No looking back for Gavin as hand of history rests lightly on his shoulders
JIM GAVIN stands on the brink of a victory that would propel him deeper into the conversation about where he stands in terms of the all-time great GAA managers.
Still, you won’t hear him talk of achievements or legacy, or even mention the ‘four in a row’.
The time is here and the moment is now. Everything else is irrelevant because it can’t help him or Dublin on Sunday in Croke Park.
That’s something he learned during his playing days. When Dublin won the All-Ireland in 1995 it was a success whose foundations were built on years of heartbreak and near misses.
Gavin was a fresh face on the panel at the time and expected the good times to roll following the breakthrough. They wouldn’t win another Leinster title until 2002.
“I was young enough at that stage (in 1995),” Gavin says.
“I was only on the squad a couple of seasons. The build-up to that game was that the team had come so close to getting over the line and there was a big sense of relief when we eventually won a tight game against Tyrone.
LESSON
“So the overall feeling was relief among the group, but Jason (Sherlock), Dessie (Farrell) and myself, we wanted a lot more.
“There’s a great lesson in that as well. We had won a few Leinsters running into that (1995) and I think 2002 was the next Leinster.
“There was a bit of a gap and it gave us a great lesson that you need to live in the moment and focus on the now and do your best while you can. We had some great teams in ’96, ’97 and beyond, but there were other great counties and that’s just the nature of it.”
Perhaps the greatest trait of this Dublin team is their desire never to be satisfied with their formidable successes and rest on their laurels – to always strive for more.
To put Dublin’s current run into some context, only one team (Kerry in 2006 and 2007) since Cork achieved it in 1990, have managed to put back-to-back titles together.
On Sunday, Dublin will be looking to record ‘back-to-back back-to-back’ crowns.
Maintaining that level of desire, where they have emerged from replays and All-Ireland finals on the right side of a one-point game, has been Gavin’s greatest feat. A desire to win can be unquantifiable, but it has to come from within.
The days of a newspaper cutting being stuck on a dressing room wall are dead.
“That (sticking a headline on a wall) is gone, yeah. There’s no external, it’s all internal motivation. You are not looking for motivation off any other team. You can’t control how another team prepare themselves or what motivation other teams use. And it’s short-lived, it will run itself out.
“We have always tried to be our best and just give it our all. The great strength of the group is that they understand that.
“Yes, they all want game time, but they realise that unlike individual sports it is about the team and the collective.
“And whether that’s seven minutes or the full 70 they are willing to commit in the game. They push each other hard to get game time.”
Tyrone stand in their way. When the sides met in the ‘Super 8s’ in Omagh, Dublin emerged with just three points to spare. Tyrone pushed hard in the final quarter, making it by some way the most competitive championship match they have been involved in this year.
On that viewing, albeit in the narrower surroundings of Healy Park, they have closed the gap significantly on last year’s All-Ireland semi-final.
“I don’t think it was a true reflection and they were very disappointed with their performance,” Gavin said of that game.
“Look at the start of the second-half, they clocked up a few scores and if they had of taken a few more opportunities I think the last quarter could have had a different complexion.
“We understand how that game went. People might have a different perspective of it, but we understand how close they were to us in that second-half.
“I think over the nine games they have learned a lot, from the opening game against Monaghan (in Ulster), to the big performance they put in against Monaghan in the semi-final.
“Before our game in Omagh they had just beaten Cork and Roscommon with a combined score of 7-44. That gives you a different dimension to their game.
“This perception of them as a defensive team is not the case… I think it will be completely different on September 2.”
History beckons, but it won’t be mentioned this week.
“We never reference the past. We have tried to learn from it and they are learning in every game we play, as recently as Galway, and there is rich learning within the group.
“We have never traded off the past. Never.”