'I would call him one of the all-time greats'

Hurling: When a player like DJ Carey announces his retirement words like "greatest" and "all-time" are usually thrown together. Such an accolade will be debated over the coming days, but what is certain is that the likes of Carey won't be seen again in a long time.

"I feel DJ was one of the most remarkable hurlers of this generation, or any generation," says Offaly's Brian Whelahan, the only player of the modern era on the GAA's hurling team of the millennium - Carey's exclusion caused massive debate.

"As someone who played against him right through the 1990s I feel the way he played the game and promoted the game has helped bring it to where it is today. DJ became the superstar at a very young age, and wore that mantle very well throughout his career. So he was a true ambassador of the game, say with his hurling camps down in Kilkenny. In my mind he will go down as the greatest Kilkenny hurler that ever wore their jersey."

Whelahan is still playing with Offaly at the age of 34, but understands Carey's decision to retire from the county scene: "It really is a young man's game now, if you really want to play at the highest level. Only DJ can say for sure if the time is right, but he obviously feels it is, and good luck to him.

"He'll always represent everything good about the game, a true sportsman. I suppose his hurling speaks for itself really. He was playing when the game started to reach its highest level ever. So for him to be the star of that level proves his out and out quality."

"Everyone knew about his blinding pace, but he had this great ability just to sense other players around him. Whether it was a defender coming in to hook him or lining up to block him he would always sense that before it happened. I always felt his awareness on the ball, and where he was on the field, was his great strength. He was very unselfish, and if he sensed a player in a better position than him he would have no problem laying it off. That added to his qualities really. But you have to talk about his finishing as well. He really was the supreme finisher."

Cork's Jimmy Barry Murphy would have watched Carey many times, first as a player, and later as the Cork manager. "I would call him one of the all-time greats," says Murphy, "no doubt about that. He had great speed and great speed skill, and you usually can't have much more than that in hurling. But he also had a great brain, was a great team player. He also had that great hand-passing ability, got from his early years in the handball alley . . . He also had that ability to take pressure off other players by making room for them."

Barry Murphy also knows what it's like to come to the end of a great career. "I think DJ has made the wise decision. He wasn't there during the league, and over the last couple of years maybe his standards weren't as high as he would have liked to have been himself . . . Plus the way the game has gone, with all the fitness and physical training involved. He deserves great credit for playing on as long as he did.

"I suppose Kilkenny have been building up for this, and we've seen some great younger players coming through during the league. He is a loss, but all teams discover that players have to move on."

Former Limerick player and manager Eamonn Cregan also witnessed Carey at his peak over the years, and said it was sad to see him go.

"I know he's been compared to all the greats, and he was definitely one of the greats of his era. But I would never really compare players from the '40s and '50s with players from the '80s and '90s. Hurling has changed radically over those years. But there's no doubt he was one of the top-class players of this generation."

Cregan found it hard to summarise what made Carey so good: "It's very hard to single out things about him, but his burst of speed going for the ball was definitely one thing. That was difficult for any player to cope with. He also had great intelligence, and that wonderful ability to hand-pass the ball 40 or even 50 yards.

"He helped get Kilkenny to many an All-Ireland final, and I remember when I was with Offaly in 1995 we knew he'd be the danger man at full forward, and I was trying to make sure all the high balls stayed behind him. We knew if he got the ball in front of him he could turn his man, and was gone. And would stick the ball in the back of the net. We managed that for the first 60 minutes, but then DJ got two balls in front of him, and they were two goals. He proved time after time that he could turn a match in a split second like that."