Gavin departs unchallenged as The Greatest
Manager’s tactical and technical brilliance matched by his modesty over Dublin’s era-defining successes
HE FRUSTRATED ATTEMPTS TO MAKE DUBLIN’S GREATNESS ABOUT HIM
JIM GAVIN seemed determined to make his way through inter-county management without leaving any personal impression on the game. That is perhaps why some found so irritating his unflagging determination to keep himself in the background and out of the story of Dublin’s drive to greatness.
Everyone knew that Gavin had transformed Dublin football, and with it not only the history of the old game but views about how it must evolve in a climate now shaped by the biggest county in the sport.
Yet from day one, Gavin refused to let his personal story get tangled up in Dublin’s blue.
Any time he was asked about a player, a score, a controversy, a triumph, he fell back on the greater good: what he did, he did for Dublin.
The deeds of his players and his back-room team, he repeated like an incantation, were nothing more than the latest sacrifice offered up in the name of Dublin Gaelic games.
Jim Gavin frustrated any attempt to make Dublin’s magnificence about him.
At least he failed at something over the past seven seasons, then.
Because as news of his departure came tumbling out of a cold November morning, a shock in its timing but no great surprise in its logic, Gavin’s status as the greatest manager in the history of his sport was already safely assured.
It was settled on a Saturday night in September when his team completed five senior football titles in a row, staking out theretofore unconquered territory in the landscape of Irish sport.
It is less than a decade since the common wisdom was that counties would no longer win three in a row, given the standards being aggressively pursued by Kerry and Tyrone in the 2000s.
Gavin succeeded Pat Gilroy and developed the rehabilitative work the latter had completed with a team seen as flash but insubstantial shapers, to an extent nobody could have predicted.
It is at this point that allusion needs to be made to Dublin’s advantages. And some of them are real and undeniable and unfair, most obviously their use of Croke Park as a home ground.
But that does not explain what they have done under Gavin. Nor does their commercial power or the exhaustive extent of their playing resources.
They have turned the Leinster championship into a foregone conclusion, but All-Ireland glory has rarely come easily.
The closest they got to an easy time in an All-Ireland final was the 2018 edition against Tyrone. But even on that day, they had to close a significant early deficit.
That was as nothing compared to the examples of character they displayed on other days, through their operatic tussles with Mayo to the gripping conclusion to this year’s drawn final.
In fact it was on that day, one of only four of 48 Championship matches under Gavin that Dublin did not win (44 victories, three draws, one solitary defeat), that they showed everything substantial and admirable in their team.
Playing more than 35 minutes with 14 men, they dominated the closing stages of the game, as a callow but gifted Kerry side tried to protect a lead. Dublin would not be denied, got their draw, and then removed doubt from the conclusion long before the end of the replay.
None of this stuff happens inevitably. Think of all those years of Dublin teams threatening all kinds of carnage before dissolving against harder, cuter, or more skilful sides.
Gavin made Dublin all of those things. It was Gilroy that put an end to silliness like marching to Hill 16 before throw-in and mouthing at opponents, and the blessing for Dublin was that they replaced a man as serious and estimable as Gilroy with another one in Jim Gavin.
News of his leaving Dublin brought to mind a conversation from last summer with a former All-Irelandwinning captain.
The talk turned to the issue of management and the old question of what specifically separates the good ones from the rest. Integrity, was the instant reply. The belief of players depends on the integrity of the man trying to lead them.
And Gavin’s comportment supports that thesis.
Players listened to him because he was honest and genuine.
There were missteps occasionally, and his row with RTÉ over the Diarmuid Connolly suspension in 2017 was ill-advised.
Dublin were tough and willing to push as far as they were allowed in pursuing victory. But their manager was not one for abusing sideline officials or jawing at opponents.
He was dignified and he believed what he said about the history of Dublin football and his place as one more link in a long chain extending into the past and the future. It sounded twee sometimes, but he was true to it.
He was also, of course, tactically brilliant and confident enough to surround himself with the finest expertise he could, from his old playing comrade Declan Darcy to a basketball coach, the latter to improve his players’ awareness of space and passing options when facing massed defences.
That happened in the spring of 2015 as Gavin plotted Dublin’s return from their semi-final defeat to Donegal in 2014, their only loss, of course, in seven Championship seasons under his guidance.
Reacting to that setback as they
did – redeploying Cian O’Sullivan in the short term but in the longer-term learning the patience and timing needed to pick apart reactive tactics – showed Dublin’s fortitude but also the astute man they had leading them.
It is difficult to imagine him in a studio, sitting behind that enigmatic smile while alongside him, pundits who played the game when it was slower and duller and much less complicated try and take apart the game of today.
He will, one supposes, be quietly reabsorbed by everyday life. His career with the Irish Aviation Authority is said to be busy and thriving, and he mentioned it when
asked about his future after what turns out was his final All-Ireland win. There were, of course, more factors than that in such an important decision. Dublin fans will scan the frequencies like ham radio enthusiasts for news of more departures in the coming weeks.
This does have the feel of an era ending. From Gavin’s perspective, leaving aside personal and professional considerations, it makes sense from a sporting one.
He has reached the pinnacle, succeeded on a level no manager ever has. Trying to inch even further clear would take enormous effort with a group whose most important components have amassed big miles in the past half-decade.
This is the end of the Gavin years. They were times of insatiable success, of little in the way of sensational outbursts, of serious and admirable people achieving in a way footballers never did before.
He leaves the greatest. Talk like that might make him uncomfortable, but they are the facts.
Gavin goes a great.