So, what’s it like embarking on a playing career when you have one of the most recognisable surnames in Welsh rugby?
That was the experience Jamie Ringer went through during an adventure that saw him play some 300-plus first class games and win two caps for his country.
His dad is fellow flanker Paul Ringer, a man who gained notoriety following his controversial sending off while playing for Wales against England at Twickenham in 1980.
When I caught up with Jamie this week for a trip down memory lane, I was intrigued to know whether he felt the family name had been a help or a hindrance?
“It wasn’t always so easy because, through schoolboy and youth rugby, people would assume you are there just because of your surname,” he reflects.
“I did find that difficult at times. Even when you were playing good rugby, it would happen and people would compare you.
“I felt like I had to do twice as well as everyone else and really prove a point. I had to prove my worth and make a point to say this guy can actually play.
“It was the same with the Quinnells I suppose. I have subsequently chatted to Scott and Craig about this and they felt the same way.
“It really gives you the impetus to go out there and show people that actually you are a good player.
“Having the name probably made me strive that bit more.
“Also, having dad behind me, in youth rugby I was training like a man in terms of running and hill sprints and the rest. I was doing stuff that other kids weren’t doing.
“He kind of instilled that work ethic into me from an early age of what you’ve got to do to stand out, not just on the rugby field.
“He is a hard task master in terms of being very, very encouraging but also very, very honest.
“He obviously had a bit of an infamous name of putting it out a bit, but I never really felt any pressure in that respect. It wasn’t something I felt I had to live up to. You have just got to go out and be yourself really.”
Jamie is actually Paul’s step-son. His father was a professional middlweight boxer by the name of Dennis Pleace. But then, following a marriage break up, Paul came into his life when he was around five years old.
“Paul brought me up and I consider him my dad,” he said.
“He brought me up to be the person that I am.”
As he was growing up, Jamie would have regular reminders of the 1980 game in which the eight-cap Paul was sent off by Irish referee Dave Burnett for an apparent short-armed charge on English fly-half John Horton.
“I was aware of it from a young age,” he said.
“It was something that was mentioned anywhere that I went with him really.
“Everyone wanted to talk about the infamous incident and that kind of carried on through my whole career.
“I used to think to myself as a kid, ‘What are these people asking about? Why do they all want to know about this?’
“You try and work it out for yourself.
“As you get older then, you realise the importance of that game and the fact it was arguably the demise of Welsh rugby, certainly the ferocity of Welsh forward play at the time.
“When you look back at the incidents that happened that game, it’s incredible the stuff that was going on. All bets were off. There was absolute pandemonium.
“The referee obviously assumed there was contact made by dad, even though he just brushed Horton’s mascara, as he says!
“It was a situation where someone was going to go and it just happened to be him.
“Funnily enough, my very first schoolboys cap was against Ireland over there and it was the referee Dave Burnett’s local club.
“He was actually there at the game and him and my dad had a pint together and there were a couple of photos taken. So that was quite ironic and pretty strange.
“But dad has got no bitterness towards him. His only regret would be that he missed out on the Lions tour to South Africa as a result.
“At the time, he genuinely thought he was playing well enough and had a chance to go on the tour that summer.
“The ban he received pretty much ruled him out.
“I think he feels pretty sure he missed out through that incident.
“That’s the only thing with him, he deserved to be on that tour, but wasn’t.”
It was soon after that 1980 match that Jamie began to follow in his dad’s footsteps, taking up rugby at the age of six with Dinas Powys RFC, just down the road from the family home in Penarth.
“It was just something I always wanted to do,” he said.
“I bounced around the backs for a little while, until I was told to get in the pack.”
He went on to represent Wales at age-grade level, as he linked up with his beloved Cardiff RFC, for whom he was to play 142 games in two spells.
“I was born in Cardiff Bay and Gerald Cordle’s mother Peggy used to live next to my auntie Carol, so I had an affiliation with Gerald and my love of the club started very young,” he said.
“My nana used to take me to the games and I’d watch the likes of John Scott and Terry Holmes from the terraces.
“So being able to play for my home-town club was everything for me.”
One of Ringer’s very first games for the Blue & Blacks was against the Barbarians in April 1996.
“I was just 19 and still playing youth rugby,” he recalls.
“They had the likes of Denis Charvet, Agustin Pichot, Ieuan Evans and John Gallagher playing.
“It was a fantastic occasion, a packed house and we just managed to win.
“It was a huge day for me and a day I will never forget.”
Six months later came the match Ringer looks back on as the highlight of his time at the club, the Heineken Cup quarter-final victory over Bath at the Arms Park.
“It was one of those games where you had the old mist across the ground and the fans were hanging off the fir trees at the one end and the flats at the other,” he recalls.
“I don’t know how many were officially supposed to be there, but there was a hell of a lot more.
“That was an absolutely unbelievable occasion.”
Openside Ringer - nicknamed Stinger - was to be a pretty regular fixture in the team for two or three years, playing under both Alec Evans and Terry Holmes.
“I’ve got to be honest, at first me and Alec never hit it off. It’s safe to say that,” he admits.
“He’s a no-nonsense sort of guy. I was a young player who’d had a bit of success and probably thought I knew more than what I did.
“I quickly found out the other side to him. But, you know what, I grew to love him.
“When I think back, the areas he was trying to get me to improve on, he was 100 per cent right. By the time he left, the relationship had flipped on its head.
“Looking back, there haven’t been many coaches that have left a mark on me like he did. He was definitely before his time.
“With Terry, it was a completely different relationship again.
“I was in awe of him for what he represented and stood for as a player.
“He was a man of few words, but he instantly had the respect of the players and he knew the game inside out.”
It was Holmes’ exit in 1999 that was to lead to Ringer’s departure from the Arms Park.
“Lynn Howells was appointed as coach and it was clear to see he wanted to put his own mark on the team,” he said.
“He brought Martyn Williams with him from Pontypridd. Martyn is a very fine player and I realised he was going to be number one. It was clear I wasn’t going to play a lot of rugby.
“Dennis John offered me the chance to go to Bridgend and I took the opportunity.
“It was a big thing to me to leave a club which I loved so much, but you have to make decisions in life that are best for you and I wholeheartedly think that was the right thing for me to do at the time.”
That certainly proved to be the case, with Ringer winning his two Wales caps while with Bridgend, both against Japan on the summer tour of 2001, coming on as a replacement in Osaka and Tokyo.
“It was amazing, amazing. It’s something I will never forget,” he said.
“Singing the anthem at the beginning is the thing that sticks out for me.”
Ringer also toured Argentina with Wales in 2006, when he was with the Dragons, but he was to miss out on any more caps due to a youngster who was to go on to have a reasonable career.
“When I look back, I was definitely playing better rugby at the time than I was in 2001,” he said.
“I was playing more on the blindside by then.
“The irony of that trip was I remember Gareth Jenkins telling me he was going with a young chap by the name of Alun Wyn Jones to play 6.
“I was thinking to myself at the time ‘Who the bloody hell is he? He’s only played a couple of games for the Ospreys, I should be playing instead of him.’
“Well, he didn’t turn out to be a bad player, did he? So what the hell do I know!
“It makes me laugh when I look back at it.
“He turned out to be arguably the best forward Wales have ever produced.
“I have the utmost respect for him and it goes without saying he will go down as being one of the greatest.”
That tour marked the end of Ringer’s involvement with Wales, leaving him on the two cap mark.
“Sometimes you get a little break when you are young and you are coming through, like with me in Japan,” he said.
“Then, later on, when you feel you are a more rounded player and a better player, you don’t always get the breaks.
“But then there are some great players I have admired - the likes of the late, great Mike Budd - who never got any caps. You could name a few more.
“So I don’t feel hard done by in any respect like that.
“Sometimes the breaks just don’t go your way.
“I have got no regrets. I had a fantastic career and was lucky enough to play a lot of games, 300 odd first-class matches. I am proud of that.”
After making 140 appearances for the Dragons, Ringer came full circle as he finished off his playing career at Cardiff RFC, finally hanging up his boots at the age of 37 in 2014.
During that he time, he was coaching with the Cardiff Blues Academy and he went to have two seasons as defence coach at Merthyr before calling it a day.
“I was ready to step away from rugby because I knew it wasn’t what I wanted to do anymore,” he explained.
“I did find adjusting to life after rugby quite difficult initially, in terms of finding something I really wanted to do and felt passionate about.
“Then an opportunity came along in the commercial finance world as a business development manager and I have never looked back.
“My career has gone in a completely different direction, totally away from rugby.
“I am now sales director and shareholder in a company called Cornerstone Commercial Finance.
“I have worked really hard and established myself in a completely different industry.”
But while he has moved away from rugby, the speed and fearless approach he brought to the game still linger on, as he proved when he tackled a man armed with a gun to the floor in April 2019.
“That was crazy,” he said.
“It was wrong place at the wrong time, maybe for him and for me.
“He had attacked the owner of a cafe I frequent on Clifton Street.
“I tackled him to the ground and then he went away to the side of the road and around the corner.
“Little did I know he had a gun in his back pack, so I wasn’t hanging around for too long then.
“The pace was still there for the first 20 yards after he pulled the gun out, I can assure you of that!
“It was pretty scary, but you just act on instinct.”
Now 44 and living in the Cardiff suburb of Lisvane, father-of-six Ringer is a contented man, with a successful career and some great rugby memories.
“When I look back on the people I have met and all the characters, it’s been an amazing rollercoaster,” he said.
“Life has been good to me.”
It’s safe to say he has done the Ringer name proud.
