Ed Slattery has a passion for taking elite athletes to the next level as a hugely experienced strength and conditioning coach who has worked with Irish Rugby for coming up in a decade.

Take a listen to this CV – Athletics Performance Coach for Irish women’s rugby; Athletic Performance Coach for Sevens and Womens Rugby; Athletic Performance Coach for Mens Rugby; and now his current role as Head of Athletic Performance for the Womens Pathways and National team.

What that means, to you and me, is that he’s absolutely brilliant at helping get the absolute best out of players across the Irish national rugby set-up – and that has taken him through Six Nations campaigns, to the Tokyo Olympics and so much more.

He’s also been a long-time listener to the podcast – and when we started chatting about him coming on, he was more than happy to join us – even if he was worried he wouldn’t have anything interesting to say.

Turns out he was wrong about that, as he’s a brilliant guest, and we get into all sorts of things!

We talk about the skills of high-performance coaching and getting into it in the first place; about getting players on-board and seeing results; the Tokyo Olympics and that experience with Ed; his own personal journey and how being his authentic self made him a better coach; and loads, loads more.

This isn’t Ed’s ‘coming out’ story, as more than a few folks know his story – but plenty of others don’t so we hope you enjoy it, as it’s a cracking conversation with a great guy.

WANT TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUR OUR GUEST?
@edsla_
@irishrugby

WANT TO GET IN TOUCH WITH THE PODCAST?
@jack_murley
jack.murley@bbc.co.uk