Pat Gilroy’s return to the Dublin football management team has been confirmed by defender Lee Gannon.
Mirror Sport was first to report last week that the 2011 All-Ireland winning boss was being coaxed back under current manager Dessie Farrell as the Dubs bid to wrestle back the Sam Maguire Cup in 2023 after successive semi-final defeats under Farrell.
It would appear to be another boost to their chances of doing so following on from the news that Paul Mannion and Jack McCaffrey are to rejoin the panel for the forthcoming campaign.
Gilroy has had no involvement with inter-county football since stepping down as manager after the 2012 All-Ireland semi-final defeat to Mayo though he did serve a single season as Dublin hurling boss in 2018.
Incidentally, Gannon, who starred for the footballers this year, was called into the hurling panel shortly after Gilroy’s departure but has never worked with the St Vincent’s man before.
He said: “Dessie informed us two weeks ago that that Pat would be joining up with us so it’s really exciting to have another Dublin stalwart back in with us and hopefully he can just push us on that extra little level to hopefully get that bit better and keep going forward so yeah, Pat’s back in.”
There is still some mystery as to what Gilroy’s role will be with Gannon saying that that has yet to be confirmed.
“No, to be fair Dessie’s great at keeping in contact with us on that level and even on a personal level he’s great too but he just told us a few weeks ago that Pat would be joining up with the squad but there was no mention of a coaching capacity or a mindset capacity, whatever it would be, we don’t really know yet, so it still is very exciting now and I’d say in a week or two’s time we’ll find out.”
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