Another 400-gamer - in the AFL and not the NRL - Dustin Fletcher played into his 40s, becoming just the second to do so in their fifth decade.

Brad Hogg was still running around on cricket pitches at 46 for the Melbourne Renegades. Roger Federer turned 39 this week, while Kareem Abdul-Jabbar played until he was 42 - and LeBron James is still going at 35.

At lower levels, over 50s sports are becoming more and more common - with the NSW Central West city of Orange hosting its own tournament around Easter - as people are more and more capable of beating back Father Time.

However, there's one woman at the forefront, going boldly where no-one in Orange - that we know of - has gone before: Gail Pringle.

On Saturday, Pringle celebrated her 80^th birthday. Eighty. The big eight-o.

How did she celebrate? She didn't have people around for tea, she didn't play bingo, she didn't watch re-runs of British crime dramas.

No. Gail Pringle pulled on the boots, grabbed her hockey stick and stepped onto the field at the Orange Hockey Centre, just like she has done nearly every Saturday in winter for 67 years.

"I've had three years off, for children and one year I ruptured my Achilles tendon," she said.

We're just going to take a moment here to appreciate how long 67 years is. Just a moment.

When Pringle played her first game of hockey at the start of high school, Josef Stalin was still leader of the Soviet Union. Queen Elizabeth wasn't yet queen. Australia still had soldiers in Korea.

The time passed. As Australia rolled through prime ministers - first steadily and then slightly more rapidly - and technology moved from radios to televisions to the internet to building computers more powerful than the ones which sent Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins to the moon - which happened during her second decade playing, if you don't mind - which could fit into our pockets.

Hundreds of games. Possibly thousands of games. No-one knows, and no-one ever will know. And in all that time, the game's changed too.

"It was very, very different to the artificial turf. It was a different game altogether," she said.

"When you had a hit from the sideline it used to be a roll-in and now it's a hit, the surface is just so much faster.

"There's no hitting it's just scooping and pushing and it's very different but I still love it."

But Pringle's still there. She keeps on keeping on. She's been with Canobolas for over 30 years, and also spent 25 years with Marathons, who've now become Orange City.

"Every year I say it's my last year," she said laughing. "I've been saying it for about 10 years that I'm too old."

"I know my limitations."

It's something which younger players are amusingly still coming to terms with after games.

"I have no worries at all, but some of the younger players complain they're still and sore," she said.

"I've always loved sport - lawn bowls, tenpin bowls, anything. I think you can sit at home and say 'I'm too old' but you've got to keep moving and keep doing it.

"If you sit at home you will get old and I don't want to be old."

While Pringle admitted the artificial turf was "harder on the joints", she said there was no comparison between playing on grass and the turf, with the change for the better.

There's no shortage of more experienced players around at the Orange Hockey Centre, with goalie Maureen Oakman still lining up with Pringle after all these years.

"We used to go to carnivals all over the place but that doesn't happen any more," she said.

"We go to Masters every year which is over 35s, my team are in the over 55s and the average age would be over 60s."

The one person Pringle played the most hockey with was her best friend Val Gregory, who died two years ago, and despite family and friends coming up for the special occasion, Gregory was the one person Pringle would have loved to see on Saturday.

"Val was my best friend and she passed away two years ago which was very unexpected and very sad, she was 12 months younger than me.

"She would have been here, she was slowing up and not playing as much."

Does Pringle feel the passage time entering her ninth decade? Just before warming up, she said "it's just another day".

She keeps up, too - despite spending time marking 11-year-old THC striker Stella Davis and commanding the Canobolas backline in the side's loss on Saturday.

But still, you couldn't wipe the smile off her face.

"I love it, I don't want to stop," she said.