Jaeger operator fails to parse Jaeger instance version on Kubernetes - go

Question

Jaeger operator shows this log.
time="2022-01-07T11:27:57Z" level=info msg=Versions arch=amd64 identity=jaeger-operator.jaeger-operator jaeger=1.21.0 jaeger-operator=v1.21.3 operator-sdk=v0.18.2 os=linux version=go1.14.15 time="2022-01-07T11:28:20Z" level=warning msg="Failed to parse current Jaeger instance version. Unable to perform upgrade" current= error="Invalid Semantic Version" instance=tracing namespace=istio-system
The tracing operated resource shows like this afterwards:
kubectl get jaeger
NAME STATUS VERSION STRATEGY STORAGE AGE
tracing Running allinone elasticsearch 37d
We use GitOps for distributing the applications (included jaeger-operator and jaeger tracing resource). Only difference we are aware is between versions of clusters. In this case, this is only failing for a particular cluster with the following kubernetes version:
Server Version: version.Info{Major:"1", Minor:"20+", GitVersion:"v1.20.12-gke.1500", GitCommit:"d32c0db9a3ccd0ac73b0b3abd0532505217b376e", GitTreeState:"clean", BuildDate:"2021-11-17T09:30:02Z", GoVersion:"go1.15.15b5", Compiler:"gc", Platform:"linux/amd64"}
Other than the log error and the resulting missing information from the get jaeger command, the jaeger-operator modifies 2 things from the initial manifest:
It removes the line: .spec.storage.esRollover.enabled: true
It lowercases the .spec.strategy: AllInOne
The functions used for parsing the version: https://github.com/jaegertracing/jaeger-operator/blob/v1.21.3/pkg/upgrade/main.go#L28
The the function used to check the current version and compare it to verify if it needs to update the resource: https://github.com/jaegertracing/jaeger-operator/blob/v1.21.3/pkg/upgrade/upgrade.go#L134
They both look ok to me. Can't tell where/what the problem is and how to workaround it.