In his first comments on the allegation of biting made by his Meath counterpart Mick O’Dowd, Dublin manager Jim Gavin has praised the restraint shown by his forward Eoghan O’Gara in last month’s Leinster football final.
“I just thought that Eoghan showed great composure for a big strong man, to maintain his self-discipline when he was under stress. As I said, it’s not really talked about in the Dublin squad. We just moved on to the next game pretty quickly.”
He declined to criticise Meath over the controversy, which arose from an incident involving O’Gara and opponent Mickey Burke.
O’Dowd returned to the post-match media room to make the allegation public. Gavin had been unaware of the accusation until speaking to media after the match.
Photographs and video evidence suggested Burke’s finger had been in contact with O’Gara’s mouth but the matter wasn’t pursued by the GAA’s Central Competitions Control Committee because of a lack of evidence.
Great respect
“The manager has got to do whatever he feels is best for his team,” said Gavin.
“There was great respect going into that game for the county of Meath and the way they play their football and their GAA community and there was great respect after the game for Meath football and for Meath GAA people. So that hasn’t changed one bit. What a manager does, that’s in his control and we can’t influence that.”
Dublin face Ulster finalists Monaghan in tomorrow’s All-Ireland quarter-final at Croke Park with the free- scoring Leinster champions likely to face the most defensively oriented opponents they have encountered during Gavin’s two years in charge.
Asked was he surprised this was the case given how hard the county was pressed by Donegal’s defensive configuration three years ago, Gavin said he wasn’t.
“That doesn’t come into our thought process at all. We will present on any given day, we’ll bring a game-plan to play in Croke Park or wherever we play and if that game-plan works that is great and if it needs to be modified or changed in the course of a game that’s what we do and Saturday will be no different.”
Although he described maintaining discipline as a “core value” of the team, the Dublin manager said he didn’t regard as being of enormous significance his players’ achievement in not receiving a single black card since the sanction intended to combat calculated fouling was introduced at the start of the year.
“We got excellent briefs from the county board and Croke Park on the black card. But it’s not kind of talked about. We go after heavily in our training sessions the art of defending. You don’t always get it right. Obviously frees are conceded but it’s nice to have that record. It’s not something that we’ve focused too heavily on but we want to get the tackle right so that we don’t concede frees.”
Monaghan come into the weekend’s quarter-final having had a stern test from Kildare in last week’s All-Ireland fourth-round qualifier, which went to extra time. Gavin didn’t however feel that the gruelling match played in a torrential downpour would create a fitness issue for Dublin’s opponents.
“Looking back at the tape, I think at this elite level an extra couple of minutes won’t make any difference in terms of the overall and how a team prepares. A week’s break is quite sufficient for any team to get themselves right for another game and Monaghan are coming off the back of a very good performance.”
Gavin also commented on the termination by Westmeath County Board of Gavin’s 1995 All-Ireland winning team-mate Paul Bealin’s tenure as county manager.
“Westmeath have a great club structure and a proud county tradition and you wish them well and you wish Paul Bealin well. I felt he did a very good job with them and when we played them they were very competitive and it could have gone either way.”
