Let’s ignore the banalities and hail Gavin as a great
A series of dull interviews won’t undermine legacy of Dublin boss
FINDING the words to explain Jim Gavin’s place in the affections of many connected to Gaelic football is very easy.
Take these as a first sample. ‘Our game-plan continues to change. If you go back five years, the game has changed. Go back 10, 20 years the game of Gaelic football continues to change. That’s a great flux that we’re in. It’s a fantastic time to be involved in it as a coach where there’s a lot of innovation going on.’
Those sentiments are harmless to the point of meaningless. They came in response to a question put to Gavin before today’s match against Tyrone when he was asked about the changes in Dublin’s game wrought by defeat to Donegal at this stage of the Championship in 2014.
In his particular way, Gavin avoided the question and instead soused the issue with banalities.
He is well practised in that tactic now, and it explains why, despite his remarkable record, and the fact that he is two games away from leading Dublin to four All-Irelands in five seasons, Gavin is not an especially popular figure.
Journalists despair at his preference for platitudes over opinions, but when Gavin did take a strong view – on coverage of the freshest Diarmuid Connolly controversy – he got hammered, too.
That he made his point using the language of a debating society bore (‘Freedom of expression is one of the rights in the Republic but it’s not absolute,’ he said, criticising analysis of Connolly’s push on a linesman) did not help in eliciting sympathy, but Gavin was entitled to defend his player against what he interpreted as unfair treatment. No sympathy came his way. It is just as well, then, that the appraisal of greatness in sport does not value words over deeds. Gavin might not produce much in the way of diverting pre or post-match comment, but he is one of the great managers in the history of Gaelic games.
That can be confidently asserted even after less than five seasons in charge of a senior inter-county team. In fact, there could be a time soon when we discuss just who ranks ahead of him as an outstanding football manager, and discover only Mick O’Dwyer.
Talk like that horrifies those who resent every success Gavin enjoys, or those with a Pavlovian aversion to Dublin, or those who would argue that no Dublin manager could ever stand above Kevin Heffernan.
His importance extended beyond managing three All-Ireland-winning teams to making football relevant to Dublin again, as he helped to do in the 1970s.
But Gavin has built on that legacy like no manager has been able to since, and in a city now dizzied by many more distractions than was the case in the ’70s, the status of the Dublin footballers could not be higher.
They are heroes in a 21st-century city shaped by globalising influences, and they are adored because of a sport that draws on 19th-century Ireland for many of its inspirations. Gavin is vital to this. Before this afternoon’s semi-final with Tyrone, Dublin have played 25 Championship matches under him. They have lost one, that shock against Donegal three years ago, and drawn two, last year’s final against Mayo, and a semi-final against the same opponents in 2015.
That leaves 22 victories, which have brought three All-Ireland titles in four seasons. The man Gavin must out-manoeuvre today brought Tyrone their only three Sam Maguire victories so far, and in six seasons between 2003 and 2008. Mickey Harte has long been celebrated as one of the most influential figures in the game, yet there is a reluctance to similarly garland Gavin.
Harte was a tactical innovator who shaped the game for a decade, but Gavin refined the sweeper system over three seasons to make Dublin consequently unbeatable.
In time, the magnitude of what he has done will be recognised, including re-purposing his team over the past 12 months.
It should be acknowledged now. The hesitation to recognise ageless greatness in the present age resulted in silly criticism of Colm Cooper throughout his playing career, for instance.
Cooper was, with Peter Canavan, an obviously luminous talent who should be celebrated for improving Irish life.
Others demurred – as if judgements in football must be delivered in the spirit of Mao’s apocryphal refusal to rush to a conclusion on the effects of the French Revolution.
Mean-mindedness will not stop brilliance emerging though, and as surely as Cooper will be a figure of enduring inspiration in the sport, so will Jim Gavin.
No amount of dull interviews or micro-management will detract from that.