Gavin Devlin opens up on playing day regrets, Derry regrets, and Louth return
WEE CHAT: Louth manager Gavin Devlin: 'In my 20s, I wasn’t obsessed enough. I was flippant, I was flaky, I was the class clown' Pic: Shauna Clinton/Sportsfile
YOU remind Gavin Devlin of the gushing words of his mentor.
“Gavin had the feet of a dancer,” Mickey Harte said, “because it wasn’t just about mopping things up or getting rid of the ball; he could evade forwards and work his way out of difficult situations, stay in control and pass the ball out of defence.
“He’d a lot of composure. He was a man you liked to see on the ball because you knew he would handle things and make this a good outcome.”
Back for a second stint with the Louth senior footballers, Devlin has agreed to stop off for a coffee in the upstairs café at Fiveways, Newry before resuming his journey to Darver. It's 10.30 and Louth's training session doesn't start until 7pm.
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Devlin’s laptop sits to his left on the table beside the window, holding tightly a million nuggets on Dublin, their Leinster semi-final opponents in Portlaoise on Saturday evening.
Devlin is in wistful mood.
In the early-to-mid noughties, the Ardboe man was Mickey Harte’s cerebral enforcer. The first recognised libero.
He was part of Tyrone's two All-Ireland triumphs in 2003 and ’05. By the time they nailed a third in 2008, Devlin was gone from the scene.
He was 27-years-old - slap, bang in the middle of his peak years. The older he gets, the more his playing days gnaw at him. Squinting into a blinding low sun, Devlin doesn’t spare himself.
“In my 20s, I wasn’t obsessed enough. I was flippant, I was flaky, I was the class clown. I didn’t grow up until later on. I was full of craic. I would have contributed to the craic at training and a night out.
“I was burning the candle at both ends. We won the All-Ireland in ’05 but I was drinking and enjoying the party life. I was working hard during the day and training hard at night.
“I’d be up early in the morning with a van-load of boys building houses down in Monaghan, running jobs and leaving at half-two – the stress of all that – hoping the boys would finish the day out.
“I’d be home and getting ready for training and at the weekend I’d be out drinking. Looking back now, it was absolutely toxic. I knew long before Mickey [Harte] even knew. Mickey looked after me too well. He looked after me like a son. He gave me ample opportunities.”
Devlin adds: “The game was beginning to evolve and I wasn’t physically in the right place. I never missed training. If we were training five nights a week I would’ve been there. But I was doing the bare minimum and I was getting exposed. I left serious years behind me on the playing end of it. I didn’t work hard enough.
“If I'd matured earlier and completely dedicated my life to it, I know 100% I could have offered a lot more. But I didn’t. And it does bother me.”
From his minor days, Devlin played every minute of Tyrone’s string of successful All-Ireland assaults at minor, U21 and senior level – until the axe fell on him between Tyrone’s two epic quarter-final jousts with the Dubs in ’05.
He stayed around the set-up for a couple more years before stepping away in ’07.
In 2012, Devlin was enjoying a coaching stint with the Bellaghy footballers when Harte rang and made him an offer he couldn't refuse.
The pair were joined at the hip for the next 12 seasons before going their separate ways after a difficult year with the Derry footballers in 2024.
More twists and turns lay ahead as Harte headed to Offaly and Devlin returned to Louth.
Every conversation with Devlin is versatile; it can ricochet in any direction at any time. He speaks candidly about his abrupt departure from Louth to join Harte in Derry – and, without prompting, ruefully recalls Derry's now-infamous training camp to Portugal and letting the Derry lads off the leash to enjoy a couple of extra days in the sun before they were licked by Donegal in the Ulster Championship a week later.
“We’d an unbelievable time in Portugal, four absolutely immense days,” Devlin says. “But some of the lads wanted to stay on for a couple of days. It started with five or six boys, then it went out to seven or eight, and by the time the training camp came around it was the whole team.
“Looking back now, we should have got them on the plane with us on the Thursday and it might have been slightly different.”
Unconvincing, Derry rallied in that year’s All-Ireland series, but ran out of steam heading down the home straight against Kerry at Croke Park.
And then there was Devlin heading up the Louth Academy last year, navigating the awkwardness around the Louth players after his return to the Wee County.
Spool forward to the present and Devlin has replaced Ger Brennan as Louth senior boss, tasked with trying to retain Leinster for the first time in 69 years, while Brennan is now in the sky-blue corner.
Devlin was reluctant to leave Louth at the end of the 2023 season – but his loyalty to Harte was the deciding factor.
At the time, Sam Mulroy felt Harte and Devlin had left Louth “high and dry” - but it never changed the totemic forward’s opinion that ‘Horse’ Devlin was, in coaching terms, a class apart.
“I would have met up with Sam the year I was with Derry,” Devlin says. “I’d stop off and have something to eat or have a few drinks with him and a few of the players. I think what made it that bit easier was when I came back to the academy last year. I was part of the script in Louth. I was there on a nightly basis on the premises and you’d be bumping into players. So that was a really good ice-breaker for me. It just fell into place and it felt that’s where I needed to be.”
When Devlin was growing up in Ardboe, he could take or leave school. All he cared about was hearing the last bell of the day and who’d be in his six-a-side team on his street, while re-enacting the moves of Plunkett Donaghy, Kevin McCabe or Frank McGuigan.
Some of his fondest memories were being squeezed into his father’s car – affectionately known as the ‘Heavy Shevy’ – like sardines and driving down to the pitch for an U10 match.
“I played the game in my own mind," he says. "I was very good at French in school and I wasn’t at all good at Irish. I remember I could only pick one language and I picked Irish over French.
“My mother said: ‘But you’re so good at French.’ And I said: ‘That’s not going to help me in the middle of the Hogan Stand when I’m lifting the All-Ireland.’
“I always visualised lifting the All-Ireland when I was young. I was one away from that in ’05 when I was vice-captain and [Brian] Dooher lifted the Sam Maguire.”
Devlin is one of the most successful Gaelic footballers to emerge from Tyrone, winning a couple of All-Ireland Vocational Schools titles, an All-Ireland minor, two U21 All-Irelands and the same at senior level.
Devlin, though, doesn’t lean on his medal collection for anything and would swap it all for pursuing sporting excellence and perhaps winning less.
“I mightn’t have fulfilled my potential as a player and left uncharted ground. Now, I work hard every single day. You might have mocked me or teased me as a player – but try and mock me now. I don’t do everything right but to overcome me now, you better be up early…
“Whether it’s sport, business or your personal life, when you put your heart and soul into something, it normally doesn’t backfire.
“Yes, you’ll have a bad moment here, a bad moment there, but you can always find a solution, you can always bounce back. That’s the way I live my life now.”
Devlin is glad, relieved almost, to be back in Louth and he'll embrace the challenge of toppling the Dubs in O'Moore Park on Saturday evening.
“The only three places I’ve been are Tyrone, Derry and Louth. When this one is over, I don’t see myself going anywhere else. I’m here in Louth for as long as they want me.”
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