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New sports radio double act Jacqui Hurley and Marie Crowe said their firm friendship will be a big plus on their new drive-time show on RTÉ 1. Hurley and Crowe will share presenting duties on their show, Inside Sport, which will air between 6 pm and 7 pm at the end of Radio 1's Drivetime programme from tomorrow. Speaking ahead of the show's debut, Hurley told the Irish Mail on Sunday: 'It actually helps to be co-hosting the show together. 'You could get thrown into something like this with people that you maybe haven't worked with before, or people you don't know that well. But actually, we don't have any of those preconceived notions or anything like that, because we know exactly what each other are into.' Marie added: 'We are fairly aligned in the way we think, and because we are friends with each other outside of the job, I think that probably makes it much easier.' The friends' new roles come after a huge shake-up at RTÉ Radio 1, which sees Newstalk's Kieran Cuddihy take over at Liveline, and big names such as Ray D'Arcy and Claire Byrne head for the door. Marie and Jacqui said that when they got the call to go out on the new drive-time show, it was an offer they couldn't refuse. 'You just get a phone call from somebody and they say, "Hey, we want you to do this,"' said Jacqui. 'It certainly wasn't us banging on the door saying, "Hey, give us something else." I mean, genuinely, when they rang us and they said, "look, would you do this" We both said "absolutely, that sounds great". 'Particularly, the team of people that are involved are brilliant as well. There's a really enthusiastic group on it.' Marie recalled: 'I just got a phone call from the Head of Sports, who said: "Look, we want you to do this. Is it something that you'd be interested in?" And I was. I was delighted as well that Jackie was also in it.' She said the pair are fortunate that it is a good time to be a woman in the industry.'I grew up with very few women in sports on telly,' Crowe added. 'So where we're at now, I certainly never thought there'd be so many women on television and radio. But I think as our careers progressed, the growth in women's sports probably coincided with that as well. 'I think to have women talking about sports, writing about sports, speaking about sports, giving their opinions on sport - definitely, when I was younger, I didn't think it would be so many. But as I got on in years, it became something that I thought could happen.' Jacqui agreed: 'There has been a huge amount of progress during the time that we were progressing in our careers. So it was something that you could see happening as time went by. It just became a little bit more normal.' Recalling her big break, Hurley said: 'I remember I started when I got Sunday Sport on Radio 1. That was in 2009, and I actually didn't know I was the first ever woman to present the show until we were doing calls with journalists. Somebody said it to me, and I was like, "Oh God". 'Like, I actually didn't realise that. And it was only after that that I started thinking about it a little bit more, because, no more than what Marie said, you get asked to do a gig, you're just delighted to do the job. 'You're not really thinking about what the wider implications are. But I do think over the years, the biggest thing that we've all noticed is that there are so many more women,' she added. Jacqui , who graduated from Mary Immaculate College in Limerick with a degree in media and communications, said she now gets 'phone calls from students and emails all the time about young people coming through, not just women'. 'I'm always encouraged about the amount of them who now see it as a pathway in a way that we probably didn't before,' she said. Marie added: 'Women are presenting [BBC's] Match of the Day now. And if you'd asked anybody, I'd say, even five years ago, would you think that the main football presenters in the UK would be women? Nobody would believe it. 'So I think it's kind of moved on a little bit now that, like, we're not the first any more. It's quite normal.' While the friends look forward to working together, they will not actually be on air at the same time. Crowe will captain the show between Monday and Wednesday, with Hurley picking up the baton on Thursdays and Fridays. Marie said: 'I'm going to be doing three days and Jacqui's going to be in two days, so we won't be on air together, unfortunately.' But Jacqui was quick to add that there will be occasions when they do both contribute to the show. 'There will be times when one of us is in a stadium and reporting back to the studio, so we will be on air together. So there will be lots of scope for banter.
