Rian Bailey, a 21-year-old journalism and new media UL student from Sligo, has recently set up a podcast titled “Ball Talk”.
The show includes a wide variety of guest speakers from the sporting world who all bring their knowledge of different sports to create a variety of topics spoken about on the podcast.
Rian always wanted to start up a podcast but never got around to doing it, until the lockdowns allowed him extra time to come up with content and create the podcast itself.
“It was April last year and I was kind of thinking to myself, is this course right for me? Then I decided how else will I find out if it’s right or not if I don’t try.”
Rian’s first guest was Enda Smith, the Roscommon Football Captain, and the response that came from it was huge.
Beginning with a topic he knew loads about, Rian made the first 10 episodes about footballers, hurlers and S&C coaches.
He, then, was lucky enough to get in contact with the ‘3 Bucks Left’ who were three of the men originally from the Hardy Bucks.
“We met in a handball alley and recorded the podcast from there and it was brilliant, from then on I decided to record two podcasts a week one sports-related and the other more comedic with different guests like actors or singers.”
The podcast has gone from strength to strength since its creation a year ago.
Many of the guests would have been people Rian had looked up to growing up in Sligo.
Sligo GAA footballers Alan Costello and Brendan Egan have been on ‘Ball Talk’ with Rian as well as many other stars from across the island.
“It started out as something I would do weekly for 10 weeks just to see how it went and now, I’m after doing 154 episodes”.
Rian like many other students across the country has been affected by Covid-19 when his placement back in September was done remotely.
He started in Ocean FM doing trial days of news reading and quickly moved into the sports department.
The podcast started to earn some benefits for Rian as Ocean FM in Sligo could see the experience he had gained from starting the podcast during the lockdown.
“It helped me a lot on my placement as I was able to go straight into doing news bulletins, live streams of matches and live commentating. It made me look forward to coming back into UL this year.”
If you want to check out Rian’s social media or podcast all are listed below:
Instagram: ball_talk_podcast
YouTube: Ball Talk with Rian Bailey
Molly Cantwell 
Olivia O'Dwyer 
Joe Costigan