His record speaks for itself and he will deservedly go down as one of the all time greats. For all the praise he gets, I think his greatest quality often got overlooked, which was his on-field decision making/team selection. While he obviously had a talented management team around him, he had the final say and he almost always seemed to get it right...2016-throwing in a relatively unknown Cormac Costello who proceeded to single-handedly win it for them, 2017-Not starting Connolly and then unleashing him when the game was in the melting pot, deciding to start Eoin Murchan in the replay this year, the list goes on.
For me though, I'll remember him as the man who sucked the life out of Gaelic football. The endless platitude infested interviews, the lack of even a smile after wining the three in a row in 2017, the way his ruthlessly efficient, yet robotic team tore away any element of surprise or competitiveness from the Leinster championship before essentially doing the same thing to the AI Championship (bar 1 game a year against Kerry or Mayo).
His two faced utterances about playing 'honest open' football while his team brought cynicism to new levels. There is no way that the co-ordinated pull down of several Mayo defenders at the exact same time at the end of that final was a spur the moment decision by the Dublin players. I don't blame the Dublin management for organising it (I would have gladly taken an All-Ireland win had the Mayo management done the same) however I do think Gavin's deceitful shite in the media needed to be called out a lot more.
So despite his great qualities as a manger, I can't help but think that his departure will be a positive thing for Gaelic football as a whole.
