The ending of his career became him. Unlike the turmoil and unhappiness that characterised his previous "retirement" in 1998, DJ Carey's final departure from the intercounty scene comes at a time when he is content in his achievements and happy to take the curtain, writes Seán Moran.

The 35-year-old is happy that Kilkenny manager Brian Cody wanted him to stay for another year and regretful that he had to say "no" but few are going to quibble with his timing.

"In some ways," he told The Irish Times when asked had he been sitting on the decision for a while. "I felt the wrong time to do it was after losing to Galway (in last August's All-Ireland semi-final) and in January I wanted to see how the club matches would go and I probably did extend it a bit longer because I knew that this time the decision would be for good.

"I didn't want to be flying with the club and wanting to rejoin the panel after making an announcement too early.

"I was going to matches this year but the serious buzz was not there. I'm quite happy with the decision. I've bought a new business and I'm living in Dublin. The time was right."

The main talking points of a fabulously successful career were his place in posterity and his place on the Kilkenny team. Unlike a lot of high-profile players, he was happy to serve in less glamorous ways as the years stripped away some of his speed.

The claims of posterity were debated in 2000 when Carey didn't make the final cut in the Team of the Millennium but such generation-game categorisations are by their nature hard to define.

And as former Wexford manager Liam Griffin, who had compared him to Christy Ring, wisely suggested, the nebulous business of stacking one great player against another is simply a means by which the folklore of the game keeps alive great names from one generation to the next.

In a time when society is more obsessed with celebrities than heroes, there will probably never be another player with the unanimous acclamation that Ring enjoyed but Carey deserves his place in the limelight.

Whereas his displays in recent seasons were characterised by hard work and the defensive arts of blocking and hooking, which Cody was quick to commend, it is as a spring-heeled strike forward he will be best remembered.

Goals are often defining scores in hurling and in his pomp Carey, more than any other forward of his generation, radiated that threat.

And his goals seemed to hurt the opposition more grievously than when scored by other players.

One of the last things Offaly and Clare needed was to concede an early goal in the All-Ireland finals of 2000 and 2002. The last thing they needed was Carey to score it, which he duly did.

Good hands and pace made him lethal. In the 1999 semi-final against Clare and the following year's against Galway he drifted on to high deliveries and out-ran the cover before nailing the chance with that inevitable thunderclap finish.

His handball acumen was another important weapon in his stockpile. Although a great scorer he also had vision and an appreciation of other players. The hand pass to Henry Shefflin for a goal in the 1999 Leinster final demonstrated how creative Carey could be for team-mates.

He took seriously his status as an ambassador for the game and saw media co-operation as a way of promoting hurling. Of course, he was also aware of the personal benefits of profile but his openness and approachability didn't suggest cynicism or manipulation.

For his troubles in this regard he got hammered by some members of the public, who saw his media appearances as self-serving and at the hands of some media was ultimately the butt of gross intrusion into his private life.

Carey wasn't given to extremes when reflecting on his career.

Self-effacing when he was at his best, he was also forthrightly defensive about those times when he wasn't on top of his game and was particularly combative about the canard that he had on balance failed in All-Ireland finals.

His initial "retirement" seven years ago was quickly revoked and he remembers it as being rooted in a number of factors.

"I was taking an awful lot of stick publicly because Kilkenny weren't going well or I wasn't going well and at the same time I was trying to run a business on my own. It wasn't easy."

The management of Cody, from 1999 to the present, was a major influence in the player's rehabilitation after that difficult time and yesterday Carey was warm in his praise, saying that his main regret in retiring was having had to do so under the current management.

"One of Brian Cody's greatest attributes is that when he sits down to have a talk with you, nobody else will know about it. He's a great disciplinarian with himself and the team. I had a great relationship with him."

His exemplary disciplinary record cropped up in his interview with Brian Carty on RTÉ Radio yesterday. Carey's response serves well as a memorial for an exceptional career.

"I would never like to shirk my responsibility in a tough game but I always believed that the biggest enemy I ever had was that ball. That's what I wanted to get and score with."