By John Harrington

It says a lot about the quiet, understated way that Kilkenny wing-back Mikey Carey goes about his business that little has been said or written about him at this stage in his inter-county career.

Which is a little surprising when you consider just how good he’s been for Kilkenny in this year’s championship, and the not insignificant fact that he’s the son of one of the county’s greatest hurlers of all, DJ Carey.

But then, Mikey Carey has always been something of a slow burner. Hurling wasn’t even his first sport for much of his teenage years. He preferred to focus on golf and was very good at it too, getting his handicap down to low single digits.

When he attended St. Kieran’s College he wasn’t considered good enough for an outfield spot so instead played in goal on their juvenile team. He didn’t make the St. Kieran’s U-16 A team at all, and wasn't even that prominent on the school’s ‘B’ team.

Because he was so focused on golf, he wasn’t the fastest or fittest, which might be hard to believe now when you see the athleticism with which he gets up and down the pitch for the Kilkenny senior team.

But then he fell back in love with hurling in his final two years in St. Kieran’s, worked hard on both his fitness and first-touch, and in his Leaving Cert year starred as a full-back on the team that won the Leinster Championship and were beaten by Our Lady’s Templemore in the Croke Cup Final.

That got him on the radar of Kilkenny minor hurling team manager, Pat O’Grady, who was pleasantly surprised by the promising hurler that Carey had suddenly blossomed into.

“I'm from a rural club called Black and Whites and we'd be neighbouring club of Young Irelands so I would know most of those guys and I would have played with DJ, Pat O'Neill and Charlie Carter and those guys at minor and U-21 level,” O’Grady told GAA.ie

“I would have known DJ had a couple of sons coming so I would have been keeping an eye on them. Sean, Mikey's brother, would definitely have been the more better known of the pair underage in Kilkenny, he was a forward.

“I remember watching Mikey when he was about 12 or 13 years of age and he was playing underage for Gowran and he was playing centre-forward. I remember thinking to myself he had plenty of skill and was determined and all of that sort of stuff, but I didn't think he was related to a forward. He was running into cul de sacs and things like that.

“Then the next time I saw him was playing for St. Kieran's against Templemore in a Colleges Final. He had previously played on the St. Kieran's U-14 team as a goalkeeper, so this was the first time I had seen him out the field since he was 12 or 13. I had been sort of resigned to the fact that he wasn't going to be good enough to play out the field and that that's why they were playing him in the goal.

“So I was interested to see how he was going to play. That was in March 2017 and I had been appointed Kilkenny minor manager so I was interested to see this guy. They didn't win that Final, but Mikey played very well and we brought him into the Kilkenny minor panel straight away after that, which would have been his first time to be involved at that level because he was never on a development squad.

“The logical thing was to try him at full-back with us, and he was a dream to train. A really, really easy guy. Because he had missed out on three or four years at that inter-county level there was a real innocence about him.

“I remember thinking that other players on the team knew what they could and couldn't get away with. They'd know when they had to go full tilt and maybe when they didn't have to.

“But Mikey, from the first day he came into us, it was full tilt with him the whole time. There was just an innocence about him, he wanted to do everything 100 per cent. He was still playing as if he was trying to make an U-13 or U-14 schools team. But, God, he was a dream to coach.

“He actually reminded me of his father in that regard. I remember standing beside DJ once and a coach giving us him impression of what we needed to improve on and DJ was taking it all in. I wondered at the time, 'DJ, what more do you need to know about the game, you're a great hurler'.

“It was basic enough what the coach was telling us, but I never saw DJ question what a coach was saying, he was always trying to take something out of the conversation. If I was to compare DJ and Mikey, that would be the big thing I'd say they have in common, they were both very easy to coach and both 100 per cent types of guys.”

There’s a proud tradition in Kilkenny of sons following in the steps of their fathers to play senior inter-county hurling, but the truth is that far more don’t than do because having a famous hurling father often stunts the growth of a son overburdened by expectation.

Hurling fathers don’t come any more famous than DJ Carey, which makes Mikey’s ability to successfully make the leap to inter-county hurling all the more impressive.

“For the first couple of years when he was underage and playing in the forwards, I wonder did that weigh on him a little bit?” says O’Grady. “And maybe that's the reason why he went off and played golf.

“I think really though the pressure has been taken off him in so far as he's not a forward. If he was a forward and trying to be compared to his dad, sure where would you be going with that?

“As a modern half-back he can afford to go forward and take a shot or two. And if he misses, it might be explained away, but if you're playing half-forward or corner-forward and you miss it mightn't be so easy to explain away. I think the pressure isn't on him as much as a half-back as if he had to be a half-forward or in the full-forward line.”

After completing his Leaving Cert in St. Kieran’s, Carey’s hurling education as well as general schooling continued in the University of Limerick where he was a solid rather than spectacular performer for their Fitzgibbon Cup team.

And despite being a very apt student in terms of how he listened to his coaches and applied himself to self-improvement, current UL manager, Brian Ryan, admits Carey has made more rapid strides than most in the College would have predicted back in 2019.

“My recollection of Michael Carey was that he was a very quiet, reserved young fella who would take on board all the coaching instructions,” says Ryan. “He was very diligent about his work and the way he went about it.

“First to training, last to leave, and very committed to the role he was given. He definitely used to take on board all the tips he was given.

“But if you were to look back three years ago at that UL team and say that he would play in an All-Ireland Final three years later you'd say, no, it'll be the other guy over there.

“But you could see from his temperament and the way he went about his business that he was very committed and willing to learn and he’s obviously worked very hard since then to get to where he is now. It’s great to see players like that get the rewards.”

2019 was a key year in Carey’s development as a player. He starred at centre-back on the Kilkenny U-20 team managed by his father that won the Leinster Championship and also made his senior debut for Kilkenny as a substitute against Limerick in the Allianz Hurling League.

Being drafted into the Kilkenny senior set-up brought him under the influence of highly respected strength and conditioning coach, Mickey Comerford, who joined Brian Cody’s backroom team at the end of 2019 and has been credited with overseeing a marked athletic improvement in the panel.

Carey, certainly, has put on a good few kilos of muscle in the last three years and has developed both a sprint speed and sprint endurance that not many would have thought he was capable of in his teenage years.

“Physically, he's a very, very impressive athlete,” says his manager at club level with Young Irelands, Tom Coogan.

“That's the first thing you'll notice about him when you see him, his physique, power and athleticism, he's just very, very strong. That was just very evident from the first time I worked with him, the explosive speed that he has compared to your normal player.

“I'd say he has worked very, very hard on the S&C side for the past three or four years to get to the level that he has. The chap has a great attitude too, he's very, very honest in his work and does everything pitch perfect. You couldn't find a fault in his character.

“There's no airs and graces with Mikey. What you see is what you get. He takes on board everything anybody says but he has his own mind too and has plenty of confidence in himself even though he’s a very softly spoken chap.

“You won't hear Mikey shouting and bawling and roaring, that's not his way. But when he applies himself he has a lot of confidence in himself and a lot of aggression in how he plays the game.

“He's not over-physical or anything or dirty, but he plays at a very high rate of intensity and he has just built himself up to that by the looks of him in the last three or four years. I'd say a lot of work has been done in the background by himself on his own to get to where he is now.

“He has developed really well and I'm sure anyone who has handled Mikey won't have had an issue with his attitude, drive, or will to win or anything like that. And obviously his skillset and his general presence on the pitch is there for all to see as well.”

Carey is a very modern wing-back in so far as he has the athleticism to get up and down the pitch all day and is confident in the opposition half as he is his own as a haul of 1-4 from play in this year's championship attests to.

“Yeah, he is,” says Coogan. “We would have experimented with him a bit in the forwards towards the tail end of last year and he's very comfortable in that area of the field as well.

“He's well able to hurl in numerous positions and I imagine with the club he would have played in various positions up through the grades.

“In the modern game, for that area of the field he's in at the moment, your most powerful athletes are in that area of the field because you need to make those powerful runs up and down the field to stay with wing-forwards and get forward and get back. That's really key to the modern game at the moment.”

If he manages a score or two himself on Sunday that will be a bonus for Carey, because he’ll have his hands full limiting the influence of Limerick’s outstanding wing-forward, Tom Morrissey.

It’s definitely the biggest challenge of Carey’s career to date, but Pat O’Grady doesn’t think the 23-year-old will be fazed by it.

“No matter what you tell Mikey to do, he will do it,” says O’Grady. “If you gave him a plan in the morning, he wouldn't question it. He'd believe that what you were telling him was the truth. He would follow that plan to the letter of the law.

“That's what makes him so dependable, if you tell him to do a job he'll do a job. I'm sure that Brian Cody loves working with him because you couldn't but have high praise for the way he goes about his business.”

Michael Carey may not be the superstitious type, but the portents are good ahead of Sunday's All-Ireland Final.

90 years ago his Great-granduncle, Paddy Phelan, won an All-Ireland with Kilkenny and his father DJ won Celtic Crosses 30 years ago and 20 years ago so years ending in the digit two seem to suit the family.

Both Paddy, a member of both the hurling team of the century and team of the millennium, and DJ were tipped as something special from a very young age. Michael never had the same billing, but he's made it this far in his own unfussy way.

Expect Kilkenny's quiet man to do his talking on the pitch again on Sunday.