Nobody quite knows what makes Papua New Guinea cult hero Stanley Gene tick. The long-serving five-eighth certainly is one of a kind, writes Glenn Jackson.

WHERE to start with Stanley? It's tough, given no one is exactly sure when, quite literally, Stanley started. So how do you tell a story when you don't even know when it began?

Like the fabled story about his age, you just don't know how much of this story is exact and how much is exaggerated. But if half of it is true, it's a belter. Let's start at the end, because that seems appropriate. Tomorrow night, Stanley Gene says, he will play his last game for Papua New Guinea. He has said it before, but speaking with the Herald in Townsville yesterday, this time he means it.

"I set my mind for the third World Cup four years ago - what a great way to finish," he says.

Indeed. It will be the end, at least internationally, of a quite wonderful story, even if fact is often blurred with fiction.

The truth of the matter is, with Gene, there is no truth. Not real truth anyway. When it comes to Stanley stories, you just enjoy them. Like when he was given £500 worth of fishing gear when he joined Hull KR and, using it for the first time, cast it by throwing the "whole f---ing thing in the pond". His former PNG teammate Marcus Bai recalls a 1996 match against New Zealand: "He tackles them and pushes his fingers through their eyes, through their ears and mouth.

"He knees them in the ribs, knees them in the torso, and knees them in the nuts. He punches them in tackles, punches them in the scrums. He's matured now, but when we start to get flogged, the old head comes back."

But how old? The alleged age of Gene (as we know now, pronounced Ge-nay) has had more fluctuations than the sharemarket in recent times. Asked about it, he rattles off the response like he's said it many times before, or rehearsed it many times before: "I'm 34 this year. 11-05-74. People keep talking about it, but I'm not born in a cave or born in the sea. I was born in a hospital in Goroka. When people go on about it, it gives you a kick to prove them wrong."

What is not up for debate is that this is Gene's third World Cup. His first, in 1995, was the launching pad for his move to England, a journey that continues to this day with Hull KR - where it all began (he has also spent time with Hull, Bradford and Huddersfield). He was picked up by Rovers, offered a car, a house, and given a cheque he didn't know what to do with. But armed with three words of English in his vocabulary, he moved to the UK, to a unit and a car he knew about as much about as the cheque.

"I was scared of going," he said. "I thought, 'This world is too fast for me, roundabouts and traffic lights'. My family don't own a car. The first time I drove it I took the lane where the cars were coming towards me. When people were tooting their horns I thought they knew me and I was just waving … I just opened the door, locked the car and just walked back to the club and gave the car keys to the coach."

About 12 years on, he still pinches himself. "I'm still living a dream," he says. "I didn't ever believe that I'd have a beautiful family in England, and two beautiful boys, and a house and a flat screen - in my house in PNG, I never had a TV! I never had a septic toilet.

"Some mornings, I wake up, and in that few 10 to 15 seconds, I look at the white ceiling, and I think, 'Where am I?' Then I realise I'm in the real world."

The real world for him used to be a "ghetto". He was a "little rascal" as a youngster in PNG. He was brought up predominantly by his grandparents, but not knowing they were his grandparents until after high school, nor that the woman who used to bring him chocolates and cake to school was his mother.

Maybe it's for that reason that age has not wearied him, as it clearly hasn't worried him. Maybe it's for that reason that not even wrapping his left leg around a post, snapping his posterior cruciate ligament and being told he could never play again - which happened five years ago - has not stopped him.

Bai says: "His body is different to any other living human being. Stanley's just Stanley. If he wants to play, he'll play."

As he did in the lead-up to the World Club Challenge in 2006, playing for Bradford against Wests Tigers. Gene went in for an arthroscopy on his knee eight days before and was told he would miss six weeks. He headed for the coach's office and told him the specialist said he could play. Only problem was, the coach Brian Noble had just spoken with the specialist. Gene's response: "I've never won anything big. This is the only chance for me to win a World Club Challenge. I want to be able to tell my kids I won something."

Bai says: "When we won the game, we were singing afterwards and Stanley was sitting on his own looking at me and crying his eyes out."

The only other time Bai has seen him cry was last Saturday night, after the Kumuls were crushed by the Kiwis. It was then that Bai knew it might be "bye".

"He said the old legs couldn't give any more. We shook hands and he gave me a hug." Who knows? He may well decide to play on next year for the Kumuls. Like everything else about him, his age and the many hundreds of Stanley stories, you're just not quite sure.