JOE BROLLY: Vote Jim Gavin for President

AS each of his plans end in triumph, I imagine Jim Gavin sitting in a hot tub, sipping champagne, smoking a fine cigar, like Hannibal in the A team, smiling and saying to himself, “I love it when a plan comes together.”

He is a mysterious and unknowable man. Like The Equalizer he appears from nowhere to solve impossible problems, then disappears until the next crisis, never seeking credit. As the Dublin manager, he famously refused to pose for photographs with the Sam Maguire, saying “This is the players’ achievement.”

On the Monday night after they had demolished Tyrone to make it four in-a-row, I met him and the squad in The Palace Bar on Fleet Street. The boys were in party mood. Kevin McManamon stood on a table, playing the guitar and belting out Dublin songs. The lads were performing their party pieces. The drink was on the house.

Conor Sketches was with me and the boys wanted him to do a turn on the table. He approached Jim, who was sitting beside me, and very respectfully said, “Jim, is it alright if I borrow your cap?” That’s the thing about Jim. Something about him causes you to approach him differently. Even on a night like that. “Sure Conor, no problem,” he said. Sketches went on to perform a hilarious skit where the Dubs were playing the Leitrim u-14s and Jim was saying, “We have the greatest respect for this Leitrim team and although their goalie is only 12, he is a superb shot stopper.”

Jim sat there silently, in the middle of the mayhem but apart from it, glowing like the Buddha, that Mona Lisa half smile playing on his lips. He bears the permanent expression of a man who knows something that no one else does. Something very important. Something life changing.

Another thing about him is that in company, he only asks questions, like the 40 year old Virgin. Questions rebound off the force field that surrounds him. Instead, he becomes the cross examiner. The glamorous brunette was with me and spent the night answering questions about the new hospice in Mayo we were building and about her career, Jim concentrating intently on her answers in the manner of a novice sports journalist granted a personal interview with Lionel Messi.

Sketches told me a fascinating story that night. It was 2016 and he had decided to do his first ever live show.

When he went out on stage, Jim Gavin and the Dublin squad were there. “The show was a disaster. I was terrible. The only thing that got a bit of a laugh was when I did Jim. I was in my changing room afterwards, telling myself that that would be my last ever live gig, when there was a knock on the door. It was Jim, who I had never met. “Just wanted to say that was brilliant Conor, the lads really enjoyed it and they would love to get a picture with you if that’s okay.” I couldn’t believe it. I went out to them and we got photographs. They were all complimenting me. I thought to myself ‘I can do this, I can really do this.”

Two years later, that night when Jim arrived into the Palace bar with the lads, he shook hands with Conor and said, “Congratulations on all your great success Conor. You’ve come a long way since that first gig.”

After a few minutes chit chat, Conor said, “I always wanted to ask you about that night Jim. Is it really true the lads wanted a photograph with me?” Jim smiled and after a long pause, said, “No. But I thought you needed to hear that at the time.”

When I was managing our minor footballers in Belfast, and we had just won our semi-final, I got a call out of the blue

Jim: Joe, Jim Gavin here.

Me: Conor is that you?

Jim: No, it’s Jim. I see your minors are in the county final, would you like me to come up with the group and take a session?

Me: Conor, stop taking the piss.

Jim: No, it’s me Joe. Let me know if it suits, we could do this Saturday around 11am at your grounds in Belfast.

It really was Jim. The Dubs were in their pomp at the time and so, on that Saturday morning, the flotilla of Dublin kit vans arrived an hour beforehand and Jim, Jayo and the crew arranged the pitch.

Me: Do you need me to do anything Jim?

Jim: No Joe, all good.

We hadn’t told the lads and when they arrived they could not believe their eyes.

Afterwards, like an aid worker surrounded by hungry kids, Jim handed out his patented Dublin baseball caps to the boys. John Costello rolled his eyes and said to me, “I’m out a fortune on those caps.”

And then they were gone, off to west Belfast to spend time with Jim’s great friend Anto Finnegan, who did not have long to live from the cursed MND.

Sometime after he left the Dubs, he texted me to invite me to watch his u-14s. “They play lovely football,” he said.

Later, with Gaelic football going down the toilet, the GAA sought out The Equalizer. Two years later, standing in front of a Christmas tree in Croke Park on a Saturday morning, Jim Gavin delivered the mother of all Christmas presents to the GAA community, with voting majorities our political parties could only dream of. Every one of the 49 motions passed, resulting in all 18 new rules being passed in their entirety.

It was a triumph for the GAA community and a personal triumph for Jim, who in a taste of things to come, ran the revolution with the same brilliance and efficiency as his six-in-a-row campaign.

In different hands, it could have been a terrible mess. We saw that with the previous rules review committee who were out of their depth, strategically, tactically and politically.

Jim understood that it was not enough to create a comprehensive set of rules to save football. He also knew he needed to win the hearts and minds of both the football public and a GAA Congress that is more conservative than the Taliban.

He achieved that with a simply brilliant PR blitz, explaining the rules to the public with excellent graphics and video shorts, using highly respected football people to endorse them. He toured the studios. He was endlessly patient, exuding that reassuring Dalai Lama aura that says, “Don’t worry, everything will be okay.”

By the time it came to the votes, Congress was hynotized. After the vote, he shimmered quietly out of the building, back to the hot tub and the champagne, before proceeding with his plans for world domination for his u-14s. Jim is a man of integrity and courage and compassion and moderation.

We will never wake up to a headline in the tabloids “My Night of Passion with Dublin GAA Love rat” or “The Leitrim triplets Jim abandoned.” The closest he will ever get to a mid-life crisis is those designer spectacles. Nor will brown envelopes rear their ugly heads. John Costello told me once that it was virtually impossible to even get Jim claim his travel expenses. “I gave up chasing him,” he said.

He would be an excellent President. A President to be proud of. It is only a pity that in common with three quarters of a million other Irish citizens, I will not be able to vote for this remarkable man.

The hot tub in the Áras beckons.