Former Australian Football League star Wayne Carey has revealed that his alcoholic father was so violent that his mother and brother planned to shoot him with a rifle.

Excerpts of the sportsman's book The Truth Hurts, in which he makes the claims about his family, were printed in The Sunday Mail yesterday.

Carey wrote: "One night, Dad put a serrated knife into Mum's nose and slit her nostril open. The wound left a scar, which she still carries today. Another time, he broke her cheekbone with a punch."

Carey said that his mother and brother planned to wait by the front door with a gun one night so that they could kill their dad, but he didn't come home.

He said that despite his father beating, stabbing and shooting his mother, he still loved his parent and longed for a "normal family".