The Socially Distant Sports Bar

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.