Some time this morning, Dublin manager Jim Gavin will lift his phone to inform 10 or so players that they won’t be part of the matchday panel for the All-Ireland final replay.
By virtue of not receiving a phone call, the rest will deduce that they have made the 26, though that will be made clear at training tonight, along with the starting team.
“I was lucky enough I was never outside the 26 thank God,” smiles former star Alan Brogan. “I never got one, but they’re the ones where you just have to turn the phone off Thursday morning.
“I think that’s how he does it. He makes a call to guys and explains the reasons and stuff and then he just names the team that evening.
“There’s 35 or 36 on that panel so there’s 10 phone calls that Jim has to make and tell lads that they’re not in the 26 so that’s not an easy job for Jim either and I think it’s the one he probably struggles with most, the part of the job he struggles with most but look, he has tough decisions to make every game he goes into.”
It’s well-known by now that, strictly speaking, Kilkenny hurling manager Brian Cody doesn’t actually name his starting line-ups, preferring to write it on a chart which is flipped over in front of the players to reveal the preferred 15.
Gavin has a different style.
Brogan added: “No, he names a team in a huddle and he names the subs in a huddle before the training on the Thursday which would be (tonight), so two days before he’ll do that. But he’ll have told the guys that are not on the 26.”
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