YOU can’t keep a good man down. Or an old one, for that matter. Jimmy Gopperth, a couple of months into his 42nd year, will be turning out for Provence in the French ProD2 this season, alongside some equally familiar, if rather younger, Premiership faces: George North, Tomas Francis, Teimana Harrison.
Meanwhile, there is similar example of long-in-the-tooth-evity a million rugby miles away in the North Island of New Zealand, where the 36-year-old Hadleigh Parkes has suddenly re-materialised in deepest Manawatu, where he began his senior rugby career when the All Blacks were sti...