The Offside Line Podcast

This week Barney and Burnsy have an exclusive sit down with Pierre Schoeman to discuss Edinburgh’s recent turnaround in fortunes, his pride in playing for the club and the city and his ambitions with the Lions. They also talk to Emily Harrower from Scottish Building Society about their community give-back programme, analyse Edinburgh and Glasgow’s performances in the URC, Scotland Women’s game against England in the Six Nations, the Scotland U18 teams’ performances, all the action from Silver Saturday at Murrayfield, the Ayr vs Currie Premiership play-off match, speculation around Steve Tandy taking over at Wales and Johnny Sexton’s appointment as an assistant coach with the Lions. For more information on Scottish Building Society’s programmes (including g Tackle Maths), check out their social media channels and the Edinburgh Rugby website:https://edinburghrugby.org/community/take-part-in-tackle-maths/https://www.scottishbs.co.uk/news-media/we-re-helping-school-pupils-across-scotland-tackle-maths

This week’s episode is recorded live at the Hive Stadium, so please accept out apologies for the background noise. We were covering a brilliant event for Edinburgh and the Scottish Building Society, but you’ll have to wait until next week to hear all those bits and pieces. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy this week’s show.This week Barney and Burnsy delve into the horror show that was Glasgow’s Champions Cup quarter-final defeat in Dublin, Edinburgh’s harum-scarum victory over the Bulls in the Challenge Cup, Scotland’s disappointing loss to Italy in the Women’s Six Nations and they preview Silver Saturday and the second Premiership play-off semi-final.

Barney and Burnsy get the show back on the road after a week’s break (Burnsy is still picking himself off the floor after a vets’ tour to northern Italy) to discuss Glasgow and Edinburgh’s success in thelast-16 of the Champions and Challenge Cups, preview their quarter-final fixtures this weekend. They also dive into the third round of the Women’s Six Nations and discuss the Premiership at length, challenging listeners to come up with a new season structure for domestic Scottish club rugby – please email your thoughts on this to contact@theoffsideline.com

Barney and Burnsy dive into their overall reflections on the men’s Six Nations then buoy themselves with the action from the women’s edition, give their thoughts on Gregor Townsend’s future, discuss all things URC and the Men’s Premiership and look back on 100 years at Murrayfield.

Barney, Mark Palmer and Craig Watson call in from the pitch at the Stade de France to preview the final game of the 2025 Six Nations. Can Scotland pull off a miracle? And where is the title going?

We’re delighted to be joined by the great Duncan Hodge, who among many other playing and coaching accolades, won 26 caps at fly-half for Scotland and now runs Accelerate Rugby: High performance training. You can find out more at www.acceleraterugby.comThe boys get stuck into analysing Scotland’s Six Nations victory over Wales – what was good, what was bad and where it all nearly went horribly wrong – and look forward to the final round showdown with France in Paris.

Barney and Burnsy preview this weekend’s Six Nations matches with a focus on Scotland hosting Wales and review the latest action in the URC and the Men’s Premiership. What do you make of their predictions? Soothsayers or stabbing around wildly in the dark?

Barney and Burnsy get together to pick over the bones of Scotland's match at Twickenham, chat Wales-Ireland, Italy-France, the Under-20s, the Prem and the URC. Enjoy!

While Burnsy is stuck in Edinburgh, Barney is ensconced at Twickenham with Mark Palmer and Craig Watson and all four come together to preview the 2025 Calcutta Cup and examine the Wales-Ireland and Italy-France matches.