‘Burn your trophies’ – the secrets of Gavin’s success
URGING his team to “burn their trophies” at the end of every season and reading books on motivational theories were just some of the secrets of Jim Gavin’s remarkable success as Dublin manager.
Gavin – who led Dublin to six All-Ireland titles in seven years – made the revelations at the KPMG Irish Independent Property Industry Excellence Awards. It turned out to be one of his final interviews as Dublin manager.
“Obviously we have some key performance indicators,” Gavin (below) said last Thursday, just two days before he announced his decision to step down.
“We have got a high standard of performance we try to aspire to, and that is what drives us on.
“I always say to the players as well, at the start of every season, that we have to burn our trophies.
“Past success does not guarantee that you are going to win the competition again. “I’m a big reader of motivational theories. Charles Handy’s Sigmoid Curve, where you have to break things up. And the paradox in aviation and sport is that sometimes the learning is in the failure. And it’s having that open growth mindset, even if you win. In the Dublin football team we have never achieved perfection, there is always something to go after and improve upon. That relentlessness, and the humility the players have, makes it very easy for me to work with them.”
Gavin also confirmed that he has never spoken to his teams about winning, instead preferring to focus on preparation.
“I’ve been involved managing teams for 12 years. I managed the Dublin U-21s for five and I’m into my seventh with the senior team and I have never mentioned winning or said that we have to win this game or competition.
“What I’m interested in is the process of performance even though that might sound quite bland,” said the six-time All-Ireland SFC winning manager.
“If you get your preparation and performance generally speaking the result will look after itself.”
Gavin heaped praise on his players, insisting that what they did in their time away from he Dublin setup was at least as important as what they did when they were with the squad.
“In sporting context if I have players for three hours every second day – then the other 21 hours are so important.
“So the preparations are in the mundane parts of the day, how players decide to rest, what they eat, what their recovery is like.
“All those small things, that in the shadows of victory that people don’t see. It’s that small attention to detail
... if you look after the small things the big things look after themselves ... the discipline the players have that’s a key component of sports performance.”
When it was put to Gavin that Dublin were odds-on to win six in a row, he responded: “I see incidents and accidents every day in aviation. All we will do is prepare our best for the season ahead.
“For the moment we are grateful we had success again we had this year and we are enjoying it while we can and living in the moment and when
January 1 comes around we’ll look on the season then.”
Two days later, he shocked the GAA world and stepped down.
Meanwhile, John Costello and Seán Shanley will head up the subcommittee, to be ratified tomorrow night, tasked with identifying Gavin’s replacement.
Shanley, the outgoing county board chairman, stressed that the kingmakers would cast a wide net and speak to as many interested parties as possible but hoped to make an appointment would be made on or before annual convention on Thursday week.
It has also been confirmed that Dublin will not be pulling out of the
O’Byrne Cup and that the January 11 semi-final will be the new manager’s first competitive game in charge.
Meanwhile, Brian Fenton last night became the first current Dublin panellist to publicly comment on Gavin’s exit.
In a post on his instagram account, accompanied by a pic of Fenton and Gavin, the Raheny clubman said: “Forever grateful to this man who gave me the chance to live out a boyhood dream and have some of the best days of my life,” in a tribute to Gavin, the man under whom he made his senior debut in 2015.
“Exciting chapter ahead with hopefully many more great days to come.”