It’s now exactly two weeks on from when we got club membership for the podcast up and running on Patreon. It’s been a rather hectic fortnight for us, during which we’ve put a significant amount of bonus content online and sorted out other issues relating to the service too.

We’ve been blown away by the number of people who have come on board as club members over the first two weeks and, if you’re one of these, then you’ll know already what we’ve been up to. If you haven’t taken the plunge yet, then what follows may be of interest to you in terms of finding out more about what’s on offer to you as a podcast club member.

We got going with the second part of Mike Finnerty’s in-depth interview with Colm Boyle. The first part – which is available for free on all the usual platforms – covers the final two years of Colm’s inter-county career but in Part 2 the Davitts man talks about how his development as a footballer and how he became one of the great Mayo players of the modern era.

The Colm Boyle episode went online on the Sunday, just under two weeks ago. Then, that same night, news broke that Oisín Mullin wouldn’t, after all, be going to Australia. Mike, Rob and I scrambled rapidly to record a podcast episode reacting to the news, which went online less than two hours after the official announcement had come out.

On Friday last week, we released our second bonus episode for club members. Mike was at the helm for this one, where he was joined by Ger Flanagan and Stephen Drake for a chat about Oisín Mullin, Stephen Coen, Aidan O’Shea and more. The lads ended up have a go at picking the Mayo team for the Donegal game.

On Tuesday this week, Mike, Rob and I were back with another bonus episode, which we’d recorded past midnight the night before. This episode kicked off our build-up to the Donegal game and it also included audio from the press event James Horan had held with local media the previous night.

On Wednesday, club members got early access to the free Donegal preview episode, which then went up on all other platforms for free on Thursday morning. This one, in which Rob and I were joined by Billy Joe Padden and Colm Keys, also had some bonus AOB chat at the end, which was only included in the Patreon version.

Yesterday afternoon, Mike was back with a ‘Here Comes the Weekend’ bonus episode where, along with Ed McGreal, he had a great chat with ex-Donegal player Eamon McGee. Mike and Ed then ran the rule over the Mayo team selection for tomorrow’s game.

Aside from all that bonus podcast content, we’ve also been busy over the last two weeks sorting out the Discord match-day chat function. This is already starting to get active, with plenty of club members signed up for it, and we’re looking forward to our first match-day chat getting going in earnest tomorrow. I think it’s going to be fun and, over the longer-term, this could well be where the comments facility here on the blog will eventually transition to.

Club membership on Patreon costs €5 plus VAT per month so around €2.50 plus VAT has given our members access to all we’ve been up to over the last fortnight. While we can’t promise that we’ll maintain this blistering pace over the long-term – we definitely won’t – what we can promise is that club members will continue to get their money’s worth and more from us for as long as they stick with us.

We’re indebted to the wide range of great contributors we’ve been able to call upon and our aim is to continue to bring you a varied range of interesting, informed voices over the coming months. We’re also very lucky to have the services of Ger Duffy as our podcast editor/producer and all-round IT expert.

As the season cranks up over the coming weeks, club members can expect to see plenty of new content coming their way. On match day, we’ll have a ‘Final Whistle’ podcast episode that’ll be recorded right after the game and which will be online soon after, we’ll have a bonus match review episode out the day after and then the usual review/preview episode, which will remain free to all, out in midweek. Then it’ll be ‘Here Comes the Weekend’ time again.

We’re very happy with how the first two weeks have gone and we’re looking forward hugely to the weeks and months ahead, where we’ll have plenty more new content for our ever-expanding club membership. If you fancy joining the club, where you’ll get immediate access to all the bonus material made available to date as well as all the new content that’s to come, you can sign up here. If you do, you’ll be very welcome aboard.