Review: Open Goaaal

A fence that backs on to a busy road is asking for trouble.

One rogue kick, and you’ve got an angry driver, and most likely a lost ball. And one or two very upset small children.

Open Goaaal is a clever new concept that promised to solve that problem – it has a large net surrounding the goal itself to stop balls flying over the fence. Happy children, happy drivers, happy everyone!

But first…we had to set it up.

The box is a lot smaller than I was expecting, given the size of the Open Goaaal itself (minimum 2m depth and between 6.3-9m wide!). It was heavy though! So I opened it up and carted all the bits separately into the garden, where I checked them off against the instructions.

And there are a LOT of bits. Poles, guy ropes, bits of cord, carabiners…and the net of course…it all looked very daunting. So I decided to watch the video, as suggested by the instructions.

That made everything seem a whole lot simpler, and so, feeling motivated again, I got to work.

The box says it should take about two hours to assemble, and working on my own, that’s about what it took. Ideally, you’d have two adults to build it because the poles are very tall and heavy and the tensioning really needs two people ideally; but given that the kids were clamouring to use it and there was never a time when two adults were available at the same time I gave in and decided to go for it on my own.

And the end result? A very, very large goal and a happy boy with his ball. Pretty much anyway.

I did make one small mistake, and that was to weave the crossbar tensioner through the net either side as well, which has resulted in the netting being pulled up a bit at either side of the goal. It will get fixed, next time there is an adult to help me; at the moment it is so tensioned that I can’t get the cord free again myself to adjust it!

I was pleasantly surprised how easily the posts bang in (the Wee Man was fascinated by the spirit level); and equally the guy rope attachment parts were much, much easier than I thought they would be too.

I think if the parts were perhaps colour coded to show whoch bits should end up where that would help, but overall we got there and it does what it said it will do. A couple of hours of work for weeks of no ball retrieval required – thats a good enough bargain for me!