Jim Gavin ready and willing to pay full respect to Fermanagh

Thursday morning and Jim Gavin faces maybe his biggest task of the week – talking up Dublin's All-Ireland quarter-final against Fermanagh.

His side have been racking up an average score of 4-18 in the championship so far, with an average concession of just 0-10. Fermanagh’s numbers in this regard are 1-15 for and 0-13 against. Gavin is a polite man, a mannerly man, so he has a go. But he leaves no room for doubt as to the Dubs’ sense of mission and purpose.

“It’s a fantastic achievement for Fermanagh to be so competitive,” he says. “I know from a club perspective, they have less than 20 clubs. That’s just being realistic about it. That’s why it’s a fantastic achievement what Pete McGrath has done with the team. Obviously the work they’ve put in in the season and obviously, how they’re playing their football.

“It’s the last eight. It’s winner-takes-all now. There is no back door. That brings its own pressures on both sets of players. It’s a space that we’re quite accustomed to . . .”

It’s been a heady championship for teams from outside the major population bases. With the likes of Fermanagh and Monaghan in the last eight, the argument that there’s no future outsides the Dublins and Kerrys looks a little thin. Fermanagh’s best 20 players might not be up to the standard of Dublin’s best 20 but they don’t reach for excuses off the back of it.

“There is a core group in every county,” says Gavin. “The Fermanagh example the last day, Ryan McCluskey and Marty O’Brien are off the field inside 20 minutes and they still have the resources to put away a Westmeath team who certainly put it up to us.

“So, absolutely, the Fermanagh model demonstrates that if teams can be ambitious and if they’re prepared well, coached well, managed well and obviously if they have the technical ability, then they can do well.”

Like Eamonn Fitzmaurice, Gavin was wrong-footed last weekend when it came to which fixture to attend. While the Kerry manager was in Cavan watching Dublin's eventual opponents, Gavin was in Thurles watching what turned out to be Kerry's. Cue a bout of familiarisation with a county Dublin haven't ever met in the championship and whose last league meeting was eight years ago.

“Yeah, a lot of work was done over the last few days researching Fermanagh. They haven’t come across our radar before. We have been very impressed with what we have seen. [They’re] a team that has played with a lot of structure. They have Pete McGrath, a man that I would have huge admiration for with all he has achieved in football going back to Burren in the 1980s.

“He came across our paths in ’09 with the under-21s. He had good success there with Down. Obviously his legacy is ’91 and ’94 with the Down senior football team, that breakthrough for Ulster teams and they have obviously blazed a trail ever since.

Very fruitful

“Pete, the way he carries himself like all good leaders, he is humble as he goes about his business. He has always said that it is a players’ game and that he is there to facilitate it and empower people.

“That’s the way he has this Fermanagh team playing and with a lot of structure in defence. They are very composed on the ball and they pick their moments to attack and they have been very fruitful in doing that. Their Division Three record and promotion speaks for itself and the way that they have dispatched Roscommon and Westmeath was quite impressive.”

McGrath has been coaching for three decades now and has evolved all the while. The Fermanagh manager won’t turn up on Sunday without a mix of sweepers and markers and workers to try and stay in the game as long as possible.

While it is a challenge Dublin don’t necessarily enjoy – Westmeath held them to the lowest Leinster Championship score of Gavin’s time in charge the last day – it is one that they’re getting used to.

“We’ve accepted that that’s going to be the way teams play – with 13 men behind the ball. If they give our offence that much respect, then it’s not going to be a high-scoring game. We just need to go through the phases, be controlled, and when the opportunities arise to try and take them.”