Gilligan also extensively coached and lectured around the county, spending time in the English winters raising the team's profile. He encouraged the search for promising young cricketers, and most of the club's professional cricketers during its successful years in the 1930s were discovered during Gilligan's drive for new talent. Percy Fender believed that Gilligan allowed the team's professionals a greater say in Sussex's affairs than previously permitted. Fender wrote that Gilligan's teams enjoyed playing under him and that he was one of the most popular captains in county cricket. Cricket writer R. C. Robertson-Glasgow said: "With him there was no sharpnesses, no petty restraints, no mathematical cricket. He won or lost plumb straight". Swanton wrote that "Gilligan was essentially a friendly man, hail-fellow-well-met, and it is hard to think that in the world of sport he ever made an enemy."