Name: Barry Cahill
County: Dublin
Sport: Football
Business: Malley Sport
FOR so long, Gaelic games sportswear was all designed by the same company - such was O’Neills’ monopoly. But with the boom in playing numbers and the explosion of interest in top-level football and hurling, that market-place is, and will continue to be, much more keenly contested.
In comparison to 10 years ago, the GAA is awash with money at all levels, meaning teams can be picky about the gear they kit themselves out with. And that’s precisely why Dublin defender Barry Cahill teamed up with his St Brigid’s colleague Kevin Kehily to co-found Malley Sport just over three years ago.
The company, which employs eight people and is fully Irish owned and runned, makes customised sportswear for GAA, rugby, basketball and athletics teams at club, college and school level but their selling-point is the flexibility of the design.
“The big thing for us is that people can create whatever style or design they want,” says Cahill. “For example, my club St Brigid’s wear red and white.
“I think there’s six clubs in Dublin that are red and white and five of them had the exact same tracksuit. The only difference was the club crest. And that’s the same for 70 or 80 clubs around the country.”
The company has grown rapidly in the three years Cahill has been trading and he reckons the profile being a Dublin footballer brings has its benefits in this instance - a foot in the door.
“It can be a very hard market to break into,” he admits. “But the position I’m in, I’d have a lot of contacts through playing football. Playing for Dublin, it does open up opportunities for me.” And that, of course, means endless football talk.
“I’d say 70 per cent of the meetings are Dublin GAA related. You spend most of the time talking Dublin football, not just when you’re in Dublin but other people from down the country are very interested in Dublin and have very strong
opinions on it. But I don’t mind it too much.”
The next step of Malley Sport is to engage with the GAA about supplying a senior inter-county team but that’s some way down the line yet.
For the moment, Cahill is glad he can customise his office hours around the hectic summer time football schedule.
“The fact that I’m my own boss, it does help if I have to do a weights session or go to the gym or physio or anything like that and work around that. Then, the couple of days leading in to a championship match, I can take it easier and make sure I’m not tied-up working late on a Friday evening.
“The other thing, though, about owning your own business is that if you’re not putting in the hours, you don’t do as well.” n