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Sport for Business
Sport for Business
Jim Gavin's Downfall - Sport for Business Daily
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A week can crown a champion or cut one down. We follow Jim Gavin’s leap from the certainty of silverware to the volatility of a national presidential race, exploring why mastery in sport doesn’t automatically translate to survival in politics—and what that means for anyone tempted to cross the line from the sideline to the ballot box.
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Hello and welcome this morning to the Sport for Business Daily. I'm your host, Rob Hartnett, and thank you for joining us for this audio blast of the content that we produce on sportforbusiness.com each morning and evening, Monday to Friday. Get in touch if there's something that you'd like us to be covering, or if you've got any thoughts on the content that we produce, you can reach me at rob at sportforbusiness.com. Today's lead story is not strictly from the world of sport, but it does include the sobering lessons that can be learned from one of sport's finest exponents over the past decade stepping into a different world. Jim Gavin was lauded as one of the finest Gaelic football managers of all time, leading Dublin to an unprecedented six All-Ireland titles, five of them back to back from 2015 to 2019. He then bolstered his credentials by chairing the Football Review Committee that transformed the sport with rule changes implemented for the first time this past year. In between times, he also chaired a People's Assembly on the election of a Lord Mayor for Dublin, all the time maintaining his day job in charge of Irish air traffic control. And somewhere along the line, the idea entered his mind of a run for the office of President of Ireland. I can understand the logic of a line between a strong commitment to public service and an entry to the world of electoral politics. Ireland has over 1,000 elected politicians at the national and local authority levels, all of whom sacrifice time and energy and put themselves before their peers to seek election. For most of them, the elections can be won with a few hundred first preference votes within the local community they have generally been a part of for a long time and where their efforts are known and recognized. The office of the president, though, is a whole different ballgame. Politics is a tough station where every choice you make is magnified and seen as fair game for political opponents. In the presidential election where Michael D. Higgins was first elected, businessman Sean Gallagher was an early front runner, but got taken down by questions raised, though never validated in a TV debate. His experience put in full view the fact that you had to have a Teflon coat if you were to enter this world without years, if not decades, of experience in handling the inevitable scrutiny. Being a football manager is a high profile role, but it is sport, and while it matters deeply, it is correctly described as perhaps the most important of the least important things. Proving yourself in this arena is only part of the journey to bringing it into a national contest on matters of international geopolitics, housing, cost of living challenges, immigration, integration, and questions of a border pole. It is hard to know how much hard preparation Jim Gavin was put through before entering this bear pit. It is less than a week since the first TV debate where the consensus was that he had not performed well. In that week he has been questioned and chipped away at over his presentation skills, over drone flights, over poorly thought through photographs, and then over a financial episode from sixteen years ago that was, as he said, a part of his life that he had moved on from. A poor opinion poll on Sunday morning suggested that this was a battle already lost, and then last night the announcement of his withdrawal from the race. The problem that should have been put to him in stark capital letters is that politics is a place where no part of life can be fully moved on from. Everything is up for grabs, whether through investigative journalism or by rival candidate teams that leave no stone stone or even pebble unturned. A life in politics should always be prefaced by a relentless immersion in the extensive canon of movies and TV series from Washington behind closed doors to House of Cards. Most of us will watch and be entertained, then shocked at why anyone would want to subject themselves to that scrutiny. Thankfully for our democratic system, there are those who do want to do it, who are willing to be pilloried in satire and in public debate, but who keep on showing up. But you really need to be willing for the sacrifice. It takes a lifetime to build a reputation, but it's taken only seven days to leave a different picture of Jim Gavin for most of the population. For sports fans, the football contribution alone will always leave him standing tall, but for those outside that bubble, his pace in public life is now tarnished. It is a shame for him and for those around him. It is also a shame for public life because he is now another reason to say no when the voice in your head says that public service and putting yourself up for it in a public vote is a sound way towards a peaceful life. Elsewhere on sportforbusiness.com this morning, we are looking back on a weekend and identifying five of our sporting champions from a variety of sports from basketball, show jumping, rugby, football, and Gaelic games, and we also continue the build-up to our Sport for Social Good conference, which is taking place on October the 14th. Plenty more as well, including how to watch all of the live TV in sport and streaming over the coming days. If you want to be a part of the Sport for Business community, you can find out more at sportforbusiness.com. Thank you for your time with us this morning.
