Gavan Reilly: When Gavan met Gavin ... and not the man he expected

I had only met Jim Gavin for about 20 seconds and we were already talking GAA.

“Before we get into all this,” I said - meaning the presidency - “thanks for all the work on the FRC. It’s been great.”

“Ah! Whereabouts are you from?”

I tell him I’m from Meath, which he says he should have guessed given my Breffni surname. He asks what my local club is; I explain that the football club would be Moynalvey but that the family is from Kiltale, the hurling part of a football county.

“Somebody told me,” says the Fianna Fáil presidential candidate in reply, “that the hurling part of Meath has great soil.”

I relish in telling him that the club’s sponsors, McCormack Family Farms, are the country’s biggest producer of salad leaves. It genuinely took 20 seconds.

If you’re a newcomer to politics and you’re looking for a conversational icebreaker, Jim Gavin has quite a few bases covered. His thorough knowledge of Gaelic football clubs will likely make it easy to strike up a chat with plenty of people going to the National Ploughing Championships, for example.

So far, so predictable. Gavin was an occasional visitor to Oireachtas committees given his roles chairing a citizens’ assembly on local government in Dublin, and his day job with the Irish Aviation Authority.

Then, just as with any time he was giving a pre- or post-match interview in the GAA world, he was commanding and calm, mastering the dual civil service and GAA tactic of speaking at length without ever giving much away.

The other common thread in all of Jim Gavin’s exploits is that he operates at elite levels.

You don’t get to the higher levels of bodies like the Irish Aviation Authority without being well-drilled in your stuff; likewise the Defence Forces. And, of course, you don’t win six All-Irelands in seven years without having your team prepared for almost every eventuality.

Before Gavin came over to me to record his few minutes of a TV interview for Virgin Media, he had spoken to my Newstalk counterpart Seán Defoe.

I’d been eavesdropping on the chat and noticed some of his lines were almost carbon copy repeats from a hasty and slightly scrappy press conference earlier.

Even at that, though, if Gavin had ever appeared jumpy, the vibe was still one of control: as he arrived at his victory media scrum alongside the Taoiseach, Gavin didn’t wait for Micheál Martin to kick off the festivities: he walked up to the mic and started speaking himself.

So, everything about the prelude suggested Gavin would not be easily flapped. The man struck up easy conversation, and seemed to be keen to stick to his prepared answers.

And then, we started the interview, and suddenly the poise seemed to fade. Gavin was jittery; coming across as slightly unsure of himself.

It was his first TV interview of the campaign and the time was limited so I wasn’t going to be getting into deep water – no pop quizzes about the process of convening the Council of State, or the points where the Constitution distinguishes between ‘the Oireachtas’ and ‘the Houses of the Oireachtas’.

My goal was to flesh out who Gavin is, politically: what do you stand for? What’s your view on X and Y?

Those questions were foreseeable. Gavin is such a political unknown that asking about his stance on recent referendums was an obvious one. So, I asked, how had he vetoed on the two referendums last year?

“The two… referenda? Remind me again?” Gavin raised his gaze, asking for a hint. He appeared to have forgotten what we’d voted on. There was one on the role of women in the home, I said, and on carers.

He was briefly relieved to have been reminded, then stumbled into an answer again.

“Women in the home. So, so, in terms of women in the home, I understood the thread and intent of that referendum, but I believed the language, language wasn’t clear, clear enough on that. So, so I voted no, no in that referendum.”

And on the recognition of non-marital families? “So, so non-marital families, I voted no in that regard.”

On that shaky note I asked about his stance on the Occupied Territories Bill - supported by those who think Ireland should use every lever it can to pressure Israel; opposed by some who fear an adverse impact of American investment on Ireland itself.

I was told, in reply, that the Oireachtas had been very strong on the question (?) and Israel had long achieved its military objectives in Gaza – neither answering my question, nor labelling the campaign as the genocide many would expect.

Outside of the GAA and official Ireland, Jim Gavin is a relative unknown.

That can be an amazing opportunity for Fianna Fáil; if they put their best foot forward and present him as someone who’s served in UN peacekeeping forces, flown in the Air Corps, and chaired a series of state boards (all, seemingly, pro bono), there’s a lot to like. On paper he passes the “won’t make a show of us” test at the centre of most Áras elections.

And yet, while he obviously needs to break his Dublin stereotype, his first campaign video shows him ‘on a farm’… leaving the gate open behind him, and wearing cream coloured trousers, neither typical farm behaviour. If non-GAA fans have a stereotype about GAA managers, it won’t be dissuaded by having a city slicker cosplaying as a farmer.

In all, though, Gavin will need to get better on the microphone. Ploughing aside, the presidential campaign will be an ‘air war’ - waged in broadcast setpieces - as much as a ‘ground war’ of handshakes and visits.

The Jim Gavin who so regularly held court with media in the bowels of the Hogan Stand would be right at home. The Jim Gavin who stuttered through a series of interviews last week, on his first day, may not have it so easy.

- Gavan Reilly is Political Correspondent with Virgin Media News and Political Columnist with the Meath Chronicle - Column appears first in the paper evey Tuesday