Marathon man Myler goes clear of the field

As from next month, Stephen Myler will have outlasted every single one of his fly-half contemporaries in Europe and beyond – the veterans’ veteran.

- PETER JACKSON

At 36, the unsung Merseysider will soon find himself out on his own in the ultimate endurance race, a feat so difficult to overestimate that it’s akin to a long-distance club runner superseding the holiest of Olympian trinities, Emil Zatopek, Abebe Bikila and Haile Gebrsalassie, in one fell swoop.

That the longest of goals should be achieved by a No.10 with one of the shortest Test careers of all time makes it all the more worthy. Myler’s marathon has been 17 years in the making and, as a reminder that his race is far from run, he is currently negotiating a close-season of such absurd brevity as to be measured in days rather than months.

After two derby matches at the end of the old season, Myler the Osprey is already training for the new one, starting on October 3.

When the curtain comes down on the English Premiership season a fortnight later, it will also come down on another of long-playing fly-half.

Gareth Steenson deserves to take his final bow at Twickenham on October 17, albeit off the bench in the final few moments of Exeter’s coronation as champions of England. The uncapped Ulsterman will hang up his boots just as Brock James did when the pandemic hit the Top 14 for six months ago.

They are not the only the senior practitioners to defer to Father Time. Dan Carter, the best of the professional era, is unlikely to play again having failed to make a single appearance for Auckland Blues after Covid-19 had hastened his exit from Japan.

At 38, the All Black superstar has surely come to the end of a very long career, one stretching back to Canterbury in 2002. James and Steenson started theirs in 2004, in Brisbane and Dungannon respectively.