Can a rugby swan song lift a team to greater heights?

One day a rich man went to the market and bought a goose and a swan. He fed the goose for his table and kept the swan for its song.

Now I don’t wish to pick holes in one of Aesop’s famous fables, but I have never encountered a swan with a wondrous voice.

Indeed, if I were to buy a swan it would be as a substitute guard dog. Both geese and swans are vicious, territorial creatures.

I was traumatised as a child by a goose. I was crossing a farmer’s field when it set upon me. It smelled my fear and knew the most vulnerable part on my body to strike. The only spontaneous song that came forth that day was from my lungs. It was a miracle that my high-pitched shriek did not remain as my natural voice.

I digress. When the time came for killing the goose, the cook decided on the small hours of the morning. I can only assume he did so driven by thematic necessity. Admittedly, this was ancient Greece and electricity hadn’t been invented, but all the more reason to do the killing and plucking by the light of day.

I digress further. As it was dark, the cook was not able to distinguish one bird from the other. By mistake, he took the swan instead of the goose. Personally, there was only one big goose in this story and that was the cook. Hired help was hard to come by as, sadly, the curriculum vitae was another thing the Greeks didn’t invent.

Nevertheless, the swan threatened with death burst forth into song and thus, by his voice, made himself known and preserved his life by his dulcet tones.

From this dubious tale, the swan song has become a metaphorical phrase for a final gesture, effort or performance moments before death. The honks and hisses of a swan for most of its natural life were somehow transformed into a haunting melody just before death.

This curious gift was picked up by other Greek writers and poets. Ovid mention it in The Story of Picus and Canens.

“There, she poured out her words of grief, tearfully, in faint tones, in harmony with sadness, just as the swan sings once, in dying, its own funeral song,” he wrote.

I don’t want to envision the day Richie McCaw retires from rugby. Daniel Carter has less selfishly acclimatised me to his impending retirement.

I imagine most of the rugby world will sound much like I imagine the noise a multitude of geese and swans would make when Richie announces his retirement. Lots of celebratory honking mixed in with a generous offering of hissing.

As a Canterbury Crusaders and All Black fan, I imagine my voice will resemble the haunting weeping melody of an ancient swan. In doing so, I will become acutely aware that I will be mixing my metaphors.

It does raise the question, however, how many swan songs are possible in this World Cup year? A lot of players will be shaking off their rugby mortal coil and not all of them will have their swan songs heard.

Their retirement will come and go and for many the metaphorical cook will hack off their necks with a merciless blade.

Ma’a Nonu, James Horwill, Adam Ashley-Cooper, Scott Higginbotham and Daniel Carter are but a few who have already announced that the World Cup will mark an end to their international careers as they will be taking up club contracts in Europe or Japan.

We can speculate about a few others like Juan Martín Hernández, Richie McCaw, Jerome Kaino, Tony Woodcock, Conrad Smith, Bryan Habana and Jean de Villiers as who will add their names to that list of retired players.

When a player reaches 100 caps, there is a mixed record of success and failure. De Villiers, Ashley-Cooper and John Smit did not have games to remember in their centenary match but Brian O’Driscoll, George Gregan and Richie McCaw’s 100th Test cap as captain were sweet moments.

However, when a team knows it will no longer be without its player after a certain time, can it lift itself to greater heights to send off that player. Are they inspired to hear his swan song?

Take Brian O’Driscoll as an example. I had never seen Ireland play like they did against New Zealand in that first half of that epic match in 2013.

It was not the first time Ireland had built up a half-time lead at home against New Zealand. In 2001, there were seven Canterbury men in the pack including Richie McCaw on his debut. New Zealand scored 33 points in 30 minutes that day.

While the 2013 defeat was a cruel way to end O’Driscoll’s last match against New Zealand, the following year in his last ever Six Nations and Test match his teammates conspired to squeeze out his swan song. In France of all places, where Ireland had about as much to write home about as a tourist with an anecdote about friendly and helpful service by a Parisian waiter.

If I were a betting man – and I am – I wouldn’t mind a flutter on McCaw and Carter sending out their swan song both on the provincial and international stage this year.

The Crusaders are much like the All Blacks in terms of their consistency, but much like the All Blacks before 2011 their recent failure to secure any more silverware has been well documented. Necessity is the mother of all invention. If you google image that expression, the first image you get is McCaw on a dodgy foot holding up the World Cup trophy.

In what could well be his last ever year in a Crusaders and All Blacks jersey, I will definitely be hoping to hear the swan song of Richie McCaw this year. I certainly hope that his teammates send him out on a fitting note, even though I fully recognise that it is not his divine right and life often doesn’t work out that way.

That said, I’d be interested in hearing whose swan song you are dying to hear. And on that note I’ll stop as I’m aware that I’m mixing metaphors once again.