Peter Stringer is on the bench for Bath in the Amlin Challenge Cup final against Northampton tonight. Stringer is now 36 but still wants to play on. In fact he told the Irish Independent today, "There's no reason why I couldn't play until I'm 40". He has already signed an extension of his Bath deal.
Roll back five years ago to the 2009 Six Nations and Stephen Jones, our favourite Aviva Premiership-loving Welsh Sunday Times writer, penned this about the scrum-half.
O’Gara wins his 90th cap for Ireland on Saturday at Croke Park. Considering that all the world’s greatest flankers have been trying to upset him for decades it is a tribute to longevity at the very least.
Consider also that he won most of those caps playing outside the drastically limited Peter Stringer, who would struggle to win a contract in the Guinness Premiership as a third-string back-up and who never took the pressure from O’Gara by actually varying his play. In that light O’Gara’s achievement becomes all the better.
That little snippet is from a piece where Jones reevaluated his view of Ronan O'Gara, probably his most pro-Irish bit of writing ever. The article wasn't just about ROG though, it was a kind of round up of the week which also featured his top five favourite New Zealand meals (pumpkin soup was no.1.) He couldn't be having an article dedicated entirely to a large chunk of backtracking.
So five years on and Stringer is still proving him wrong.
Any chance he's got something lined up for Sunday reassessing his opinion of Stringer?
Probably not.
Picture credit: Matt Browne / SPORTSFILE
