Second Captains, the artists formerly known as the Off the Ball 5, will make their return to the airwaves from next week in a series of shows in partnership with The Irish Times.

The multi-award winning team of Eoin McDevitt, Ken Early, Ciaran Murphy, Simon Hick and Mark Horgan – who parted company with Newstalk two months ago having presented the Off the Ball show for a number of years – return to broadcasting as Second Captains @ The Irish Times.

Second Captains @ The Irish Times will be free to stream and podcast worldwide every Tuesday on irishtimes.com.

“We’re delighted to be teaming up with The Irish Times,” McDevitt said this morning. “Our gardening leave ended a couple of days ago and being in the constant company of four other men has become extremely tiresome. For me getting back to work on Second Captains @ The Irish Times can’t come quick enough as I look forward to getting my relationship with the lads back on a strictly professional footing.”

Over the next few weeks we have the Heineken and Amlin Cup finals in Dublin, the Champions League final at Wembley, and the first match between England and the Republic of Ireland for nearly 20 years. Second Captains will be covering all of them alongside the Irish Times sports team.

This month, the only place to hear the Second Captains is with irishtimes.com