The Good, the Bad & the Rugby was not always guaranteed to be a success. It was launched at an inauspicious time — 2018 — when a show about rugby was not really an itch that needed scratching, even though the sport was the third biggest in the world. And this was pre-Covid, of course, when the usual rhythms of life — commuting, socialising — meant that our collective headspace was well occupied, and the podcasting phenomenon was still in its infancy.
The three presenters — Alex Payne, James Haskell and Mike Tindall — were able to cut their teeth in the medium at what Payne (I think he is the ‘Good’) refers to as the “start of the hockey stick” in podcasting’s remarkable growth. Payne had 20 years’ experience covering rugby at Sky Sports, which intersected with the playing careers of his co-hosts — the lovable bull-in-a-china-shop Haskell and the 2003 World Cup winner Tindall, the man with the greatest mother-in-law in the land (Princess Anne, a favourite of The Rake’s).
Between them, they amalgamate the essentials for engaging content: witty repartee,
