Jim Gavin keeps lid on hype and plays down great expectations

Jim Gavin doesn’t do hyperbole, particularly not when it comes to his Dublin team’s increasingly remarkable achievements, so a statement of serious All-Ireland intent was perhaps asking a little too much.

But even by the experienced manager’s standards his post-match analysis after their fourth consecutive Allianz League title success amounted to an exercise in putting a lid on the hype and expectation surrounding his players.

Gavin has now collected a whopping nine pieces of silverware from a possible 10, across the league and championship, but did his very best to play it all down and keep supporters in check ahead of the summer.

“We’re very much on the coat-tails of the players, they’re leading this drive and it’s a privilege to be with them,” said Gavin. “But we’ve got big challenges ahead. Players will go back to their clubs now for club championships, both in hurling and football. We’ll regroup three weeks before the first championship game. But there are no guarantees. We’ll take one game at a time, we’ll respect the opposition equally and as best we can and we’ll try and go out and perform.

“We understand if we get a performance then we’ll be there or thereabouts.”

Asked if the feat is in any way comparable to anything they’ve done in the championship, Gavin, a two-time All-Ireland winning manager, shook his head.

“No, it’s not, the championship is the championship and the league is the league,” he continued. “We look at the league as the third competition because you have the league, the provincial series and the Championship series and that’s the way Croke Park have it laid out for us.

“We’re representing our county and just want to be the best we can be in every competition we play. If there’s things to be won along the way, we’ll take them but it’s all about the process of trying to be our best and the outcome of that is the four leagues we’ve won.”

To add to Dublin’s latest league win, they did it without All Star defenders Rory O’Carroll and Jack McCaffrey who opted off the panel earlier in the year. Again, Gavin insisted winning national silverware without them wasn’t a particularly satisfying thing.

“The sense of satisfaction is seeing the players perform to their best,” he said. “Myself and the management team were given a very privileged position to be asked by the county board to look after this group of players. It is simply my job to get them to be the best they can be.”

Gavin gave a brief response to the suggestion from opposing Kerry manager Eamonn Fitzmaurice Kieran Donaghy was continuously fouled and not protected by the referee.

“I thought our defence coped admirably with him,” responded Gavin. “He is a very big player, a very talented footballer, not easily watched and if you take your eye off him he will punish you with goals and points. I thought our defence played a very fair game, we were very disciplined in our tackling. We had a very good structure around the broken ball and guys really committed themselves to that breaking ball and I thought we coped with it really, really well.”