Reluctant hero
Delighted though he is to be the beneficiary of such goodwill, the professional rugby player in him had left his try-scoring, Tiger-bashing Welford Road experience behind him in the English east midlands.
The only thing on the scrum-half's mind right now is the game ahead.
"The Leicester thing is still in people's heads and people keep saying 'well done, well done' and they will probably until right up to kick-off in Toulouse," Stringer said.
"But as soon as the Leicester game was over we had to forget about it. Now, it is hard with people coming up to you all the time and telling you what a great game the last one was but we have to move on, say 'okay, how can we improve to beat Toulouse' rather than look back and think how good people we thought were against Leicester.
"So it's difficult that way, having such good support and so many people wanting to congratulate you. We really have to focus on the next game and try and forget about what happened."
Just as the 33-6 defeat of Gloucester in the final group game back in January has already entered into Munster folklore, so too has the 20-7 quarter-final defeat of the European champions in their own backyard.
Stringer is not unappreciative of the feat.
"I don't know if it's sunk in yet," he admitted. "We were watching the video and I think the fact that it was in Welford Road and Leicester are very rarely beaten over there is really the plus we going to have to take out of it.
"The lads had a game the week before I didn't play in it but given that we hadn't played that often together recently I thought it was quite a good performance.
"We just got in their faces and didn't really allow them to play.
"There have been a lot of teams beaten before they get to Welford Road, psychologically; there may have been doubts at the back of their minds but I think the lads were confident and they just didn't want to go out of the competition at that stage.
"So we basically didn't stand off them and wait to see what they had to offer. We went out and we played our own game and got stuck into them."
For Stringer and his Irish international team-mates in the Munster squad, the Leicester game also served as a release following the intensity of a compressed Six Nations campaign that had ended in bitter disappointment just a fortnight before. The Six Nations, Stringer said, "was so intense".
"We were living in a hotel for six or seven weeks and it was tough. I think after the English game a lot of the guys were very down. We were very disappointed with the way things had finished even though the season had gone pretty well and we would have taken that at the start of it.But I think the fact that we had Leicester to look forward to meant it was something to get our minds off the English game.
"Rather than sitting at home watching the video and wondering what the hell had gone wrong we were back involved with the guys we hadn't seen in a while, back to friends, back to training and the routine. It was good to be back, get your mind off things and get stuck into training again.
"We had no option but to focus on another game. The first week's training was hard getting back into it but it was just a matter of getting in a few tackles and you were back into the swing of things again."
Losing to England really hurt, though, and Stringer, more than any of his team-mates, was most visibly affected by it after the final whistle of that match at Lansdowne.
"The wounds will heal with a bit of time but looking back on that performance it wasn't that bad. You have to give England huge credit for the way they played.
"We were maybe unlucky not to come away with a score in the first-half and then we threw everything at it. We tried everything we'd tried in training, everything, the whole game plan. We got into our structure, the way we wanted to play but obviously England were just too good on the day."
As for the tears, he added: "I don't know if I took it worse than the others or not but I probably showed it a bit more. Looking at the video and seeing some photos afterwards, I didn't realise how affected I was by it. But I did take it badly. I really believed we could do it. The Grand Slam was in sight and it doesn't happen to you every day.
"A lot of the older guys said to me that they mightn't have another chance but hopefully the younger guys will but we realise we might never have it like that, at home, final game of the season, to go out and win a Grand Slam, a Triple Crown.
"That's a once-in-a-lifetime thing and it just hit me at the final whistle that we hadn't done it, that it was gone."
Hopes of reaching a third Heineken Cup final are still, of course, very much alive, and Stringer puts Munster's continued strength in the competition down to the seamless handover from Declan Kidney to new coach Alan Gaffney last summer.
"Fair dues to Alan, he hasn't tried to change things too much. I think it would have been wrong on his part if he had done. He knows the squad was successful already and it was probably difficult to come into that. A lot of coaches come in if things are going wrong and they try and change things drastically.
"I think he's left things up to ourselves and that's probably the main progress we've made as a squad doing things for ourselves. Declan taught us to go out and for everybody to be a leader, make your own decisions and if you needed advice that was what the coach was there for.
"Alan's pretty much the same and we haven't really noticed the progression from Declan to Alan, which is a very good thing. It wasn't on our minds and we got into the groove of things as soon as the season started.
"That was really pleasing for us because obviously there were doubts in guys heads about how things were going to go. There was new management, a new way of coaching, different techniques and things like that. But it hasn't been like that at all and it's shown in the matches we've played."
In fact, losing two commanding influences on the field in Peter Clohessy and Mick Galwey probably had more of an impact on the players left behind. Kidney, wily and perceptive coach that he is, had already prepared them for that, though.
"They were guys who had been there a lot longer than Declan was there. Gaillimh's still around and Claw still pops his head in the odd time with a pint in his hand. But Declan had picked out maybe four or five of us, younger guys, and prepared us for when Claw and Gaillimh would leave and for us to take charge of the guys.
"He told us there would be a time when they wouldn't be there to look to on the pitch that we would then have to stand up and be counted for.
"He told us we were the future of it, we were going to be there for a while and we had to stand up and take control of guys coming through. So we were kind of prepared for that over the last few seasons and there are a few leaders now in certain areas of the pitch and I think it's worked.
"At the time, it was a daunting enough thing to be marked out as someone to lead other guys, guys that were older and bigger than you. That was difficult but as we progressed it was just a matter of settling into things. As we got involved in the Irish set-up we became more confident then going back to Munster and being leaders."
As a young, raw, five-feet, nine-inch scrum-half, breaking into a Munster squad packed with old heads, the responsibility must have been more than a little daunting but Stringer is nothing if not tenacious, even when it comes to bossing a pack.
"It's hard to boss guys like that around when you come in at the start but in fairness to them guys took criticism when they needed criticism. There wasn't the kind of attitude that went 'who does yer man, this tiny young guy, think he is bossing us around'.
"I think that's a mark of the squad. People have to be able to take criticism if things aren't going right.
"They have to be able to take it on the chin and take advice from people without getting all hot-headed and flying off the handle. I think I was thrown in at the deep end as soon as I started with Munster, having to take charge of guys I had looked up to as a young fella, and it took a few seasons to kind of get a rip on things. Then as I settled into the team it was fine. I became more of a regular in the team and I felt more confident doing it, rather than being a guy who was there for a couple of matches and might not be there again. It becomes easier when you're established; the guys got know me, I got to know the system and the set-up."
Ah, the old wise head looking back on a glittering career. You have to stop and remind yourself that Stringer is still only 25, his best years as a scrum-half still ahead of him.
"It has been a good few years, I must say. I mean, before the Gloucester game there was a fear there of not reaching the quarter-finals, this realisation hit home that this could be the first season since I had been involved that we hadn't reached the European Cup quarter-finals.
"That was a big turning-point among the guys. It was back in January and we sat down and we talked and we said, 'look, there's a situation here and it could be our last game of the season with Munster'. There was a horrible feeling that we weren't going to reach the knockout stages and the guys just didn't want that to happen. Then we went out and performed against Gloucester. Maybe a lot of people didn't believe we could get through but here we are into another semi-final."
Thoughts turn to Stringer's first semi-final, back in 2000 and Munster's initial clash with Toulouse in Bordeaux's Stade Lescure.
"I remember it being 30 degrees, it was absolutely boiling. It was an unbelievable atmosphere and Declan brought us down to the Toulouse end of the ground where their supporters were. That was completely his decision. We were trying to go up the other end!
"But it worked, we got used to it all. It was so loud you actually couldn't hear each other speak when you were standing next to each other and this was in the warm-up. It was one of Declan's mind games and it did work.
"Looking back on it that was kind of the start of it, great support came over that day and started the whole travel bug. They've got used to it now, the south of France in the warm weather. I expect there'll be quite a few over this weekend. It's their last chance to travel this year and they'll want to see us try and reach another final knowing they won't have to delve into their pockets too much more this season. There's a bit to go before that but it would be nice to get to Lansdowne."
Stringer is well aware that this present Toulouse team is indeed a considerable obstacle in Munster's path.
"They are going well," he said, "I watched a bit of the Northampton game and they looked good ball-in-hand. The forwards have just as good hands as the backs, even Trevor (Brennan)! There'll be a few interesting battles all right.
"It looks like a great stadium, a great pitch, we're going to have a lot of support and there'll be some noise. I'm looking forward to some summer rugby, nice weather, throwing the ball around, hopefully.
"I think we play our best rugby on days like that: firm ground, warm weather, guys enjoying throwing the ball around and expressing themselves.
"Obviously they'll be looking to do the same as well, which we've got to stop whichever way we can."
To Stringer, motivation is a given.
"It's Toulouse away and they are the Real Madrid of European rugby. The incentive is obviously to reach the final and that's all the motivation we need. That's all people will be thinking about.
"Before the Celtic League people were thinking what do we have to do win something and winning that was a big, big boost for us. We actually had a cup in our hands and it did the squad a lot of good, gave us a lot of confidence, belief that we could win something. So hopefully hopefully, it will stand to us."
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