POKER FACE

Jim Gavin may think he holds all the aces, but his manufactured disconnect has a knock-on effect

WHAT hurts most is that Jim Gavin does not care enough anymore to even play with us.

Last week, in the aftermath of his team’s Allianz League win over Donegal, journalists at the postmatch briefing enquired as to the absence of Bernard Brogan, who had been listed to start but had been vaporised from the match panel to the point that his number was taken by Paddy Small.

‘He has a niggle,’ replied Gavin. It was a response that within 24 hours would be exposed for not only being shy of the truth, but barely masked his indifference/ contempt/disregard for the press.

In truth, his lack of warmth towards the fourth estate has always been evident, but in the early days he cared enough to put time and effort into expressing those feelings.

A potential season-ending — and given his age, possibly career-ending — injury to a player of Brogan’s status would have seen him bring his A Game to the post match press conference in the early days, back when he still got his kicks out of sending the press shuffling away in a state of dazed bewilderment.

When he was on the top of his media game he would most likely have coughed up the following: ‘the soft tissue trauma medical personnel have activated protocols which will allow for a preliminary examination to proceed on the suspected affected area, which will in turn facilitate a preliminary report to be published that will provide the road-map as to what possible, if any, treatment options may be required to ensure that optimum recovery can be achieved.’

And you just knew that beneath that wide-eyed poker faced visage, there was a little man dancing manically inside while screaming at the heavens, “now go and make an opening paragraph out of that.”

We knew we were beaten, but we are a needy profession and that a man of Jim’s status could invest such time and effort to reduce the English language into a pulp of noise just for us suggested there was a little part of him that cared.

Not any more, alas. The man who we suspected once swallowed the entire works of Humphrey Appleby in preparation — after all fail to prepare, prepare to fail — for his jousts with the GAA media has thrown his verbose hat at it.

A cruciate ligament tear has become a niggle which is the equiv alent of confusing a quadruple bypass for heartburn. He has just gone and punctured the ball.

To what end this serves is a mystery. The truth eventually gets out and what edge is gained by keeping it in-house is hard to figure.

But that is how Dublin roll these days.

Last year, Michael Darragh Macauley suffered a partial tear to his cruciate ligament, yet the injury was denied by Dublin management as late as last May when the former player of the year had all but rehabbed from it.

The news this week that Gavin is not co-operating with RTÉ has created a stir out of all proportion to news value.

With furrowed brows we have all wondered what is really behind the decision.

Is it really down to RTÉ’s inability to deliver on a request for match footage or is it the legacy of last year and what Gavin felt was the hatchet job carried out on Diarmuid Connolly by the Sunday Game?

But, surely, the question that really matters is who cares?

It is easy to sell Gavin’s disengagement with the media as a success because of all he has achieved but where is the correlation?

He is the best manager, with the best players who want for nothing and who will play in excess of 75 per cent of all their games at home every season — including all their important ones.

When it comes down to key performance facilitators, those are the factors that really matter, not some abstract notion that they are cashing in on how tightly they control and modify the release of information from within their camp.

In fact, that policy may not be working as well as they imagine.

After all, in Gavin’s reign twice his players have been involved in biting incidents which came to light post match, while another was left hospitalised after a brawl in a behind doors challenge match with Armagh which they desperately sought to keep under wraps.

Their lack of co-operation into two GAA investigations — the 2014 bite on Donegal’s Paddy McBrearty and the 2015 Dublin/Armagh brawl saw them openly criticised by Croke Park, most notably in Páraic Duffy’s annual report, for a lack of moral fortitude.

And it hardly reflects well on their public relations strategy that despite having one of the truly great teams in the GAA’s history, they have struggled to bask in the affection of the general public.

Their third All-Ireland in a row win last year, as much as it was lauded, was also criticised for the manner in which it was achieved in closing out their win over Mayo.

That may have something to do with the manufactured disconnect between Gaelic football’s best team and the wider public.

All of that may not bother Gavin, but every one of those little victories in the press room get hollower by the year.

And soon — and we may already have hit it — we will reach a point that no matter what he says or what he doesn’t, no one will be bothered to tune in.