The ancient writers — Plato, Aesop, Ovid, those lads — claimed that there were few more beautiful sounds than the song of a dying swan. The prospect of mortality led these sacred birds to honk a last hurrah that was sad yet glorious. We humans also hope to go out on a high.
As sporting swansongs go, if you forgive a customary plug for Blackheath rugby club, Dave Allen’s is hard to beat. The flanker is a club legend, a modest, hard-working scuffler with a nose for the tryline. In 278 league appearances he scored an extraordinary 147 tries, a record for National League One. Only three players, from other clubs, have scored even 100 at level three.
His hallmark was the driving maul and even today, nine years after he left, they whisper on the touchline when Blackheath get a lineout in the 22 that now would be a good time for an Allen special. And when he didn’t get the ball down himself, opponents often had to stop him illegally. There was one season where our second-top scorer was penalty tries, most of them earned by him.
April 30, 2016, was not just his final match; it was the last Blackheath game to be played at Rectory Field, their home for 133 years. This blessed plot in southeast London was where England played Wales in 1886 and Australia in 1909, before moving to a cabbage patch across town. It oozed history. So there was an emotional farewell to that too.
For this last hurrah for man and ground, Blackheath decided not to wear their usual Dennis the Menace stripes but a special jersey designed for the occasion by Allen’s primary school-age daughters of electric blue, lurid lime and orange. He walked out to warm applause down a tunnel of fans including Mickey Skinner, one great flanker saluting another. By neat coincidence, the opponents were Blaydon, whom Skinner had left in 1979 to join us southern softies and begin his path into the England team.
The sun shone, the beer flowed and Allen scored twice, of course, as Club turned a 12-12 half-time deadlock into a 45-17 trouncing to secure third place in the league. There was not a dry eye as the brightly coloured hero hugged his daughters. His loud jersey now hangs in the bar of the new ground. Though he came back quietly to play three more matches the next season, purely to help out in an injury crisis, this was his farewell performance and he sang it like a swan.
Some don’t realise it is their finale at the time. Pete Sampras had the perfect end to his professional tennis career, beating his old rival Andre Agassi to win the US Open and his 14th major title in 2002, but he didn’t announce his retirement until the next year. Andy Murray’s farewell to Wimbledon, on the other hand, became a sad coda thanks to injury (to him and Emma Raducanu). You can’t always plan perfection.
As mute swansongs go, Don Bradman’s second-ball duck at the Oval in 1948 has to be the most infamous. “I wonder if you see the ball very clearly in your last Test in England … where the opposing side has just stood round you and given you three cheers and the crowd has clapped you all the way to the wicket,” John Arlott said on the BBC. “I wonder if you see the ball at all.” Yet no one would say that Bradman’s lapse ruined his career. Rather, the slight imperfection in his final average of 99.94 emphasised its brilliance.
Almost 40 Test cricketers have made a century in their last Test, including Alastair Cook, with 147 against India at the Oval in 2018, Jacques Kallis, Bill Ponsford and Nasser Hussain, who made an unbeaten 103 at Lord’s in 2004, spanking the winning runs through the covers as England chased 282 against New Zealand. Andrew Strauss forgave him for running him out for 83.
Andrew Sandham made a world-record 325 in his final Test in 1930, earning sore feet as well as plaudits after having to borrow Patsy Hendren’s shoes when his own fell apart. CAG “Jack” Russell made 140 and 111 against South Africa in 1923, but illness, followed by the rise of Herbert Sutcliffe, meant the Essex man wasn’t selected again. Perhaps the most unexpected last hurrah was Jason Gillespie’s 201 as nightwatchman against Bangladesh in 2006, on his 31st birthday. The Australia tailender’s second-highest Test innings was 54.
Many have been denied a swansong by awful luck. Exactly 85 years ago, on March 28, 1940, a 24-year-old Rosslyn Park wing received a letter inviting him to play for England against Wales at Kingsholm. He had made a stunning international debut in 1936, scoring one of the finest tries Twickenham had seen, but played only three more times before the war. Now he had another chance to show what he could do. Except he didn’t. The very next day, Pilot Officer Alexander Obolensky was killed during training when a wheel of his Hawker Hurricane snagged in a rabbit warren on a grass airfield near Ipswich. He was catapulted out of the cockpit and broke his neck.
Some promising sportsmen never even made a start. In 1996, 66,000 spectators stood in silence before the Varsity Match at Twickenham to remember Ian Tucker, the Oxford centre, who had recently died at 23 from injuries suffered in a tackle. Four years before that John Hebbes had a fatal heart attack aged 19 while out training with Oxford’s Boat Race crew. It was brought on by an undiagnosed cancer.
The race, a few weeks later, would be one of the closest there has been. As they passed Barnes Bridge my old friend Andrew Probert, coxing Cambridge, heard his opposite number call for “one big push for John” and instantly knew he would lose. Oxford had nine oarsmen in their boat at that point.
As lovers of sport, we appreciate the true meaning of the Latin poet Horace’s “carpe diem”, often translated as “seize the day” but more literally meaning to savour it like a sweet and ephemeral fruit. You never know when you might get a rough bounce or a bad decision, a cruel injury or simply fall victim to the selectors, so enjoy it, savour it, while you can.
It has been a huge privilege and pleasure to write this column for five years and be on the staff of The Times for over 20. This race is run, my song is sung. Back to the pavilion and new adventures.
