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.

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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!

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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.

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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.

It's another pick from the Netfllix "Untold" series for the "Documentary of the Week". It features Rachel Gunn "Raygun" and her appearance in the breakdancing competions at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Mike, Elis and Steff talk about her rise to the Olympic stage, how someone who described herself as a "dorky white woman who's an academic" ended up being globally humiliated after her performance at the Games. 

Steff Documentary: Raygun, Breaking Badly https://www.netflix.com/watch/82048542?trackId=284616272&tctx=NaN%2C1%2Cc5ae2730-71a4-43c2-b000-9cd65f7e67a9%2Cc5ae2730-71a4-43c2-b000-9cd65f7e67a9%7C%3DeyJwYWdlSWQiOiJlYzBlZjRhYS0zNGE4LTQ4NzUtYjZiNC01MGZlMzk0Y2NmOWMvMS8vdW50b2xkLzAvMCIsImxvY2FsU2VjdGlvbklkIjoiMiJ9%2C%2C%2C%2C%2C82048542%2CVideo%3A82048542%2CminiDpPlayButton 

Elis Book: Football in Sun and Shadow https://link.amazon/B0flqyW7r

🛍️ 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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Welcome to another week in the world of Mike Bubbins, Elis James and Steff Garrero at the Socially Distant Sports Bar. 

If you've ever had a day that promised so much and turned into a living hell then you will sympathise with Elis' attempt to watch Swansea City at Southampton. It's straight out of a bad sitcom. Mike reveals why he thinks he has Phil Bennett's Barbarians blazer in his bar which leads to reminiscing about Kim Cattrall on the back of a motor bike, there is a connection....honestly. 

The lads chat about Katie Taylor boxing in front of a sell-out crowd at Croke Park, some rugby nostalgia from 1953 and they talk about the great Sean Fitzpatrick, one of the legenfs of rugby union.

Mike:Sean and Ardie

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DclpZm0NIkN/?stkn=MXFjb3k0enRkejVyNA==

Steff: Katie Taylor  https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/boxing/articles/c5yjr8pp0jwo 

https://www.instagram.com/reel/Dc63ebVDiiV/?stkn=MXdwZXg2bXN2YXZseQ==

https://www.instagram.com/reel/Dc62YnfoWEO/?stkn=MWpqY2V2bWVpcmV4bw==

https://www.instagram.com/reel/Dc65DgVJPEt/?stkn=cXE3ZnpyZ3k4azM=

Elis Cardiff beat New Zealand, 1953

https://www.instagram.com/reel/Dc1cKJYILtn/?stkn=NXhnNWxmcDl4a Wg=

🛍️ 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 287: Fabio's Goose"

🛍️ 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 back to this week’s Socially Distant Sports Bar with Elis James, Mike Bubbins and Steff Garrero.

This week, Steff and Elis are attempting to have a perfectly sensible conversation about a sports documentary and a book.

Unfortunately, Mike has decided to spend much of that conversation sending them an increasingly large number of photographs of himself dressed as a cowboy while very clearly not working as a cowboy.

Cowboy at home. Cowboy out and about. Cowboy going about his normal business. Cowboy, potentially, at the Little Tesco.

Between incoming photographs, we do actually manage to discuss some sport.

Documentary

Mike: Untold — The Testimony of Vince Young

The Netflix Untold series turns its attention to former college football superstar and NFL quarterback Vince Young, looking back at his extraordinary rise, the expectations placed upon him and what happened when one of the biggest names in American sport found himself struggling away from the field.

https://www.netflix.com/title/82020375

Book

Steff: Cyclettes by Tree Abraham

Steff brings in Tree Abraham’s Cyclettes, a beautifully unusual book about a life spent cycling — part memoir, part visual diary and part exploration of the places, people and experiences we encounter when travelling around on two wheels.

https://link.amazon/B0bPaGwN8

Sport, cycling, fame, expectation and a quite unreasonable number of photographs of Mike Bubbins wearing a cowboy hat.

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.

The Rizla Stadium

Welcome to this week’s Socially Distant Sports Bar with Elis James, Mike Bubbins and Steff Garrero.

This week Mike reports back from a less-than-luxurious holiday rental in Liverpool, while Steff comes up with a potentially foolproof plan to solve the financial problems in Welsh rugby using nothing more than some enormous halogen lamps and the seemingly limitless supply of Welsh rain.

We’re sure the WRU will be in touch.

There’s also plenty of actual sport. Mike celebrates the great Billy Boston, Steff brings in Jonathan Agnew and Andy Zaltzman, and Elis heads back to 1990 for Wales v England.

As ever, those are merely the starting points.

Clips

Mike: Billy Boston

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DcdYebStiy1/?igsi=ODAxNHRraHp6aGo2

Steff: Aggers and Zaltzman

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DcrRgvwoWR-/?igsi=bTB6eXc4ZTUzZW5w

https://www.instagram.com/reel/Dcsm5sdO_oZ/?igsi=cWp3eDZ1cDN4MzJh

Elis: Wales v England 1990

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DcS4CkQoN-0/?igsi=MXVnejY5MjlybmVhYQ==

There’s more from Elis, Mike and Steff later this week, and Bonus Club subscribers can get the extra episode too.

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 252: Just Put A Towel Over My Head"

🛍️ 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.