Premier JHC: Erin's Own manager Brian O'Shea hopeful that young stars can kick on

Erin’s Own manager Brian O’Shea believes that a mix of youth and experience was key in earning the team county championship glory for the second straight year.

A combination of players with senior careers under their belts and those who hope to step up that level made for a well-oiled unit and O’Shea was delighted with the end product.

“I know they say it’s our second team but for us this is our development group,” he said.

“There are guys there with massive experience – Shane Murphy, James McMahon, Mark Collins – and they’ve guys that are coming through like Brian Nolan, Cian Dunphy, Cormac McDonnell.

“All those guys are adding to the team so they’re bringing fresh energy. To take that and the experience, put the two of them together and try to get them to work, it’s great.”

After a good start, the Glounthaune club were reeled in by St Catherine’s before a strong finish to the first half sent them in with a five-point lead.

“We felt we were going quite well,” O’Shea said.

“We were getting the scores we wanted to be getting and shooting where we wanted, they got a goal that brought them back into the game, that’s our own fault.

“I thought our own goal, Johnny Kavanagh’s goal, kind of gave us that foothold back that we needed. Going in at half-time, there was no question that we were expecting a battle – that Catherine’s were going to come out and give it everything in the second half. They’ve been doing that all year and we knew that.

“It was a question of knuckling down, putting in the work and trying to get those extra scores to keep that distance ahead.”

In that second half, they had the benefit of being able to call on Robbie O’Flynn, who scored two important points. Having missed all the of the premier senior campaign, the Cork star was available to the premier junior side but management did not want to overexpose him, either.

“We thought long and hard about what the best thing was to do with Robbie,” O’Shea said.

“He was coming back after six months of injury and the expectation people had, it’s not fair.

“It was great to bring him on and it was great to bring him on against Barryroe and give him that bit of time. We feel it was a squad effort and it was always going to be the bench, it was always going to be 20 players, be that Robbie or someone else coming off the bench.”

Now, the challenge will be to perform at intermediate A level but O’Shea has no fears.

“There are guys in there that have ambitions of playing senior hurling, no question about it, they’re ambitious,” he said.

“You want to be playing a good standard of hurling so that they can step up to senior hurling very comfortably and I’m confident that they’ll be capable of doing that.

“Everyone trains together. We see ourselves as one club – you put on the jersey and it’s an Erin’s Own jersey.

“They’re getting the physicality hurling of adult hurling and senior adult hurling, which helps. No time on the ball at that level!

“This was probably one of the first years where we were able to bring our younger players through.

“There mightn’t have been so many in the last number of years but we’re trying to keep that going.

“They’re ambitious, they want to play and we want to give them the opportunity.”