The fascinating story behind rural Ireland’s greatest sporting invention

When you belt the ball over the bar in your next training session or match - or when you hit it high, wide and handsome - think of Padraig Giblin.

From hurling with his county to working with the ESB to providing the nets in Croke Park, all the way to running survival courses throughout Ireland, the Clare man has quite a story to tell. His initiative, his bravery and his persistence has saved many GAA players a telling off from their managers, a hefty bill for lost sliotars or footballs and a lot of time during a game or training. Padraig Giblin, the founder and managing director of Sportsworld Netting, is the man behind the netting that accompanies almost every GAA goalpost in Ireland. It was a simple idea, born out of the age-old problem of countless lost balls. A problem in many GAA clubs at the time, but a particular problem in his club, Scariff. "I hurled with my team, every evening I played matches. We had a sports pitch, a very high rise pitch and in one particular goals if we hit the ball over the bar or if it went wide it went down a deep incline into a farmer's field, full of rushes and thistles. So the umpire, or one of the players had to retrieve the ball and you'd often be afraid he wouldn't come back," said Giblin on this week's episode of the JOE business podcast, The Capital B. Fundraising for his project was difficult. It was rural Ireland, there was no quick-fix available. "There's lottos now in all parishes, but in my time there was only church gate collections and cake sales. We were asking the same people all the time to support the club. A sliotar would maybe cost €6 and we could lose 10 of them in a training session. The embarrassing thing for us was the team from the next parish could lose them on the visiting match." After a club AGM, Padraig decided to do something. His 18-year-spell working with the ESB prior to his venture was put to good use. "So one time, at an AGM, the main topic of discussion was how can we stop the ball going into the farmer's field. So I volunteered to put up a very large netting with very high polls. A very good Chairman at the time, PJ McNamara gave me all the assistance I needed. We bought all the material from the ESB," said Giblin. The first club he serviced was his local club. The project encountered problems. "I put up the net, year one, say 1989. We had a great summer...the matches moved quicker because there was no delay, the ball was coming down fast. You can imagine, where I live in Scariff, 40 miles away is the Atlantic. In January or February, the first storm came and it started to break the nets from the sides of the polls. Eventually, the net started to break." As Eureka moments go, Padraig's was a simple one. "My mother went to pull the curtains in the room...I got that Eureka moment, I said 'Jesus if I could do what my mother just did. That match is on Sunday, and there's no training until Tuesday, why for the 48 hours isn't the net closed'. "Monday morning, full of enthusiasm, I contacted the Chairman I said 'if you don't mind lads, in the spring, if we bought a bigger net. I've an idea, I wanted to see could I put a system in place to move it." https://twitter.com/joehas/status/874199681307463681 Padraig had no past experience, he had no money. Admirably, he battled on with the hope of a greater end result. He enlisted the help of his friends, fellow parishioners and they worked together. It was all being done voluntarily at this stage, however, and there was no monetary reward. "I'd no money for marketing, I had no experience in how to sell things, I hadn't a clue. I trained Eddie (local groundsman) on how to pull the nets (open and closed). I had no money to pay him, I'd buy him few pints at the weekend." Padraig's project began to develop, the demand and popularity of his simple invention was growing. He knew he had a sharp business idea that was brimming with potential. https://twitter.com/eamonnconway/status/847158920611352576 "My phone started ringing at night to my mother to know, 'Is the fella who did the nets there?' I did the next two or three parishes voluntarily. That's the way Ireland was, you helped each other...It gradually grew, word of mouth and simplicity. I did some then around the country and in different parishes. I didn't have the money, I did it voluntarily. It started to come to the stage where it needed to be priced and properly structured. I decided to go to my county enterprise board, in Ennis." A crucial moment in the project's development was the employment of a local marketing graduate, which gave the project the business insight that it needed. "We found this really good chap (marketing graduate) and we paid him, £600 a month. At the end of September, by the time he was going back to college, he handed me a file of 2,500 rugby and GAA clubs...loads of requests came in from Cork, Mayo and all around Ireland...Within the first four years, we fitted 2000 systems...we did the main grounds in London even." Padraig's project soon diversified into rugby, golf, landfill and working with farmers. Next time your football or sliotar is saved by the net behind the goalposts, think of the Clare man, his simple idea and his unrelenting persistence. Listen to Padraig's interview from Episode 16 of The Capital B here from 3'00". https://soundcloud.com/thecapitalbjoe/episode-16-the-irish-agri-culture-shock-how-farming-is-embracing-tech-and-beefing-up-revenues