Erin's Own's Shay Bowen looking forward to new role

Shay Bowen is going into the family business.

With his father Martin having had four stints in charge of the Erin’s Own senior hurling team, it’s hardly surprising that that two-time SHC-winning goalkeeper would take the reins at some stage.

Bowen has picked up experience with the club’s second team, helping them to win the county JAHC in 2022, while he had also been involved with the Waterford camogie team in 2018 and 2019, under current Cork coach Donal O’Rourke.

“To be honest, I’d have probably been thinking about it since I was involved with the juniors,” Bowen says.

“Realistically, I wasn’t going to be able to play this year and the lads who were there last year were after stepping away.

“The opportunity came up and I said I’d throw my name in and I ended up getting it.”

With nearly two and a half decades banked as the Caherlag club’s first-choice goalkeeper, Bowen (40) has a lot of coaching expertise from which to draw upon.

“I made my debut in 2001, when I was 16,” he says, “you couldn’t do that nowadays!

“I would have been looking at the coaching side for a while and we’ve had some brilliant outside coaches, going all the way back to when we had Seán Prendergast in the mid-2000s.

“We had Pa Kearney, who was an inter-county coach with Waterford and then obviously we had Donal O’Rourke, who is probably the best coach in the country and look what he’s done with Cork.

“You learn from them and, within the club, we’ve had the likes of PJ Murphy and Timmy Kelleher too. You’re picking up things from all these fellas over the years.

“That was the way I was looking at it.”

In the season just gone, with Bowen between the sticks, Erin’s Own finished third in a Premier SHC group comprising Midleton, Kanturk and Charleville. In addition, the second team – which followed up the 2022 junior win with the 2023 premier junior title – almost made it three championships in a row, only losing the IAHC final to Lisgoold after a replay.

There is a lot to work with there for the new boss and the benefit of moving from the goal-line to the sideline is having familiarity with all of the players he’s going to be working with.

“After I got the job, I was looking at the squad,” he says, “and, between either coaching them or playing with them, the only ones I hadn’t worked with were the ones coming up from minor.

“I would have been involved with all of them to strong degree. They’re not going to be strangers to me, or me to them either!”

At the same time, Bowen doesn’t have any concerns with regard to the change in status and all of a sudden becoming the boss rather than one of the boys.

“I don’t think there’ll be any issues there,” he says.

“Obviously, the fact that I’m a lot older than most of the lads – a couple of the lads, I’ve played championship with their fathers!

“I’m a different generation to a lot of the younger lads so I don’t think there’ll be any issue with that. The older lads that we have involved – the likes of the ‘Bear’ [Eoghan Murphy], Seánie [Kelly], Mossie [O’Carroll], they all want what’s best for the club, at the end of the day.

“We’re very lucky, we’ve brilliant servants. Even seeing what Alan [Bowen, Shay’s brother], the ‘Hero’ [Kieran Murphy] and [Stephen] Cronin did with the second team, we’re very lucky.

“We’ve some super talent coming through, all the way down to Oran [O’Regan]. Andrew O’Sullivan was away in 2024 and he’s going to be back – we’ve a lot of good players in the club.”

That view is underlined by the fact that Bowen doesn’t feel panicked by the need to find a new goalkeeper to replace the one that has retired. One benefit of the second team having enjoyed such a good run is the experience built up by the younger players and Tom Dillon is ready to step up and take the number 1 shirt.

“Tommy has played in three county finals in a row,” Bowen says.

“He has as much experience as most fellas. He’s there and ready to take over, so hopefully everything will go alright for him too.

“It’s not the easiest position in the world, as I know only too well!”