Five years ago, Jarrod Bowen became a Hammer.
The half-decade since has been full of personal and collective landmarks and moments that neither Bowen, his family, his Club, nor its supporters will ever forget.
West Ham United’s 2023 UEFA Europa Conference League final match-winning hero, the Irons’ second-highest Premier League scorer of all-time, and the reigning Hammer of the Year and Club captain, Bowen is already a modern-day Claret and Blue hero.
In fact, so deeply ingrained is Bowen, who will marry into a West Ham family this year when he weds fiancée Dani Dyer, in east London that it seems almost impossible to believe that the 28-year-old was born and raised in Herefordshire, and served his football apprenticeship on Humberside.
The son of prolific non-league striker Sam, known by the nickname ‘Dingle’ to his footballing son, Bowen started his own career with his hometown club Leominster Juniors, before joining Hereford United as a teenager.
Following Hereford’s demise, he moved across the country to Hull City at 17, became a Premier League player at 19, then enhanced his reputation hugely with 52 EFL Championship goals across just two-and-a-half seasons for the Tigers.
That form saw Bowen become one of the most-coveted players in the country come January 2020 and, amid interest from Newcastle United, West Ham swooped for his services – and the rest is history.
Cup final match-winners, record goalscoring seasons, individual accolades and 14 England caps later, Bowen is celebrating five years as a Hammer.
But the story of the No20’s time in east London has been well told, so instead, to mark the anniversary, West Ham TV went back to Bowen’s roots, speaking to his father Sam, first Hereford United coach and manager, Peter Beadle, the coach who helped hone his game at Hull City, Tony Pennock, and the player himself.
Shooting on location, including at his uncle Stu’s potato farm in Herefordshire, Jarrod Bowen tells the story of his formative years and his journey from non-league to the Premier League…
“Growing up where I'm from in Leominster was probably unique but also similar to every little boy who had a dream to play football, playing for my local club when I was this high. That’s where I started and had my upbringing, at a club where my mates and my brother and sister played, and I stayed playing there for ten years plus,” Bowen recalled. “Every other player has got their first club where they played, and they’ll always remember and it’s the same for me as well.
“The club was called Leominster Minors and it’s still going now and my brother plays for the men’s team, Leominster Town. I’ve never played for them and I’m not allowed as I’d get told off, but I always go and try to watch them and my brother play when I’m back home. I’ve donated footballs and goals and stuff just to help my local team and it’s such an important thing to me, as they were the club who gave me the opportunity to play football and stick by me, and I’ll always have my eye out for them as well.”
Back in those formative years, as it remains the case now, Bowen received great support from his family, both immediate and extended, to pursue his dream of becoming a professional footballer.
“My family are great,” he confirmed. “I've got such a big family, but the main two people are my Mum and Dad who drove me around everywhere on Saturday mornings, to midweek training, and at the times where I went on trials to different teams.
“One of them was Aston Villa when I was still in junior school and Mum was lugging me around after school and after she had finished work for me to go and play. It was the same with my Dad as well. They travelled all over and gave up their weekends for me to play football.
“So, for them now to see the position that I'm in and seeing how happy it makes them, it really takes me back sometimes because they've sacrificed a lot for me to achieve my dream, so it's important to share that moment with them as well when they come to games and buzz off seeing me walk out of the tunnel.”
While his parents now sit proudly in the stands watching him in action at the country’s biggest stadiums, it was a different story when Bowen himself was watching ‘Dingle’ in action back in the early 2000s.
“I remember loads of his games that we’d go and watch,” he explained. “I remember when he was at Forest Green Rovers and at Worcester City, and we used to go up because it was local, then there was a team called Northwich Victoria who played in green and white and we used to go there and watch him a lot.
“I can remember going up with my Granddad and I was like a fan of him and I thought ‘This is it! What a job to go and play football on a weekend!’.”
Bowen recalled seeing the match balls his Dad collected for scoring hat-tricks being displayed on a shelf in the family home, but ‘not pumped up because I don’t think he wanted me to have a kickaround!’.
Incredibly, Sam Bowen’s goalscoring exploits for Welsh club Merthyr Tydfil attracted the attention of a certain Harry Redknapp, who invited him down to Chadwell Heath for a trial. Despite impressing, West Ham could not agree compensation for the part-time forward, and his own dream of becoming a Hammer could not be realised.
While Bowen senior was not quite able to find his way into the professional game, his talented son did, but not before serving his own much shorter apprenticeship in non-league with Hereford United.
“Dad’s experiences have definitely helped me along the way, as we’ve both been in that non-league background where it’s all for yourself, so the lessons he taught me when I was at Hereford and then at Hull as well, when I was young into the game and not used to full-time football helped me learn a lot as well,” he recalled.
Prior to joining Hereford as a player, Bowen had been a supporter too, regularly heading to Edgar Street – scene of the famous FA Cup upset of Newcastle United in 1971 – to cheer his local heroes on.
One particular picture of a young Bowen endures. Stood alongside a friend on the terrace, wearing the Bulls’ famous white shirt and a Leominster Minors training jacket, he has his arms spread wide, glasses perched on his nose, and a defiant look on his face!
“That photo of me looking like the Milky Bar Kid has done the rounds!” he smiled, looking at it again. “Hereford were floating in around the Football League for all the years that I was growing up and it's only 15 minutes from my hometown, so they’re still the team now that I follow and support.
“I always used to go to the games and in that picture I’ve got a Hereford shirt on and the jacket I've got on is Leominster Minors, so I think we had all just come straight over from a game on the Saturday morning to watch Hereford. I think that photo sums me up as a boy, football-mad, but it hasn’t done the best impression on my looks!
“Growing up, I probably didn’t understand the history of the club and the Ronnie Radford goal [against Newcastle] and the different games they’ve had through the years, but I’d go and watch and I remember going to the stadium one day to meet the players with my mates.”
From being a boyhood fan, Bowen joined Hereford’s youth team himself, where he was initially coached by former Gillingham, Bristol Rovers and Bristol City striker Peter Beadle. When Beadle was promoted to caretaker first-team manager in spring 2014, it was his 17-year-old forward who he called upon to help keep the Bulls in the Football Conference.
“When I was at Hereford, Peter Beadle was the youth-team manager with a man called Steve Jenkins, who was a great help as his assistant, and I’ve got so much respect for Peter,” Bowen continued. “A couple of things went wrong at Hereford financially and it was coming towards the end of the season, we were in a relegation battle in the Conference and me and a couple of mates I played with in the Under-18s team were in the first team.
“For Peter to put me into that kind of environment was just a surreal experience. I played those eight games at the back end of the season and I remember we went to Aldershot on the last day of the season needing to win to stay up, and you don’t expect to be playing in those sort of circumstances at 16 or 17, but I started, we won 2-1 and my family was in the crowd.
“There is a video on YouTube that I still always watch of the post-match celebrations at the Aldershot game. There’s me, Peter Beadle, Steve Jenkins and one of my best mates from back home Billy Murphy who started the game as well and I played with at Hereford and Leominster Minors. Staying up on the last day of the season at 17 was just an amazing experience and feeling, playing to not get relegated, and one we still talk about.
“Peter was definitely a massive part of that for giving me the opportunity, and he was the one that put me in contact with Hull City and Tony Pennock, their head of youth development, and he came to watch me in a game at Hereford and I think it was the one when I scored my first goal against Alfreton.
“They always say you need a stroke of luck or people knowing people, and Tony had come to watch, and he was incredible for my development as well.”
As a schoolboy, Bowen had been invited for trials at a number of professional clubs, including Aston Villa, Cardiff City and Wolverhampton Wanderers, but none of them had led to the offer of a contract.
“I was really young when I went to Aston Villa, still in junior school, so it was probably a bit silly going all that way at that age anyway, but the one that sticks out is Cardiff,” he recalled. “I went there for a six-week trial and thought I had done well and enough to get in, so to be told ‘no’, of course I loved football but I didn’t know what route I was going to go down. Was I just going to go and play for my local team, Leominster Town, which I would have been happy with if that was the option.
“But the mentality my Dad has got is a ‘no reverse gear’ and to hit everything head-on and not worry about what’s happened, but rather to do something about it, and I think that’s what changed me. I went back to Hereford, went into the youth team, did everything I could and that materialised me going into the first team.
“I spoke about luck and you need luck in football, but it’s important when you get that luck to take the opportunity it gives you on the pitch. That’s always been my mentality, to bounce back stronger from setbacks and take the challenges head-on.”
At 17, having been rejected by Cardiff City and with Hereford United’s future hanging in the balance, Bowen joined Hull City, and again found himself needing to impress at a professional club.
“My Dad took me up to Hull and Tony showed me around and showed me the project and it was almost like I was his son because he was from Wales and I was from Herefordshire, so I was the one I think he looked out for the most,” Bowen smiled, thinking back to the day he left home.
“I remember the drive up and moving in with a family in Hull who I still speak to. It wasn’t home and at the start of it, I’d just left school and it was three-and-a-half hours away from my family, so it was difficult, but once I got in that routine of playing football, after a couple of months I knew it was what it was and I had to make those sacrifices to pursue my dream.
“I love going back home when I get the opportunity, but in football you have to focus on what you’re trying to achieve. That car journey with my Dad was horrible at the time, and when he dropped me off I went to my room and cried all night, but it was one of those where I could either go under if I got too emotional about it, or I could have the mindset to show what I was all about.
“Like Peter Beadle, Tony is a another I still speak to, to this day. When I think of being at Hereford and Hull, those are the people I think about who helped get me here.”
Thanks to the guidance of Hull City’s astute academy manager Pennock, who himself had played over 400 senior matches as a goalkeeper for clubs including Hereford, Yeovil Town and Newport County, and spent five years as academy manager at Swansea City, the promising young forward rapidly developed his game and sharpened his skills.
After two years scoring and assisting for the Tigers’ youth and development teams under Pennock’s direction, Bowen was promoted to the first-team squad and given his senior debut by manager Mike Phelan. In October 2016, aged 19, and in the same month Pennock himself was promoted to first-team coach, Bowen made his Premier League debut as a late substitute at Watford.
All seven of Bowen’s Premier League appearances in 2016/17 ended in defeat, and the season in relegation for Hull City, but the club’s demotion arguably gave the young forward an immediate platform in the Championship on which to share his considerable talents.
“I remember my debut at Watford away and I played seven games in the Prem that year, including West Ham at London Stadium where there is a picture of me and Mark Noble stood next to each other,” he remembered. “The game at Crystal Palace was when Hull got relegated and I played the second half, so that was obviously a moment I didn’t want to go through as it wasn’t nice to be part of.
“But then we went to the Championship and I took my opportunity. Maybe it did open a door for me, but again it was about me taking my chance when it came, playing in the Championship, which is one of the toughest leagues where anyone can beat anyone and you play 46 games in a season, Saturday-Tuesday, Saturday-Tuesday. It was a really good experience and one that I learned so much from.”
Bowen’s first season in the Championship, 2017/18, during which he turned 21, saw him score 15 goals. The next, 2018/19, saw him hit the net on 22 occasions. Then, in just over half of the 2019/20 campaign, he bagged 17 goals and added six assists.
It was clear that the boy who had started at Leominster Minors, watched his father bang in the goals for a host of non-league clubs, stood on the terraces at Edgar Street as a boy, and won a promotion battle at Hereford United as a teenager, was ready to become the main man in the Premier League.
In January 2020, he did just that with West Ham United, and the five years since have been filled with yet more incredible stories. Through creating them all, though, Jarrod Bowen will never forget the special places he has come from to become a true legend in east London.
