On this week’s show, Gavin and Sinéad are joined by The 42's GAA correspondent Declan Bogue to get into the details of Revenue’s audit of GAA county boards.

Why are Revenue targeting the GAA, and what specifically are they looking at? Is this matter likely to extend to under-the-table payments to managers?

How seriously is this being taken by the GAA at central level, and how worried are the various county boards? And what are the best and worst-case scenario outcomes - could the ramifications of this audit change the GAA forever?

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On this week’s show, Gavin and Sinéad explore the controversy around the Premier League’s Rainbow Laces campaign, a long-running visibility and inclusivity campaign in support of the LGBTQ+ community which two Premier League captains and the Manchester United team chose not to support fully last week.

Is the campaign doing more harm than good? Why is the men’s football so hostile to the LGBTQ+ community, where the women’s game is much more inclusive? Is it unfair to focus on individual footballers, when the sport as a whole does not stand up for the values it claims to hold? Is this story indicative of a wider retreat and regression on LGTBQ+ issues? And, ultimately, can sport really be the inclusive force for progressive values we sometimes like to think it can be?

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Is Gerry Hutch an exponent of sportswashing? Are Sinn Fein the FAI of politics, to Fianna Fáil’s GAA? And why do all count centres look like Ireland circa 1992?

Gav, a “humble sports correspondent”, puts these and other questions to Sinead, who had led The Journal’s coverage of GE24, and must therefore be in a good place to offer some general election player ratings for the party leaders, and a lot more insight besides to a man who has noted an increased sportification of how politics is covered in the media.

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On Friday, a jury found that Conor McGregor sexually assaulted Nikita Hand in a Dublin hotel in 2018.

Gavin and Sinéad discuss the case on today’s show, and some of the reasons why the jury may have come to their decision. They also discuss the likelihood of McGregor being granted an appeal, and salute the astonishing strength and bravery of Nikita Hand.

They also chart McGregor’s rise and fall: why did he become so popular in Ireland in the first place? And when did that popularity first begin to wane?

Plus, why did McGregor gravitate to politics, and does this case truly end the possibility of him running for president?

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Gavin and Sinead discuss what happens when a totemic leader reaches the end.

Should they be kept close to the team, or even be given a bespoke role like Johnny Sexton? Or is a clean break as in the case of Liverpool and Jurgen Klopp or Bill Shankly preferable?

Could Sexton be inhibiting the next wave of Irish out-halves, in the same manner that Alex Ferguson’s lingering presence at Old Trafford weighed heavily on successive managers?

Or is it totally different for a player, and would Ireland be mad not to keep Sexon’s rugby brain in house?

The pair debate the merits and otherwise of a dominant, era-defining character having a say in the next era. And they wonder what a young Sexton would say if faced with a similar set of circumstances when it was time for him to make the Ireland 10 jersey his own.

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Was Katie Taylor the just winner of last night’s fight for the ages with Amanda Serrano?

Was the majesty of Taylor-Serrano II diminished by its staging as part of a farcical event featuring Jake Paul and Mike Tyson?

Was the fight so good as to deem such concerns irrelevant?

Might Netflix now seek to stage Taylor-Serrano III as a headlining event, minus the novelty sideshow involving a YouTube personality and boxer who hit his peak 38 years ago?

These questions and more are answered by Gavan Casey, our man in Dallas, who caught up with Gavin Cooney and Sinead O’Carroll this afternoon.

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Why are Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano fighting on the undercard of the ‘freakshow’ that is Mike Tyson versus Jake Paul?

Gavin Cooney and Sinead O’Carroll are joined from Dallas by Gavan Casey, and the trio discuss the rise of novelty ‘boxing’ events.

They differ on whether Taylor is compromising her legacy by taking her place on such a card. Should the Bray fighter have turned her back on this spectacle, or would she be mad to have turned down the Netflix riches; a purse that dwarfs anything she has earned before in her stellar career?

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WITH IRELAND KICKING off their November rugby internationals against New Zealand on Friday night, Gav and Sinéad debate the extent to which Ireland can really be called Rugby Country. Is rugby really a national obsession?

The popularity of the provinces and the Irish national team is beyond question, but how has that fanbase grown given so few people play the game? Given the fact the Irish team is dominated by players produced by private schools, can the team be said to represent the country at large? And if not, does that even matter?

The pair sift through some of the reasons underpinning the sport’s appeal -the violence, the success, the opportunities it affords for drinking - explain the amount of media coverage afforded to the sport, and ponder what, if anything, the sport’s popularity says about class divisions in Irish society.

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AS THE LEAGUE of Ireland season draws towards its nerve-shredding final day, Gav and Sinead discuss the boom in popularity of domestic football.

Why have crowds increased so significantly this decade? And can the rising numbers be leveraged into that most elusive and long-desired of things: a thriving football industry in Ireland.

The pair talk about what needs to happen next to make that aspiration real, from improved stadiums with greater capacity, to television deals with major international networks and an academy structure which provides a conveyor belt of elite level talent which can further improve the standard of the league and lead to more hefty transfer fees from wealthy overseas clubs.

With Shelbourne one win away from an unlikely title triumph, the impact of Damien Duff is examined. What is it about the League of Ireland that so energises one of Ireland’s greatest ever players? He says he will never manage an Irish club other than Shelbourne, but could he step into the Ireland manager’s chair in future, despite his past differences of opinion with the FAI?

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There is an election on the horizon - even though the government won’t tell us when it will be.

Whenever the official election campaign swings into action, though, it’s a near-certainty that no politician will be asked about sport. Today Gavin and Sinéad wonder why that is the case: can we really be said to care about sport in any real way if it is never raised as an election topic?

Gavin and Sinéad explain why Ireland’s parish pump politics has led to inequality in access to sports facilities in different parts of the country, and ask whether it is now changing for the better.

Also, why don’t we invest more money in sport? And has the news media’s move to cover politics like sport caused more harm than good?

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