All Ireland Countdown Day 2: Project Blue 2013 – on track so far

This week www.roundtower.ie is hosting a number of features in the build up to the All Ireland Football Final. Our website will commemorate the excellent and unique achievement of Jim Gavin in managing the Dublin footballers to the Final. Today, day 2, we republish a feature article the Evening Herald’s Conor McKeon penned to coincide with the official opening of our Monastery Road development in April. In the article, Conor wrote of the early promise Jim Gavin was showing in his senior football managerial reign and he spoke with former Dublin county star and Towers manager Paul Curran, who said it was no surprise Jim was proving a success in management. Also featured below are links to three articles profiling Jim that featured in yesterday’s Irish Independent and Irish Times newspapers. Tomorrow we will feature old pictures and press clippings of Jim that have been brought together from the archives.    

 

 

We in the wider GAA community have a habit of placing the great players on such towering pantheons that subsequent failure on their part in the sphere of management can draw a great sadness and prompt a spate of ready-made, multi-use excuses.

‘Not every great player makes a great manager,’ or some such variation of the theme.

 

 

Ergo: a great team – even the truly great – are unlikely to spawn a raft of future custodians and generators of the type of excellence with which they themselves graced the county jersey.Take the best of them all, the Kerry team of the 70’s.

Several of their cherished number tried inter-county management out for size but who, other than the late Paidí Ó Sé, can be said to have truly succeeded to a standard even close to their own? Like any rule, though, there are exceptions.

 

 

 

The Clare hurling team of the ‘90’s, by virtue of their inherent Clare-ness, one of the more storied outfits of recent times, have already tossed Anthony Daly, David Fitzgerald, Ger ‘The Sparrow’ O’Loughlin and Ollie Baker onto the inter-county managerial merry-go-round while two of Ger Loughnane’s backroom team; Tony Considine and Mike McNamara have worn the Banner’s Bainisteóir bib since the great man’s departure.

 

 

And consider for a second the case of Dublin’s All-Ireland winning team of 1995.Pat Gilroy, the first of that group to manage Dublin, brought Sam Maguire back for the first time since that very September when they beat Tyrone while Dessie Farrell last season broke a ludicrous 28-year losing streak for the capital at minor level.

John O’Leary (Wicklow) and Paul Bealin (Wexford) have managed senior inter-county teams while Mick Deegan – currently a senior selector – and Mick Galvin were responsible for the Dublin juniors All-Ireland win in 2008.

Paul Clarke, meanwhile, trained the Dubs under Pillar Caffrey while Keith Barr recently got in on the act, taking St Brigid’s to an All-Ireland U-14 Féile Peil na nóg Division 1 title.

And then there’s Jim Gavin.

 

 

“You pick out one or two when you’re playing who you would think would go on to manage and Jim was always in that one or two,” says Paul Curran, making quite a reputation himself further North on the M50 from where he cut his managerial teeth, here in Round Towers.“There are a good few of that team involved, but I don’t think anyone has been as successful as Jim. And I don’t think it’s a surprise. When he was playing himself, he was organised and went about his business, took instruction very well and I think that’s what he will expect from his players as well.”

 

 

The evidence thus far is compelling. Yes, Gavin was the catalyst behind Dublin’s All-Ireland Under 21 wins of 2010 and 2012 but so too was he – and current selector Declan Darcy – equally responsible for their first win at the grade back in 2003.

And to date, he has barely put a foot wrong since taking over the senior job or, to quote Tommy Lyons, the ‘biggest gig in town,’ from Gilroy at the end of the last year.

 

 

“I think not only has he done well so far – he’s also thrown in a lot of new players as well,” says Curran, who not only shared a dressing-room with Gavin as a player, but worked alongside as a selector with the Under 21s in 2008.

“He is developing these lads, which is great. When you come as a manager, you get that first year to do that.

“But at times, that doesn’t work for you. You take a chance throwing young lads in and the result don’t go for you, all of a sudden, the pressure comes on. And it’s still only the League.”

 

 

The League is funny like that. Is there another major sporting competition in Ireland where, if you were to list the top three priorities of the managers involved, actually winning the thing would struggle to make the cut?

Particularly for those in their first year, as Gavin is, still feeling their way into the role, trying to balance the need to create momentum by achieving results whilst simultaneously implementing a style of play and blooding new players.

“He would have a clear way of looking at things and where he wants to go,” Curran explains. “We all know how organised he is. The army background and all that and I played with him and worked with him for a season.

“The organisation side of things will be done. That’s for sure. It will be done as good as he can do it and we know that he can do it well. So that will be one area that will be boxed off.

 

 

“The other thing is, he has a lot of talent at his disposal. There is a lot of great talent coming through and don’t forget, they won the All-Ireland a couple of years ago as well and that wasn’t an old team either.”

“So those fellas are fresh and under a new manager,” Curran adds, “So, all the elements are there.”

It’s still early for Jim Gavin, a cherished member of Round Towers, but already, the signs are hugely promising.