ALEX TURNER is the general manager of financial training firm Ambitious Minds

NETWORKING can be the business equivalent of rooting around a haystack. You have more chance of finding a proverbial needle than finding someone you can do business with.

That’s why very quickly conversations will turn to the more familiar ground of the fortunes of Liverpool and Everton.

However diverting that can be, there’s always that nagging anxiety it is all a bit of a waste of time, that canapés and red wine are not an adequate substitute for going home.

It’s the pressure of the event – it’s almost designed to create failure.

We thought it was time to reverse the proposition, which led to the creation of the Ambitious Minds Sporting Club, a very social, all-afternoon lunch held every couple of months at the Fly in the Loaf.

It avoids the great mass of web designers, life coaches and usual faces who threaten to overwhelm some of the other networking events in the city, or the card-happy networkers who do passable impersonations of a croupier.

Put sport first, and the conversation will, at its own unforced pace, tend to move on to business. We know from experience that it works – it’s how we first met our landlord. Last week’s event brought together business owners and managers from a range of sectors, and a good sprinkling of people involved in sport.

They included Julie Gaskell, the chief executive of Widnes Vikings, who spoke about what lies behind the new narrative the club is writing for itself ahead of its return to rugby league’s elite next season.

They have a great story to tell, about what they have achieved and their big, but achievable, ambitions.

For the rest of us, sport was overlapping with business for the afternoon.

For the Vikings, they are constant companions.

Sport is a great metaphor for business, although keeping score is trickier in the commercial world.

At the end of the afternoon, it was Potential Customers 3 Potential Suppliers 1 – a resounding win for the sporting approach to networking.