Podcast Ep11: Leicester, Champions League Return, Tiger’s Caddy, Is Rugby Dying?

Show Notes for Season Ticket Episode 11

Welcome to the Season Ticket Podcast. It’s episode 11, and it is ready for streaming or download by clicking the play button above, so give it a listen!

You can follow us on Twitter @seasonticketpod and facebook.com/seasonticketpod. Also don’t forget to rate and review the show on iTunes if you get a second.

Weekend Football

We review Cob’s picks for the weekend which were as follows:

Newcastle to beat Chelsea at 7/1

Leicester to beat Arsenal at 21/5

Spurs to beat Man City at 13/5

Only Spurs to beat Man City came good of those three, but 1/3 is above his usual win rate! Also, will defeat to Arsenal take the wind out of Leicester’s sails, or can they keep it up until the end?

We take a look at goings on in Spain and wonder how long Gary Neville will stick around at Valencia, and briefly preview this week’s Champions League last-16 fixtures.

Also, could fatigue be an issue for Barcelona? They’ve played 7 more games than Real Madrid since shortly before Christmas. Note: At the time of the conversation their absolute destruction of Celta Vigo hadn’t happened yet!

Pebble Beach Pro Am and Tiger

The pro-am is a bit of a sideshow tournament with all of the amateurs hanging around, stinking up the joint for the first few days. Despite the very strong field the tournament didn’t really throw up anything too exciting other than a resurgent Phil Mickelson (who eventually finished 2nd)

In Tiger Woods news, there was interesting article on ESPN this week with Woods’ caddy Joe LaCava who gives his thoughts on what lies ahead for Tiger, and why he’s waiting patiently for his boss to get back to work.

You can read said interview here: http://espn.go.com/golf/story/_/id/14727660/joe-lacava-patiently-waiting-home-tiger-woods-return

Six Nations and the Fate of Rugby

We welcome rugby aficionado Darragh Murphy to the studio to give is his thoughts on the weekend’s Six Nations fixtures. There’s a pretty detailed analysis of the Ireland-France game and what lies ahead for the Irish squad for the next number of years. We also talk through the Scotland-Wales and England-Italy.

That leads on to a pretty interesting discussion about the state of rugby as a whole in 2016. We’re getting less than half the number of tries per game in the Six Nations than we were 15 years ago and very few line breaks. The scrum is taking up almost a quarter of the match and the injuries are becoming more frequent and more serious with each passing year. Does rugby need saving, and if so what can be done to save it?

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