IT’S JOE VERSUS JIM

Sportsmail delves into the minds of the two greatest brains at work in Irish sport to reveal what makes them tick

THE year just past was dominated, as every year is, by the field sports. Our concentration on them is as it should be given this is where the great majority of the public find their diversion. While Aidan O’Brien’s global excellence was underlined by his record-breaking 2017, there were no two managers under more focus in the 12 months gone by than Jim Gavin and Joe Schmidt.

They operate in very different spheres: Schmidt is a professional, while Gavin combines a serious job in aviation regulation with leading the best football team in over 30 years.

Schmidt spends his time with full-time athletes, most of who have been tended for professionalism since their teenage years; Gavin is dealing with men like himself, weighing their commitment to the sport that consumes them against the requirements of family and working lives.

If this makes strict comparison tricky, these two leaders in their fields do share traits that help to explain their excellence — and the success of their teams.

TRUST IN EXPERTISE

Both Gavin and Schmidt have clear views on how to play their games. The Dublin manager wants a buccaneering attack tempered by a hard, well-populated defence. Schmidt values structure highly: Ireland’s game is reliant on set-pieces and positional kicking, after which more imaginative flourishes can be added.

However, just as notable is their willingness to share the creative burden and rely on good support. Gavin has a long coaching relationship with Declan Darcy, but he also made a shrewd move in adding the Hill’s darling Jason Sherlock, a smart operator with a whistle by all accounts.

Schmidt’s biggest gesture was recruiting Andy Farrell. The former England defence coach is a figure who knows his mind and has the achievements to back up his beliefs, but they have worked well together, with Ireland’s defence markedly improved over the past 12 months.

GAME FACE ON

Rugby has a tradition that demands coaches sit behind glass in boxes in the stand and observe the action with the sober, impassioned mien of a jury foreman. Some struggle with this: Andy Robinson, during his time with Scotland, would occasionally bash the side of the box in Murrayfield in frustration, and it was only last month that Eddie Jones got into trouble when he used some salty language as England struggled to break free from Argentina.

Schmidt, though, never lets a flicker of loose passion cross his face when watching a game. He looks intense but unmoved.

Gavin would recognise that, but he keeps calm when just feet away from the action. There is not for him the histrionics of some managers, who tear up and down the sideline like a brat in a supermarket.

He stays seated, with messages relayed by runners. When he does get out of his seat, the busiest he gets is shaking hands of substituted players. He understands, like Schmidt, that the players control the fate of a game, not a manager roaring in instructions which players cannot hear.

CONFLICT

If they can conduct themselves, though, neither man will roll over. Schmidt doesn’t forget slights, and he is loath to let criticism or even contrary opinions pass uncorrected.

He goes too far at times, needlessly contesting the views of former players now working as pundits. Nor does he like the assertion that his team play a rigid style, despite evidence supporting that contention at least to a point.

In private, players say he very rarely has to have arguments: his methods and his standards are well advertised among the squad. Those who don’t meet them don’t get the chance to make repeated mistakes.

Gavin rarely strays into conflict, but when he does it tends to be high profile. After a first season in which he was polite to the point of blandness in his public comments, he cut loose after Dublin won the All-Ireland final, expressing unhappiness with how his team were refereed.

His most bizarre outburst came this summer, though, when he railed against The Sunday Game, in particular, for how they covered the suspension of Diarmuid Connolly for putting his hands on a linesman.

He talked about the nature of rights in the republic, and refused to speak to RTÉ after one match.

It seemed silly and overwrought, but it served two purposes: it showed that, for good or ill, he would stand by his players, as all the best managers do. And it gave Dublin a cause at a time when one wondered if they had the hunger to go again. They did.

INNOVATION

Gavin’s work with Dublin will, one day, come to be widely recognised. Until then, he will have to listen to arguments that his team are a success because of money they get from the State and Croke Park.

If it can be argued that funding is making the game stronger at its roots in the capital, that does not explain what Gavin has achieved.

He is an innovator, a whip-

smart coach who learns as well as he creates. The perfect example is the aftermath of Dublin’s defeat to Donegal in the All-Ireland semi-final in 2014.

The reaction to a loss in which Dublin’s defensive underbelly was exposed was to take an existing component of his team, Cian O’Sullivan, and re-engineer him as a sweeper. This year, he took James McCarthy out of defence, moved him to midfield and instantly made the team’s attack faster.

Schmidt has an idea in his head of how his team should play, but his greatness is in enabling his players to make the vision real. This is done in different ways, perhaps most importantly by investing huge responsibility in his best players: Johnny Sexton, Conor Murray and Tadhg Furlong.

However, he also sees possibilities before they become widely apparent. Hence, James Ryan is already lined up as a starter in the next World Cup, but Schmidt capped him before he had debuted for Leinster.

And in the November series just gone, he played Andrew Conway at full-back and watched the Munster man excel — and this after the contentious omission of Simon Zebo.

LEGACY

Schmidt was once described as one of the worst Irish coaches ever, which says more about what passes for punditry in this country than it ever will about Schmidt.

His legacy is to a great extent already assured. He picked up the work of Michael Cheika at Leinster and made them the best team in Europe, perhaps the best team the European Cup has yet seen.

However, his Ireland legacy awaits confirmation, and one supposes the final verdict on that will be delivered by how Ireland fare at the 2019 World Cup.

Gavin should now be celebrated as one of the leading managers of the age, on a par with Mickey Harte and Jim McGuinness as one of the men who transformed football.

And in leading Dublin to three All-Ireland titles in a row, he merits comparison to Kevin Heffernan, the man who made Dublin relevant again over 40 years ago.