If Gavin wants to control football, he should start with his own players

LAST time I looked, Jim Gavin was not God. Neither was he the director general of the GAA. If I was not mistaken, he was just another tin-pot manager, but a very lucky one. Anybody who gets handed the job of holding the Dublin football team by the hand is being granted an especially indulgent form of parenthood.

Of course, the job brings pressure.

And Gavin handles that extremely well. Around the clock these last three years he has appeared incapable of ever being ruffled, and nothing has ever come even close to upending his apparent capacity for acting with such sanctimonious airs and graces.

He does this so well he gets up the nose of many GAA folk with considerable ease.

Mine too, though I have come to accept that Jim Gavin defaults to claptrap every single time he discusses the next game. That’s the modus operandi that was decided by him and most probably a small gang of friends and helpers told to think of Jim Gavin as a form of presidential candidate (I’m thinking US presidency here!) rather than someone who was standing at the top of the queue when Pat Gilroy jumped in 2012.

The Dublin team boss, however, does not get, nor ever seems to seriously contemplate the level of responsibility which comes with being the leader of every man and woman, boy and girl wearing the county’s immaculate blue on the football fields and on the streets.

Forget about the nonsense he spouts about so many of the weaklings which offer themselves up as Dublin’s opponents. We can perhaps forgive him that, even though we might wish that he grew a pair of liathróidí and stood up tall as the only man in the country who has a cattle mart of football talent all to himself.

What he can’t be forgiven is his repeated waving away of the moral responsibility which the Dublin football manager needs to live up to — and care for more than any of his small-town peers — in ensuring that his team knows right from wrong, and apologises to everyone looking on when they act wrongly.

Or disgracefully.

IN JIM GAVIN’S time as Dublin football manager, one of his players demolished another man’s eye socket in an unprovoked act. More than one of his men have also bitten opponents. But we’ve never got a great, big apology from him for their behaviour.

We’ve never had him publicly lay down the law so that Dublin supporters, young and old, know for sure what is acceptable and utterly unacceptable behaviour from their heroes.

On Thursday last, he spoke up interestingly enough when one of his own men was on the receiving end of what we can only presume was a fairly vicious punch to the face.

Gavin spoke a bit like God, and more than a bit like the director general, when he absolved the Armagh footballer who had broken the nose of Davey Byrne so badly that the young Dublin lad had to spend two nights in hospital.

There was no quick knee on the chest, and a good tight grip and twist, in the case of straightening Byrne’s nose. He was obviously in need of more than a fast visit to A and E as well.

And exactly what he looks like as he walks down the street these days, and chats to his own family, and greets neighbours and friends, I have no idea.

But I’m guessing he’s looking like somebody who was hit in the face with a spade and is bandaged up accordingly.

This belt that Byrne took happened 10 days ago in a challenge game between Dublin and Armagh behind closed doors in DCU. Gavin has admitted that ‘once the ball was thrown up it was a very spirited game.’

He has also explained that the entire matter is over and one hundred per cent dealt with by himself and his rival boss, Kieran McGeeney. Indeed! Why bother with disciplinary committees when two managers can put their heads together after a game and decide that there is no need for any great fuss.

Gavin said that McGeeney and himself had spoken to both players, and that the two players had also spoken to one another. And that everyone has made up after a big kiss.

‘They both want to concentrate on their inter-county careers now,’ explained Gavin, who added that himself and McGeeney both sincerely believe in discipline.

‘For Kieran, discipline would be part of his philosophy, as it is ours. We both regret what happened.’

No suspension, no kick up the arse for anybody, just the need for Byrne to suck it up.

But, I’m wondering, if Davey Byrne had had his jaw broken, would Jim Gavin have been so accepting? If he had lost an eye? If he had fallen to the ground and suffered a head trauma?

At what point does Jim Gavin believe that he might need to ensure that the safety and welfare of one of his footballers comes above everything else, and that a violent act needs to be judged and acted upon by a person or persons other than himself?

Words are sometimes cheap in sport.

The words with absolute zero value to anybody this week were... ‘discipline would be part of his philosophy, as it is ours.’