Even before Jim Gavin’s presidential campaign imploded on Sunday, it was shadowed by one very big unanswered question. It was not the ultimately fatal one about his behaviour as a former landlord. It was more basic than that: what on earth was Micheál Martin thinking?
Gavin was patently not ready for his close-up. Not in the sense of being prepared to project a comfortable and confident version of himself. And not in the darker sense of being ready for the horribly relentless scrutiny of everything you have ever said or done that starts the moment you step onto this field.
Gavin was a brilliant GAA football manager but also an infamously taciturn one. From his debut as a presidential candidate it was painfully obvious to everyone that this taciturnity was not tactical. It isn’t a ruse to out-psych opponents.
It is, rather, a result of what a good football manager tells a decent but limited player: play to your strengths.
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