This week, Australian sporting fans will be out in force to farewell two of the nation’s greatest sportsmen across two different sports.
Tomorrow night, after over 100 caps for the Socceroos, Tim Cahill will don the famous yellow jersey for the final time when Australia plays Lebanon at ANZ Stadium in the soccer, while on the weekend, Craig Lowndes will draw the curtain on his Supercars career when he aims for one final race win at the season-ending Newcastle 500.
After playing club football in England in the early part of his career, Cahill made his debut for the Socceroos against South Africa in 2004 and was instrumental in them winning the OFC Nations Cup, scoring six goals as they advanced to a World Cup qualification play-off against Uruguay the following year.
What transpired would go down as one of the greatest sporting moments in our recent history, as the Socceroos qualified for the 2006 FIFA World Cup thanks a heart-stopping 4-2 penalty shoot-out win, which followed a tough 1-0 loss in the first leg in Montevideo.
Back on the big stage for the first time since 1974, Australia would show its true colours in Germany, with Cahill scoring the country’s first ever World Cup goal as they recorded their first win at the tournament, defeating Japan 3-1 (he scored another goal in the same game) in Kaiserslautern.
After a competitive 2-0 loss to reigning champions Brazil, a draw against Croatia would prove enough to qualify for the group of 16, in which their journey would come to an end thanks to a controversial 1-0 loss to eventual champions, Italy.
Cahill also proved instrumental as the Socceroos qualified for the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, scoring goals against Qatar and Japan in the qualifying matches in 2009. This led to former coach, Rale Rasic, to label Cahill as the best Australian footballer he had seen in his lifetime.
At the tournament, he was controversially red-carded for a foul on Bastian Schweinsteiger in the first group match against Germany, which the Aussies lost by 4-0.
This saw him suspended from the second match against Ghana, before he returned for the final match against Serbia, in which he scored a goal. But despite a 2-1 scoreline in their favour, goal difference saw their tournament ended in the group stage.
Another four years later, in Brazil, Cahill scored what many regarded as “one of the best goals in World Cup history” in the Socceroos’ 3-2 loss to the Netherlands.
He therefore became one of seven players to have scored at each of the 2006, 2010 and 2014 World Cups.
Then, in January 2015, he scored three goals as Australia won the Asian Cup played on home soil, defeating South Korea 2-1 in the final at ANZ Stadium.
Over two-and-a-half years later, he would play a role in Australia qualifying for its fourth consecutive World Cup, scoring a goal late against Syria, but could only manage the one appearance in Russia as the Socceroos endured a second consecutive winless World Cup campaign.
His heroics for the Socceroos aside, he has played for eight clubs across several countries, including playing for Melbourne City in the A-League between 2016 and 2017.
However, it was at Everton where he made a name for himself, making 226 appearances and scoring 56 goals between 2004 and 2012.
And now, close to his 39th birthday, the man from Sydney’s inner-west will don the Socceroos jersey for the final time when the team plays Lebanon in what will be their first appearance in Sydney since the match against Honduras last November in which they qualified for this year’s World Cup.
Is Tim Cahill Australia’s GOAT? (Photo by Matt King/Getty Images)
Having made 107 appearances and scored 50 goals for his country, Cahill will forever go down as one of the greats in the history of Australian soccer, with the state of the sport in this country having improved vastly throughout his international career.
To better illustrate the point, Australia has not missed qualifying for a World Cup since Cahill made his debut for the Socceroos in 2004. Prior to that, their only appearance on the big stage came in West Germany in 1974.
Given his contribution to the sport in this country, it promises to be an emotional night at ANZ Stadium tomorrow night as the 38-year-old bows out of international soccer for the final time.
Later in the week, Craig Lowndes will conclude his full time Supercars career at the Newcastle 500.
Over the past quarter of a century, Lowndes has become a household name in Australian motorsport, claiming three championship titles by the age of 25 and conquering Mount Panorama seven times, including this year.
He started his racing career by riding go-karts at the age of nine before progressively rising up the ranks to race cars in 1991.
After making his debut at the 1994 Sandown 500, Lowndes took out his first Championship at age 22 in 1996 and then reigned at Sandown again in 1997 on either side of a brief trip to Europe where he competed in the International Formula 3000 Championship.
Craig Lowndes finished on a high. (AAP Image/Mark Horsburgh)
Two more Supercars Championship titles followed in 1998 and 1999, but he would not win another title despite his best efforts, finishing second on five occasions, the most recent in 2015 when he finished runner-up to Mark Winterbottom.
Last year, he endured a frustrating season as he could not record a single podium finish, finishing 10th after being felled on the penultimate lap of the final race of the season in Newcastle.
This year, however, he has won two races, the first in Symmons Plains in Tasmania back in April, and the second his seventh Bathurst 1000 title, this time with Steven Richards.
In July, Lowndes announced his intention to retire at the end of the current Supercars season, in which the Championship will be decided between Kiwi rivals Scott McLaughlin and Shane van Gisbergen, with only 14 points separating the pair.
With up to 300 points up for grabs in Newcastle this weekend (150 in each race), only one of those two men will be able to claim the title, with third-placed Jamie Whincup 467 points in arrears of Red Bull teammate van Gisbergen and Lowndes behind in fourth with 3,117 points.
Of the two, McLaughlin will be more motivated to win his first Championship after the aforementioned incident with Lowndes on the penultimate lap in the final race last year saw him slapped with a post-race drive-through penalty.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3tRuiyCMLw
This was enough for Whincup, who won the race after finishing 21st in the Saturday race, to claim his seventh Championship.
But while the focus is on the two-way battle for this year’s title between Kiwis McLaughlin and van Gisbergen, there is no doubt Craig Lowndes will be the centre of attention as thousands of Supercars fans converge onto Newcastle over the weekend to farewell one of the greats of Australian motorsport.
It will conclude what will surely be a huge week for Australian sport, with Tim Cahill to also bow out of international football for the final time after a stellar career with the Socceroos.
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