin Kilbane (soccer). The show launched on Monday with an hour-long studio interview with recently-retired Mayo Gaelic football great, Cillian O\u2019Connor. <\/p>\n [\u00a0Too much Overlap? Gary Neville\u2019s podcast empire knows no boundsOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n \u201cWe want to create this podcast network to get to the under-45s,\u201d says Gilroy, adding that his podcast is targeting a male audience and that a \u201cfemale-targeted product\u201d will be launched in the new year. <\/p>\n He wants to make the impression on younger generations that shows like Nighthawks, No Disco and Scratch Saturday had on him. In an obvious nod to Nighthawks, adjacent to Howler\u2019s main set is a high table with a couple of bar stools, intended to resemble a pub smoking area. <\/p>\n It\u2019s an ambitious vision, but how can Gilroy\u2019s show stand out in the highly saturated sports podcast market? <\/p>\n \u201cOne of the things that we\u2019re going to do is that we are going to work with independent producers to produce documentaries, and tell those big Irish stories,\u201d he says. The show also doesn\u2019t intend to stick solely to sport, with plans in place to cover social and political issues. \u201cSports fans are people too,\u201d says Gilroy. \u201cThey\u2019re genuinely interested in politics and culture and travel, so why should we not reflect that?\u201d <\/p>\n Gilroy founded Off the Ball in 2002, modelling it on Eamon Dunphy\u2019s \u201canarchic and wild\u201d hour of sport on The Last Word on Today FM. He also took lessons from American sports radio and didn\u2019t want to copy RT\u00c9 in operating a call-in show. Presenters were therefore loosened to give strong, irreverent opinions. Gilroy says the show had a \u201ccurrent affairs sensibility\u201d without losing sight of the fact that sport is \u201csupposed to be a diversion from all of the shit in the rest of our lives\u201d. <\/p>\n Implicit within much of Off the Ball\u2019s editorial direction was that it would do what RT\u00c9 would not do and Gilroy rarely shied away from criticising the State broadcaster.<\/p>\n Shortly after RT\u00c9 announced Gilroy\u2019s move in June, a Sunday newspaper reported on subsequent unease within RT\u00c9, quoting an anonymous source saying: \u201cGer Gilroy slagged off RT\u00c9 for years on Off the Ball, and then all of a sudden RT\u00c9 are giving him a job, and he says he is looking forward to working with the team? How does that work?\u201d<\/p>\n So, how does that work?<\/p>\n \u201cIf people are in any way upset, I understand,\u201d says Gilroy. \u201cMy gig before I got here was to do the very best for the people who worked on the team and sometimes that meant having an upstart attitude to things, and it generally worked. Off the Ball was ultimately really successful. My welcome here has been great, like honestly. You see we\u2019re in a separate building from everybody else and we\u2019ve been in our bubble here for the last couple of weeks. No one has said anything and I don\u2019t really expect them to either. Those comments are unattributed but if anybody wants to have a chat, I\u2019m more than open to it.\u201d <\/p>\n So was all of his criticism on Off the Ball, as Dunphy would say it, just showbusiness, baby? <\/p>\n \u201cNo. Everything I said would have been authentic to the time and the place. Like, your job is to win, right? And now I\u2019ve switched teams. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s that unusual. People change jobs.\u201d <\/p>\n Gilroy is a staff member at RT\u00c9 and declines to share his salary. He says he has taken a \u201csignificant pay cut\u201d from his previous job as managing director of Off the Ball, and says he won\u2019t be appearing on RT\u00c9\u2019s list of top earners. RT\u00c9 also declined to disclose Gilroy\u2019s salary, saying it only publishes the remuneration of its highest earners.<\/p>\n Howler has launched less than a year after RT\u00c9 Radio 1 launched a new evening sports show, Inside Sport, segments of which are podcasted. Does RT\u00c9 really need more sport content? <\/p>\n \u2018I fundamentally believe that our democracy is under threat from the tech oligarchs\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cLook at the media landscape in any other of the countries in the civilised world, there\u2019s a full 24-hour sports radio station in almost every single one of them. We need more sports content, not less sports content,\u201d says Gilroy. He says the two offerings are different: the radio show has a faster metabolism, reacting to the day\u2019s news, while the podcast can take a longer-form look at sports issues. The podcast does plan to publish additional episodes reacting to breaking news stories. Howler pundits are not precluded from appearing on the radio show and the two shows will share running orders with each other to avoid a scenario in which they are effectively competing for guests. <\/p>\n [\u00a0How the LA Clippers bent the financial rules to become the Manchester City of the NBAOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n Gilroy says joining RT\u00c9 has already changed his perception: stumbling across the Fair City set and passing The Late Late Show studio has taught him how \u201cthis stuff matters to people\u201d. <\/p>\n \u201cWe could have bad days,\u201d he says of Off the Ball, \u201cand people would be mean to you in the YouTube comments, or they would go on Reddit and destroy you, and it\u2019s like, \u2018oof\u2019. But here, people are under much more scrutiny \u2013 you could end up in an Oireachtas Committee really easily.\u201d <\/p>\n Gilroy rose to become Off the Ball\u2019s managing director, one of the loftiest roles in Irish sports media. Why leave? <\/p>\n \u201cI was kind of edging back from presenting,\u201d he says, recounting a conversation with a former colleague in 2023 who told him: \u201cAnybody can be a media executive, but not everybody can be a presenter. Don\u2019t do it.\u201d <\/p>\n He went to the 2024 Olympics as a reporter for Off the Ball, which he says went \u201crelatively well\u201d but would have gone much better if he was not simultaneously dealing with the various commercial, marketing and HR issues thrown up by his executive role. But given he was the boss at Off the Ball, why not change his own role rather than leave altogether? <\/p>\n \u201cPotentially I could,\u201d he says, \u201cbut I kind of felt like I\u2019d done everything that I wanted to do at Off the Ball. We\u2019d been through that cycle of building different teams and were entering into a brand refresh, and I was not sure I had the appetite to go again on this.\u201d <\/p>\n The first team of Ken Early, Eoin McDevitt, Ciar\u00e1n Murphy, Mark Horgan and Simon Hick abruptly left in 2013 after a dispute with station bosses over scheduling, founding their own podcast, Second Captains<\/a>. Their exit was initially so contentious that some regular Off the Ball contributors refused to join Gilroy on air as he was frantically pulling together a show for that evening. Gilroy says that whenever he meets any of the quintet now, relations are \u201cincredibly cordial and warm\u201d. <\/p>\n![\"Ger](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/6EF6BDOATRAW3DJY23DLE6ZRQY.JPG\")
Ger Gilroy has an ambitious vision for his new podcast Howler. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw\/The Irish Times <\/p>\n![\"Ger](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/DTEVCKXYNRGPDCIYW5CQHUPWE4.JPG\")
Ger Gilroy’s focus is now on presenting. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw\/The Irish Times <\/p>\n