LEINSTER SFC SEMI-FINAL: TOM HUMPHRIEStalks to the team manager Pat Gilroy who is quietly overseeing considerable change within the Dublin senior football set-up
A SUNNY AFTERNOON in St Claire’s on the balmy northside. The open French doors permit a breeze to waft over the table laden with teas, coffee, and comestibles and to circulate around the room filled with us, the coxcombs and jackanapes of the media, who are sitting in rows with questions loaded.
Pat Gilroy sits in a tan suit facing everybody with Paul Griffin on one side of him and Conal Keaney on the other. He waits for everybody to be ready and then begins patiently answering the questions. It could be a scene at any club in the Premier League.
He is good at engaging with the questioner and answering in a disciplined way. In his brief few months in charge, Gilroy has done lots of these sessions and not left any hostages to fortune.
You can see how Croke Park were sufficiently impressed to make him the surprise package on the shortlist for director generall when Liam Mulvihill retired. His answers don’t stray into hubris or unguarded malice. His excursions into humour are brief and well received, but everybody returns to the business at hand quite quickly.
Sometimes he is asked a question that invites either no answer of a bullshit answer and he grimaces slightly, as if pained to be asked to provide the latter. The media session is warm, cordial, respectful and well-organised. What information is necessary is given out. Nobody runs off at the mouth.
The whole business, from the venue to the tone, represents Gilroy’s approach to management and the challenge of doing what has to be done. When he got the Dublin job, a surprise appointment but a thoughtful one from the county board, he set about organising a few commercial sponsors, firms untapped by the churn of regular GAA fundraising.
And they built this low-slung discreet building in a gladed corner of DCU’s sports grounds, a secure place and a permanent base for Dublin senior football, a facility offering a serious county side just about everything it needs. The wooden gates out the back of the building open onto a finely-manicured pitch. This is where Dublin workshop themselves. In a quid pro quo with the college, the building and pitch serve as Sigerson campaign headquarters during the off-season for intercounty football.
“And if the economy ever picks up again there is the option of putting a second floor onto it,” he says, concluding the brief tour of a facility which has cost the county board nothing.
The venue and the press conference hold the key to understanding Gilroy’s quiet , common-sense style of management.
Problem: The media have to be accommodated.
Solution: Accommodate them in the shortest time span possible with the maximum efficiency, everybody receives a sheet with the team for Sunday and a comprehensive list of injury updates. There is a short question and answer session, some one-on- ones and it is all done within an hour.
“There are still people who will ring me but they know by now that I just don’t return the call. Nothing personal, I give this hour or so and most of the media are happy with that. We try to be as helpful as possible. At the end of the day I am not paid to do this so I’m not available 24 hours a day. It is important to do the media. You have to. It’s necessary and there’s no point moaning. So we do it the best way we can.”
No part of Pat Gilroy’s life leaves him available 24-seven. Family has first call and with four children under the age of eight there is no room at home for sitting around being maudlin’ about the state of a football team.
“It’s about a bit of compartmentalising. We’re so busy at home we don’t have time to be sitting moaning or talking about football.”
His work brings him regularly to Paris.
“I just have to time it so that I get back for training. Work is good and it’s busy. That’s a good thing. It takes concentration so you’re not spending the day talking about football.”
When it is time for football his brain turns to the game.
For the old hands in the Dublin circus the change of ringmaster has brought a change of working habits. For the core of the squad the culture of Dublin football had been set in the overlapping administrations of Tommy Lyons and Paul Caffrey.
Gilroy wanted change without revolution.
“Firstly the previous management were hugely supportive to us. They helped us in loads of ways in terms of understanding how they approached things and did things. The players had huge respect for the previous management and the way they did things and approached things, so to have come in and started dismantling things would have been counter- productive.
“They had a hugely professional approach. So the bar was set high and we had to at least get up to that level in terms of organisation and structure.”
Change has been visible everywhere, from the names on the teamsheets to the style of play and the methods of training. Even Gilroy has had to accommodate change, a radical shift in the nature of his relationship with Mickey Whelan.
“Listen, Mickey makes it very easy. He goes with it completely. His enthusiasm is incredible. I know the man so long and I get on so well with him that it’s a very easy relationship. His coaching is exceptional. His input is invaluable. The other three guys the same. Great relationship.”
Change is all around though. Quietly and thoughtfully implemented.
“We wanted to do things differently in terms of training, to try different things. These guys have been totally open to that. They are very good people to work with, there are no difficulties there.
“We are doing more things with the ball more often I imagine, making the guys play against each other more often. Introducing a bit more competition in the squad, making changes and putting guys under more pressure. All the guys are taking that well and trying to play better instead of sulking about it. What goes on in training here is you know, competitive. “
The results of the new approach were visible when the team was named for the Meath game a few weeks ago. The teamsheet robustly challenged the assumption that the experiments carried out during the league would give way to damage limitation requirements come the summer and that when the time came the first 15 would be stocked as usual with tried and generally trusted faces. It didn’t unfold that way and the substitutions made on the day matched.
“Some players have gone,” he says, “others have been brought back when they pick up their club form. It’s important that players see that. We have a panel now where a lot of players are competing for starting positions. That’s healthy and the fellas have gone with that. Lads are responding by picking it up and challenging each other harder.”
The style of play too was different and if it was obvious that Dublin were attempting fluency in a new language their grammatical limitations brought criticism aplenty. The usual famine or feast atmosphere surrounding the capital’s side.
Gilroy was unmoved.
“I’m not so sure how extreme the reaction was. We were disappointed with the finishing side of things. There were things that went well but the finishing was poor. I don’t know what the reactions were out there. I literally don’t get a chance to sit down and sift through the papers or whatever.
“And even if I did, sure guys are entitled to their opinions. Everyone is free to do that. You’ll get bamboozled if you try to understand what every criticism means.
“We do so much analysis here that’s enough to have to deal with. We have to answer to ourselves and the standards we set and that have been set before us. We are very critical of ourselves here. All the analysis is video-based. It is searching stuff. That is what matters.”
At the end of the day, Pat Gilroy will do the Dublin job according to his own standards and personality. He learned early on that not a lot else mattered or was possible.
“There’s a learning curve here. If you aren’t learning you aren’t developing but I’m just trying to be myself and trying to deal with things head on and make sure there is a fair process there behind every decision we make. If you do that, people will go with you. I am going with my own style. The only policy is to be yourself.
“If you try to go about it any other way you won’t carry it off and you will be exposed. When that happens you are in trouble.”
So the footballing part of his regular day is communication oriented. Talking to players as much as is possible.
“Communication with the players on such a regular basis is difficult. If you have a panel of 30 lads, communicating with them is time-consuming. If a fella isn’t going well you can’t just send him a text saying, listen, you need to improve. If a guy dips or if a guy improves you need to talk to him and let him know that it’s happening. So a lot of time is just spent talking to lads and listening to them. Not rocket science!”
And tomorrow brings the challenge of Westmeath, a team Dublin beat by 27 points last time out. Another huge house in Croker. More instant verdicts on Dublin’s viability come September. Gilroy will navigate the day as he has everything else in the job so far with his own compass and his eye on events later in the summer.
“The way we have gone about our business is to say that this team needs to get to an All-Ireland final. That would be progress because we haven’t been that far in a long time. In January when we faced in to the year we had to have a look at the options for progressing. In Leinster and then beyond.
“We have always said we want to get this squad to an All-Ireland final. That would be progress. We have a panel here that will give us options later in the year and that’s what we will need. We put the panel together with that in mind but in the meantime it has to be match by match.”
Outside the summer sun is high in the sky and the last of the press conference attendees has drifted off. Pat Gilroy has to wait for a while to take a meeting here, the guy was due 10 minutes ago.
He looks at his watch and considers the lateness and the knock-on effect it will have on his day. No fuss, no panic though.
That’s not how things are done around St Claire’s as a new era unfolds.
