Jim is just incredible.. he never waivers
BY the time Jim Gavin’s latest extension with Dublin ends following the 2021 Championship, he will have completed nine seasons in the job.
It will still be one less than the decade Kevin Heffernan put in, albeit the patriarch of modern Dublin football split his service over two separate terms with a two-year hiatus.
Therefore Gavin will become the manager with by far the longest continuous service in Dublin football since the term became fashionable with Heffernan’s appointment 45 years ago.
He would still be a decade behind Tyrone’s Mickey Harte, a long way short of Sean Boylan’s Meath tenure and even Mick O’dwyer’s 15 seasons with Kerry.
But there is every chance he will have matched or even surpassed O’dwyer’s mountainous managerial achievements by 2021.
And who is to say it will not stretch well beyond that? Gavin’s previous extension was announced only last year and was to take him up to the end of next year. Tuesday’s one may well be obsolete before 2021 comes around. “In 16 years I’m involved in Dublin football, between development squads, minor, under-21, seniors, nobody I have come across has the drive or the systematic approach that he brings,” said Mick Bohan, the successful Dublin ladies football manager who was part of Gavin’s coaching team when Dublin won the first of their five All-irelands under him in 2013
“It’s just incredible. And he never wavers. I go through – and I try to control it better now – massive lows when things haven’t gone well and there’s a serious high then when it goes well.
“He’s just unwavering in his approach and I have not met anybody in Dublin MICK BOHAN says there was never any chance of him leaving the Dublin ladies post to take over the men’s team in Roscommon.
Bohan was linked with the job immediately on the back of leading the or anywhere else who has brought the approach he’s brought.
“All through the last few years people talking about ‘Clucko, Clucko’.
“Stephen Cluxton is so important but my question is how long is Jim going to give? Because whoever comes in has an incredible pair of shoes to fill.” It certainly will not be Bohan anyway. “Not a chance, not a chance, mark these words,” he said. “I’ll tell you one thing, at that level, not a chance. I could not do it.
“I don’t know how he does it. I still look back to the times when [I was involved with him]. I’d look at the email in the morning and see ‘2.38’ [when it Jackies to a second successive All-ireland title in September as Roscommon scrambled for a successor to Kevin Mcstay.
But he insists that the only county outside of Dublin that he would get involved with is Clare, given that his late father hails from the county.
“Ten of the Roscommon teams came through the was sent] and then you’d respond and then the email would be back within half an hour.
“And you’re thinking, ‘When does he sleep? Where does the sleep process fit in?’.”
A multi-all-ireland-winning manager with Dublin himself, you’d imagine Bohan’s role with the ladies team would at least somewhat similar to Gavin’s but he insists otherwise.
He said: “Oh it’s completely different. And I would say to you still, I happen to be managing the women’s team but my forte is coaching and I don’t pretend to be anything else.
“But obviously I don’t have the same demands, I don’t have to deal with the same number of things that he has to deal with, purely because people aren’t looking for that insight, it’s not the same.
“Even from the point of fundraising, and we do our own fundraising, and I know Jim has everyone in situ, he has people at all different levels but he manages the managers of those [things]. It’s almost like running a mini-company.
“I don’t know how he does really don’t.” Sigerson teams I was involved with in DCU, that was that connection,” Bohan explained.
“And I’ve gone down to Roscommon, as I’ve done in plenty of other counties, giving coaching courses to development squad coaches.
“That was the Monday after winning the All-ireland. That was crazy. Like, who is talking it.
Iabout stuff then? Even if it was a reality, can you imagine… like, that would have absolutely tarnished it for me if that was the case.”
Asked was he contacted by Roscommon, who eventually appointed Anthony Cunningham, Bohan replied: “It was just the wrong time to talk to anybody about that.”