It's been a long year of sports from World Cups and another set of enthralling All Ireland Championships to controversies at home and abroad.

That gave Off The Ball plenty of food for thought in 2014 and a huge number of issues to examine and pick apart.

With the year coming to a close and 2015 on the horizon, the members of our sports team picked the pieces and interviews from the show that moved them most during the year.

 

Ger Gilroy

My favourite piece from this year has to be my interview with Betsy Andreu as a companion piece to the Emma O'Reilly interview. 

 

Joe Molloy

My personal highlight would have to be the interview I did with former Tottenham winger David Ginola, where he talks about the emotions of the curtailing of his France career.

 

Colm Parkinson

When we previewed the Dublin v Donegal semi-final, Brendan Devenney made a fairly bold prediction that worked out very nicely. 

 

Nathan Murphy

A month before Kerry won back the All Ireland Donal Dineen gave us some great tales of what makes Kerry football so great, basically this is an tribute to the often forgotten club-game. 

It was part of a panel with Shane Curran and Eoin Butler.

 

Michael McCarthy

My favourite piece of the year was one we did with Francis Fitzgibbon and Simon Murphy who is the club vice-president and player for rugby team Emerald Warriors. 

The comments of Neil Francis caused quite a stir back in February. We thought it was important to hear from gay sportspeople in Ireland and find out about their experiences first hand. Francis and Simon provided an articulate and relevant rebuttal to the controversial opinions of Francis. 

 

Donny Mahoney

I really enjoyed this interview with the great sportswriter Gary Smith of Sports Illustrated on his retirement. It was a really interesting discussion on the craft and evolution of sportswriting. 

 

Cian Murtagh

I chose an interview with David Bentley because it tells another side of professional football. He was a guy who had the footballing world at his feet but then fell out of love with the game. His interview with Joe offered a different perspective on the game. 

Betsy Andreu is one of Off the Ball's heroes. She was the loudest and most persistent voice against Lance Armstrong throughout the years when he was winning seven Tour de France titles and was rubbing shoulders with American Presidents and Hollywood royalty. Despite being put under all sorts of pressure to change her story and revise her opinion of Armstrong, she refused to do so. In early July, we spoke to Emma O'Reilly, Armstrong's former soigneur, who told us that she had forgiven Lance. The next day we asked Betsy what she made of that. Listen to both interviews:

 

Raf Diallo 

My one is also one laced with GAA bias. 1994 is a year etched in the memory of every Leitrim person the world over and for a long time I wanted to do a piece reflecting and celebrating the achievements of the team that won a first Connacht title in 67 years.

Two of the main protagonists, then-manager John O'Mahony and former captain Declan Darcy were kind enough to pool their collective memories together with Ger in a wonderful piece of nostalgia that evoke a time that all our countymen are itching to repeat once again.

 

Eoin Sheehan

A totally objective selection (I'm from the Kingdom) is Kieran Donaghy, the day after winning another All-Ireland, reflects on the 'sweetest' victory of them all. The Austin Stacks man was previously on the show in July ahead of the quarter-final. At that stage, he was bench fodder but by September's interview he had returned to the summit of Gaelic football.