‘A brother of mine got killed’ – Kilkenny legend DJ opens up about family tragedy

DJ Carey has spoken about the tragedy that befell his family when he was a very young child – the death of his brother in a farming accident.

The Kilkenny hurling legend, who was raised on a farm in Gowran, also revealed to Ivan Yates on Newstalk’s The Hard Shoulder that he lost another brother to cot death.

“I suppose what many people wouldn’t realise or know is that we had a serious tragedy when I was very young,” DJ  said.

“I was about three or four years of age, a brother of mine got killed on a PTO shaft between a tractor and manure spreader.

“My father was cleaning out the machine and he went climbing up to get to him and got caught in a PTO.

“I had an older brother that died I think in a cot death, maybe a couple of years previous to that, so I’m sure on my parents that would never have left them to be honest – particularly my father who was cleaning out that spreader at that time.”

DJ, who won five All Irelands, said he believed the heartbreak made his family closer and that he was close with his brothers growing up, but that there was a significant age gap between himself and sister – 22 years.

“There’s a huge age gap between me – I am 49 now, and my youngest sister who is 27. So there’s a huge gap there,” he said.

“Now the boys are all a year between – 49, 48, 47 and 46, around that time, so we would have been pretty close growing up along.”