Dubs won’t be weaker

F there’s one thing we wouldn’t do it’s play poker with Jim Gavin. He bluffed us and double bluffed us, or rather he allowed us all to bluff and double bluff ourselves.

After the All Ireland final we had ourselves half convinced that he was going to step away from the job he’d done so well for the previous seven years. Then when he didn’t and when it was widely reported that he was staying on we chided ourselves for reading something into something that simply wasn’t there.

In the end it turns out that our initial instincts weren’t that far off the mark. It just took a little while for the man himself to come to the same conclusion. A man not prone to rash action, the Round Towers man took his time and still managed to catch us all off guard.

The interesting thing about the announcement of his departure last Saturday morning was that it didn’t just catch those of us on the outside looking in flat-footed, it also caught his players and the Dublin County Board on the hop. They found out only a little before the rest of us did.

How that leaves them prepared for the fix for six – sorry we still haven’t come up with anything catchier than that – is probably the most interesting thing about it all beyond the usual Jim-ology. Even if the Dublin County Board hadn’t expected to have to make a decision on a new manager, we’ve got to believe that they were planning for succession from a long way out. They’ve got their men in mind and it’s going to come down to a straight shoot-out between Dessie Farrell and Pat Gilroy.

Our suspicion is that they’ll go with the younger man, but either way whatever the decision, we see it as actually making the Dubs a more dangerous proposition in 2020 than had Gavin stayed at the helm for an eighth season. That’s no slight on Gavin, a remarkable manager, more like a phenomenon really, it’s just that sometimes these things need to be shaken up. There will be a real freshness to Dublin next year in a way there couldn’t possibly have been had Gavin stayed on again.

With a new peak to scale a fresh impetus from Farrell – or Gilroy and probably Farrell to be honest – stands to make Dublin potentially even more formidable. Keep the champagne on ice for the time being.