Jim Gavin targets 2017 for Jack McCaffrey return

Jim Gavin is hopeful Jack McCaffrey will be available to Dublin in 2017.

News that McCaffrey was taking time out later this season broke last week and was confirmed by Gavin after Saturday’s league defeat of Cork at Croke Park.

McCaffrey is the second All-Star defender to become unavailable to the county after Rory O’Carroll’s decision to leave for New Zealand.

“Jack is studying medicine in University College Dublin,” Gavin explained. “He’s in his fourth year of six, doing very well, and as part of his course he has a desire to do some volunteer work in a hospital in Africa over the summer.

“We’ve known about this for some time, but we’ve given him space to reflect and to consult with those people who are close to him.

We fully support him and he won’t be playing with us for the national league or the championship in 2016.”

McCaffrey is due to return to his studies in UCD after the summer for the next academic year and, at just 22 years of age, there is ample time for him to pick up where he left off with Dublin last season which he ended as the Footballer of the Year.

The signs are good, then.

“We would hope so, but there’s no guarantees in life, no guarantees in sport, as we’ve always said,” said Gavin.

Eric Lowndes wore the number seven shirt on Saturday, but only for 35 minutes as he builds up match fitness, while Dublin looked shaky under the high ball into O’Carroll’s old stomping ground around the small square where Cork’s Peter Kelleher was a regular danger.

Still, if any side has the resources to cover such losses it must be Dublin.

“One door closes on one players’ time with us and another opens for someone else,” said Gavin. “You do go through cycles in campaigns when players aren’t available. We’ve mentioned one or two who weren’t available last year and are this year.

“That’s just the nature of sport and the nature of life. We’ve always (wanted) to get the balance in the players’ life, their families and their professional, academics. Whatever decisions they make, their life is defined by those decisions.

“We will support them whatever they are.”