Book review: Shocking downfall of a legend

DJ Carey was the game of hurling's first great superstar but there was always something that suggested his spirit was in some way troubled

Eimear Ní Bhraonáin finely lays out the narrative of DJ Carey’s fall from grace in 'The Dodger: DJ Carey and teh Great Betrayal'.

• The Dodger: DJ Carey and the Great Betrayal.
• By Eimear Ní Bhraonáin.
• Merrion Press. €19.99 

He was, before the fall, among that small cohort of those saddled with fame who are known by their first name only.

DJ. Mention the initials and everybody know of whom you talk. DJ was a byword for the beauty and power of the game of hurling. 

He was the game’s first superstar, the first among equals at a time when hurling was raised in the national consciousness way beyond its old boundaries. DJ was the man.

There is no specific juncture in Eimar Ní Bhraonáin’s comprehensive narrative of Carey’s rise and fall where the future turned dark. 

This wasn’t a case of a single event, a catastrophic accident or twist of fate, that saw something inside him turn and darken. 

Instead, there was always something that suggested his spirit was in some way troubled.

His exceptional talent was noticed early. He made his debut for the Kilkenny senior team while doing his leaving cert.

“He was never rude or arrogant despite the constant demands on his time,” Ní Bhraonáin reports. 

But there was always something at him, as if he believed he deserved more than was being offered through the game and its rewards.

After a brief few years working in sales, DJ set up a company. He wanted to be his own boss and make his fortune. 

What he forgot was that his profile was enough to send him off down that road but he needed some expertise and grounding to make the whole thing work. It didn’t.

His liaison with entrepreneur Sarah Newman appears to have led him to believe that he also had the capacity to run a business. 

They were hit hard by the economic crash in 2008, but so were thousands of others. 

Within a few years, he had embarked on a new avenue down which he believed lay his fortune. Down there, he traded in lies, some of it despicable.

One girlfriend who features in a chapter headed ‘It’s all in his head’ noted early on that he “seemed to have plenty of money for holidays, meals and living expenses. She didn’t question where this came from, thinking ‘this is DJ Carey’.”

He conned astute people like Denis O’Brien into giving him wads of money to cure what he detailed as brain cancer. He conned people who had experienced cancer in loved ones. He conned friends and a few relatives.

In 2020, he tried to con the GAA’s Leinster Council into giving him money from a benevolent fund, established to look after former players who had fallen on hard times. 

In this, to some extent, his behaviour mirrored that of Charlie Haughey, who stole from a fund set up to get life saving help for Haughey’s old friend, Brian Lenihan.

“He explained that he was suffering form multiple myelma and needed to travel to the US for treatment,” according to a source in Leinster GAA who had been approached. “The man remembers DJ showing him marks on his head.”

It had to end, but the wonder is that the con persisted for so long.

There were rumours and hints, allegation and supposition going back years, but it was as if nobody could, or wanted to, believe that one so gifted was reduced to rooting in the gutter.

The narrative in The Dodger is finely laid out and pursued. Sources and an assiduous and judicially utilised book of newspaper cuttings inform this take on Carey’s life.

The detail gives some hints as to the psyche of a man who degraded his legend. But ultimately, even at the end of this book, there are some questions that can only be answered by Carey himself.