The Socially Distant Sports Bar

Welcome to Pint-Sized Distant Pod.

We've been back through our archive of episodes and we've selected our favourite stories, anecdotes and funny bits.

If you're new to the pod, then feel free to use these as a jump off point to find your way around our earlier episodes.

This clip is taken from "Episode 160: Parking The Bus"

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This week’s Socially Distant Sports Bar with Mike Bubbins, Elis James and Steff Garrero sees Mike choosing the Documentary of the Week.

And it’s a story that took more than two decades to reach its conclusion.

Documentary of the Week

Mike: Rory McIlroy — The Masters Wait

Rory McIlroy: The Masters Wait traces McIlroy’s relationship with Augusta National from watching Tiger Woods win there in 1997 to arriving as a 21-year-old capable of winning the tournament himself.

What follows is a story of talent, expectation, heartbreak and missed opportunities as the Masters becomes the one prize McIlroy needs to complete golf’s career Grand Slam.

The documentary explores the mental burden of repeatedly returning to Augusta, the weight of global expectation and the ticking clock as McIlroy arrives for his 17th attempt to win the Green Jacket.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/video/detail/B0GPXXCNN2

Book of the Week

Steff: It’s Only Drowning by David Litt

Steff’s choice takes us from the golf course into the water with David Litt’s It’s Only Drowning — a funny, thoughtful memoir about learning to surf and the peculiar combination of fear, failure and obsession that comes with trying to get better at something that regularly dumps you into the sea.

https://link.amazon/B0ail8xno

For more of Steff’s book recommendations and reviews, follow @distantbookshelf on Instagram.

Owain’s Challenge

Steff’s mate Owain from The Running Channel is taking on Ephraim’s North to South Wales Challenge.

If you’d like to support him and donate:

https://givestar.io/gs/ephraims-north-to-south-wales-challenge?utm_source=ig&utm_medium=social&utm_content=link_in_bio&fbclid=PAZnRzaAUwxp9wZG9mAmZkaWQWUO464ncYiar-yUbqQJHbEkGRzIhKsmV4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDzEyNDAyNDU3NDI4NzQxNAABp2wZb_2BYw_cnAko3qNDsPSb0Kvz9zL8TAmio-e0r7ROcd_X1eSCY2D_YQFh_aem_3rXA_KnYlcle250i9Kk5dg

Golf, surfing and running the length of Wales. An unusually sporty second half by our standards.

Thanks for listening.

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We’ve launched a brand new merch store — mugs, hoodies, prints and more!

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Another week in the life of the world’s most fearless podcasters at The Socially Distant Sports Bar, as Mike Bubbins, Elis James and Steff Garrero once again manage to just brush the shoulder of actual sports chat.

Mike tells the tale of an unexpected night on the town with Chemical Tommy — and the fairly inevitable consequences — while the boys tackle one of the great technological questions of our age:

If AI is so clever, why can’t it make your laptop turn on faster?

Eventually, sport does make an appearance.

In the clips this week, Elis brings us the universally funny sight of a bloke getting kicked in the bollocks, Mike returns — again — to Vince Lombardi for a genuinely inspiring story, and Steff has the sheer, uncomplicated joy of a kid discovering that running very, very fast is brilliant.

Clips

Elis: Bloke Gets It In The Bollocks

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DdhKiJ_uUAc/?stkn=cTh1aGVrY2Ftb3li

Mike: Lombardi. Again.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DdcOe-7gIcq/?stkn=MXNuM3ZpNGJjZHd5ag==

Steff: Fast Kid

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DdNUm5SARql/?stkn=aXZyZ2lrM3U5N29m

Chemical Tommy. Artificial intelligence. Vince Lombardi. And a kick in the bollocks.

Donate to Steff’s mate Owain from The Running Channel https://givestar.io/gs/ephraims-north-to-south-wales-challenge?utm_source=ig&utm_medium=social&utm_content=link_in_bio&fbclid=PAZnRzaAUwxp9wZG9mAmZkaWQWUO464ncYiar-yUbqQJHbEkGRzIhKsmV4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDzEyNDAyNDU3NDI4NzQxNAABp2wZb_2BYw_cnAko3qNDsPSb0Kvz9zL8TAmio-e0r7ROcd_X1eSCY2D_YQFh_aem_3rXA_KnYlcle250i9Kk5dg

Sport. Sort of.

Thanks for listening.

🛍️ NEW MERCH ALERT

We’ve launched a brand new merch store — mugs, hoodies, prints and more!

If you fancy supporting the pod that way, head here 👇

🛒 sdsb2025.myshopify.com

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

Welcome to Pint-Sized Distant Pod.

We've been back through our archive of episodes and we've selected our favourite stories, anecdotes and funny bits.

If you're new to the pod, then feel free to use these as a jump off point to find your way around our earlier episodes.

This clip is taken from "Episode 120: That's Earnie From the Two Ronnies"

🛍️ NEW MERCH ALERT

We’ve launched a brand new merch store — mugs, hoodies, prints and more!

If you fancy supporting the pod that way, head here 👇

🛒 sdsb2025.myshopify.com

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

Tom Craine is still here

Which is excellent news for us and slightly less good news for anyone hoping this podcast might eventually become a tightly controlled discussion about sport.

This is Part 2 of our guest episode with the comedian, writer and co-host — with Elis James and Chris Scull — of Oh What A Time...

Tom has also launched Last Match Then Bed, a new podcast dedicated to the game responsible for millions of people knowing far too much about obscure Scandinavian footballers: Championship Manager.

Having got ourselves warmed up in Part 1, the conversation continues through football, the 1990s, sporting nostalgia and the moments that seemed completely normal at the time but become increasingly peculiar the further away from them we get.

Including:

Kinkladze v Southampton, 1996

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/fkVWNB0Vt3Q

Diana Ross’s World Cup penalty, 1994

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAKsGT9-XB0

World Cup Balloon Keepy-Uppies

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6r-gedgyZXI

If you haven’t listened to Part 1, start there first. This will make slightly more sense.

And if two parts of Tom Craine still aren’t enough, we kept some of the conversation back for Bonus Club on Apple Podcasts.

Go and find Last Match Then Bed wherever you get your podcasts.

🛍️ NEW MERCH ALERT

We’ve launched a brand new merch store — mugs, hoodies, prints and more!

If you fancy supporting the pod that way, head here 👇

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

We’ve got a guest in The Socially Distant Sports Bar this week as comedian, writer, podcaster and Elis James’ other podcast friend Tom Craine joins Elis, Mike Bubbins and Steff Garrero.

Tom already spends a significant amount of his working life with Elis on the brilliant history podcast Oh What A Time..., alongside Chris Scull. Now he’s launching another podcast based around one of the great threats to productivity, relationships and exam results of the late 1990s: Championship Manager.

Last Match Then Bed sees Tom return to the legendary Championship Manager 97/98 database, attempting to manage his way to glory with the help of a different celebrity assistant manager each week.

So naturally, we get stuck into football, nostalgia and the sporting moments that live permanently in your brain.

Across our chat with Tom:

Kinkladze v Southampton, 1996

One of those goals that seemed perfectly reasonable when you were playing Sensible Soccer, but considerably harder when attempted by an actual human being.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/fkVWNB0Vt3Q

Diana Ross at the 1994 World Cup Opening Ceremony

An enormous stadium. A global superstar. A penalty. A goal designed to split apart. What could possibly go wrong?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAKsGT9-XB0

World Cup Balloon Keepy-Uppies

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6r-gedgyZXI

This is Part 1 of our chat with Tom.

Part 2 follows on Friday — and if you want the extra material we kept back from the conversation, Bonus Club subscribers on Apple Podcasts can hear that too.

🛍️ NEW MERCH ALERT

We’ve launched a brand new merch store — mugs, hoodies, prints and more!

If you fancy supporting the pod that way, head here 👇

🛒 sdsb2025.myshopify.com

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

Welcome to Pint-Sized Distant Pod.

We've been back through our archive of episodes and we've selected our favourite stories, anecdotes and funny bits.

If you're new to the pod, then feel free to use these as a jump off point to find your way around our earlier episodes.

This clip is taken from "Episode 123: The Party Line"

🛍️ NEW MERCH ALERT

We’ve launched a brand new merch store — mugs, hoodies, prints and more!

If you fancy supporting the pod that way, head here 👇

🛒 sdsb2025.myshopify.com

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

The Special One

In this week’s The Socially Distant Sports Bar, Elis James, Mike Bubbins and Steff Garrero have a documentary and book which take us into two very different stories of coaching, leadership and sporting history.

Documentary of the Week

Elis: Mourinho

Elis chooses Part 1 of the new Netflix documentary about José Mourinho, tracing his journey from working alongside Bobby Robson at Barcelona to announcing himself to English football with that extraordinary first spell at Chelsea.

Before the fallouts, sackings and rather more complicated chapters that would follow, there was the young Mourinho: ambitious, charismatic, tactically obsessive and rapidly becoming The Special One.

https://www.netflix.com/title/81762073

Book of the Week

Mike: Rugby’s Forgotten Black Leader by Tony Collins

Mike brings in Tony Collins’ fascinating account of Roy Francis, one of the great overlooked figures in British sporting history.

Born in Cardiff and raised in Brynmawr, Francis went on to play rugby league for Wigan in the late 1930s before moving into coaching. At Hull, he became the first Black professional head coach in British sport, pioneering new approaches to coaching and training while confronting the racism of the era.

It’s a remarkable Welsh story, a rugby league story and an important piece of British sporting history that deserves to be far better known.

https://link.amazon/B0azGPvXt

Two very different coaches. Two very different eras. And plenty for Elis, Mike and Steff to get stuck into.

Thanks for listening.

🛍️ NEW MERCH ALERT

We’ve launched a brand new merch store — mugs, hoodies, prints and more!

If you fancy supporting the pod that way, head here 👇

🛒 sdsb2025.myshopify.com

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

Incredible scenes at The Socially Distant Sports Bar this week with Mike Bubbins, Elis James and Steff Garrero.

Elis’ talk of his “vivacious vicar” has everyone reaching for the Cambridge Dictionary, Steff self-diagnoses a nasty case of “anti-trapezius syndrome”, and Mike reminisces about the days when he was quite literally a shadow of his former self.

Eventually, some sport forces its way through the door.

We discover that if you want to play American Football, it’s apparently much better to “be a dawg” than a cat. Mike explains exactly how he’d have brought down Jonah Lomu — which will presumably come as a relief to the international rugby players who spent years trying to work that out — and Josh Pugh delivers a magnificent football manager’s team talk featuring the immortal line:

“We were allowed to fire live ammunition at each other.”

Clips

Mike: Be A Dawg

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DdAd9iNS5tx/?stkn=b3ZsM3ZuZDVwcDdw

Steff: The Gaffa — Josh Pugh

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DWf6MoWRko1/?stkn=aG02cjA1anllOHVw

Elis: Jonah Lomu Being Fallible

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DcbZC3bI9T4/?stkn=MTVhdjZvN2NtZDlxOA

Three clips. One vivacious vicar. One entirely unverified muscular condition. And Mike Bubbins finally solving the Jonah Lomu problem roughly thirty years too late.

Thanks for listening.

🛍️ NEW MERCH ALERT

We’ve launched a brand new merch store — mugs, hoodies, prints and more!

If you fancy supporting the pod that way, head here 👇

🛒 sdsb2025.myshopify.com

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

Welcome to Pint-Sized Distant Pod.

We've been back through our archive of episodes and we've selected our favourite stories, anecdotes and funny bits.

If you're new to the pod, then feel free to use these as a jump off point to find your way around our earlier episodes.

This clip is taken from "Episode 289: Snoring"

🛍️ NEW MERCH ALERT

We’ve launched a brand new merch store — mugs, hoodies, prints and more!

If you fancy supporting the pod that way, head here 👇

🛒 sdsb2025.myshopify.com

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