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29th March 2017
02:07pm BST

"All he has to do is keep them from becoming over confident and complacent...Davy Byrne got whipped off after 30 minutes, and in fairness he was getting a bit of a run around off Enda Smith, but that’s the sort of stuff you’re doing. "Most managers would say, 'ah we’re well on top here, I’ll give him till half time' you know? Whereas he’s doing the sort of thing where its keeping everybody on their toes and he’s not really giving them any praise publicly, now he may be doing a lot of it privately, but I suspect he probably isn’t either.”Gavin is certainly in a unique position as a manager in that confidence is held in abundance throughout his squad. He obviously feels that the best way to manage this air of confidence within his squad is to bring his players back down to earth as much as possible and to keep their feet on the ground. The Dublin chat starts from 23 minutes onwards, or keep reading below. https://soundcloud.com/sportsjoe-gaa-hour/john-heslin-interview-tyrones-groundhog-day-and-bantys-mindgames Colm Parkinson feels that Gavin’s tough love type approach to his players is a reflection on the conservative nature of GAA managers in general.
“If Jim Gavin went the other way and tapped into that Dublin arrogance, ‘We are Dublin’, I often think that whoever manages Cork should tap into that. There’s an arrogance there that should be harnessed, not kind of put underneath the surface. But that’ll never happen in the GAA because we’re terrified of the old cliché of the dressing room wall.”This ruthlessness, however is a motivational strategy that is paying dividends for Gavin and his squad as they lead the Division 1 table of the National League and will aim for their third Sam Maguire in a row later in the year. It will take a brave man to bet against them.
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