"There's some evidence that warm up is quite important to prevent injury in athletes, but stretching is just one component of a warm up and so when we say stretching is not of much value we need to be careful not to throw out warm up along with stretching," he says.

Physiotherapist Clare Walsh is on the same track as Rod Pope: "I think it's fairly well recognised now through the research that stretching before sport doesn't necessarily prevent you from injuring yourself while you're playing sport in that game, but I think that improving your flexibility overall in the long-term can definitely prevent injury because it prevents muscle imbalances occurring."