Local Hero: no let up for Erin's Own talisman Kieran Murphy 

The former Cork star will lead the club into a county semi-final this weekend.

HERO STORY: Erin's Owns' Kieran Murphy is fouled by Na Piarsaigh's Kelvin Forde during the Co-Op Superstores Cork PSHC clash at Pairc Ui Rinn earlier this season.

It was one month after his 17th birthday when Kieran 'Hero' Murphy made his senior hurling championship debut for Erin’s Own. The year was 2000.

Twenty-three seasons later, Murphy, now 39 years young, is still turning out for the Erin’s Own seniors.

And as you’d expect of someone who’s spent almost a quarter of a century dining at the top table of Cork hurling, he’s seen and done almost all there is to see and do on the club front.

Having lined out between the sticks during Erin’s Own’s run to the millennium county final, the then fresh-faced teenager migrated up the other end of the field in the years following. That 2000 decider defeat to Newtownshandrum was the first of four county finals he would play in, Hero captaining the club to back-to-back titles in 2006 and '07.

The first of those wins saw him nominated as Cork captain for the 2007 season. Two years previous to that, he was used as a substitute in all five of Cork’s games en route to their successful defence of Liam MacCarthy. Going even further back, there was an All-Ireland minor football medal pocketed in 2000 and a minor hurling medal added a year later.

You get the picture: he’s not shy of silverware.

And so with nothing left to prove and very little left to win, why stay going?

Oh and just to be clear, it isn’t as if the 39-year-old is only knocking about the place as a peripheral figure, being thrown in as a second-half sub here and there. The man heading for 40 continues to be one of the first names on the Erin’s Own teamsheet all these years later.

Following their Round 3 stalemate with Bishopstown last month, a result that secured Erin’s Own a free pass to the semi-finals, manager Martin Bowen - who’s been on the sideline almost as long as Murphy has been inside it - paid tribute to the oldest member of his team.

“When the pressure was really on us today, the man that stood out was Hero, at 39 years of age. He won three or four vital balls. That is what these fellas are about. They dedicate their life playing for the club,” Bowen remarked.

Hero takes our call on his way home from work as a mortgage adviser in AIB’s Douglas branch. The question is not one he needs to give much thought to.

“The social aspect would be one of the main reasons I am still hurling away,” he says.

“It is probably one of my main outlets from the point of view of the season finishes in September, October, you have two or three months where you are not doing a whole lot, and by the time January comes around you are nearly looking forward to doing a bit of training and getting back out to meet the lads.

“It is a huge social thing. We have a group of lads that have played with each other since the early 2000s who are still there and still hanging around with each other. That’s probably a lot of it. When I eventually pack it in, and I’ll probably pack it in after this year, that’ll be the thing I will miss the most.

“I won’t miss the championship games as much, the stress of being fit for a championship match and knowing that you are going to be marking a speedster half-back who is going to be running up and down the wing all day. The training and the social aspect will be the big thing.” 

Even though he later rolls back on his comment that there won’t be a 24th season with the Erin’s Own seniors and how he’ll park that decision until next January when he has the annual conversation with the wife, Hero knows the finishing line is in sight.

And although absolutely “crocked” after the aforementioned Bishopstown draw, needing a forklift to rise him out of bed the following morning, he’s never enjoyed his hurling as much.

“Every year is a bonus at this stage, especially when you get to the knockout stages, as you realise this could be my last time playing in Páirc Uí Chaoimh. Or at the last training before a championship game, you could be saying to yourself, this could be my last training with the senior hurlers. These types of things come into your head.

“You’d want to be 100% enjoying it to keep going and realising that you are getting the last few bits out of it.

“It would be massive to get to a county final. But to get there, we’ll have to get past a club with great tradition. It is great to be going out against a team like Blackrock, knowing you are going to have to give it your all, but also that it will be a tough, yet fair match.” 

Two years ago Martin Bowen told this newspaper that in Erin’s Own “we know we don’t have the best team in the championship, we know we don’t have the best hurlers but we have a great fighting spirit”.

It’s a spirit driven by the veterans who first arrived on the scene in the early noughties. And were those veterans not still serving at the frontline, Erin’s Own would not be contesting a county semi-final tomorrow.

Murphy’s brother Eoghan, who is their top-scorer this season with 0-19, is 35, half-back Stephen Cronin and midfielder Colm Coakley are 36/37, while goalkeeper Shay Bowen is 38.

“The talk is that they will chuck me back into goal in a couple of years’ time if Shay doesn’t want to keep going, so there might be a few more years in that if Shay wants to move on,” Murphy offers as a parting quip.

The wheel, in that case, will have travelled full circle, Hero ending up where he started in 2000. But irrespective of when and where he signs off, it’s been some run. Some service given.