One thing I knew: I had to impress. Youth football is a series of tests and trials, of potential opportunities and life-changing matches and tournaments, and I knew this was one of my first big chances to break through.
After hours of pounding, intense action, I found myself sitting at the end of the tournament with hundreds of other kids, cross-legged on one of the pitches. All our parents were there as well and all the coaches in their light-blue tracksuits, every one of them with a clipboard: “When we call your name, please come forward. You’ve been selected for the preliminary squad for the New South Wales PSSA Team.”
Various players would get called out, they’d stand—the adults would cheer.
I’d already done the calculations: I figured there were so many matches going on simultaneously, the odds were that the coaches had seen at least four or five highly skilled midfielders who were taller and stronger than me. I told myself I’d better accept that I wouldn’t be called.
A few of the lads from my representative squad had been chosen for their district teams and had played in the same tournament. Some of them had already been called and as their names were read, they stood up confidently, striding forward to form a line behind the coaches. They had an air that told me they’d known all along that they were head and shoulders better than the rest of us. It wasn’t cockiness; it was just confidence in their abilities.
Then one of the coaches read out: “Metropolitan East. Tim Cahill …”
My eyes shot open wide, I jumped to my feet and half-ran toward the rest of the guys who’d formed up in the queue behind the coaches. I had worked so hard for this, I was nearly in tears.
Some of the guys selected were on a different planet. They were the best physical specimens, not just from our local schools or New South Wales, but in all of Australia. They were fast and strong. Some were enormous for that age: they looked like men with full moustaches, dark hair over their legs and arms, muscles like they were eighteen or nineteen years old.
We have team photos of that NSW select squad—I look like a baby compared to some of them. We had one striker in the NSW team whose body was so well developed that when midfielders kicked the ball over the top to him, he’d burst onto it like an Olympic sprinter. He terrorised defenders, thundering down on them with that pace and his legs churning.
The NSW team was in great form and we ended up winning the entire tournament. And yet, for some of those well-built kids, that select team was the pinnacle of their careers. Many of them stopped developing at fifteen or sixteen years old and never went further in football than that NSW representative team.
It’s a lesson I learned only in hindsight: nothing is ever predetermined. It’s a constant reminder to work hard, stay focussed and never believe that your future is assured.
My obsession with football was so complete at that age that it felt as if I went from game to practice to trial, to another team and another tournament, and back again. By this point Sydney Olympic was home; I’d been there five years. I’d learned Greek, made great friends, become part of the culture. Now, after my experience with the NSW select team, I dreamed of making Olympic’s first team and playing for them in the NSL.
The way the system worked, each year—regardless of how many years you’d played in the youth teams—you had to try out again. In my fifth year, I went to trial for the Olympic youth team, but despite my best efforts, I was not selected.
When he asked why, my dad was told by one of the coaches, “Tim’s too small and not fast enough.”
“Yeah?” my dad said. “Alright—we’ll see …”
As it sank in, I realized that the coaches had essentially determined that I would never shine in the NSL, so they decided to drop me and develop younger team players they felt had more potential.
I don’t want to fault the coaches completely. It could have been the case that at fourteen I was still too undeveloped physically, but all I knew at the time was that, emotionally, I was crushed.
All my mates played in the team. I knew I was getting better every year; I knew I was giving my all in every match and in every training session. I knew I was progressing, but with their rejection I felt as if everything I had worked for was being closed off to me.
My dad remained upbeat. He said we’d just hit a bump in the road and we’d continue the private training with Johnny Doyle. But it kept echoing in my mind: Too small. Not strong enough. Not fast enough …
I said to my dad, “There’s got to be somewhere I can go to get stronger.”
My parents did some looking around, then decided to send me to the Institute of Sport in Lidcombe. The institute is a world-class facility, set up to test athletes in every facet of their ability: speed, reaction time, vertical jump. I did a fifty-metre run; they timed it, but also made a video so we could review my form. They taught me how to jump more explosively and, for the first time, I had nutritionists analysing my diet. I was looking for a reason—some scientific explanation—as to why the hell I didn’t get picked for Sydney Olympic.
It may have been nothing more than bad luck, but I’m not a big believer in blaming things on luck—good or bad. To this day I often say, “Luck is great, but if I want to be lucky I’ll go buy a lottery ticket.” If things don’t go your way, sometimes you have to do everything in your power to put yourself back in the position of achieving your goals.
My failure to make the next level at Sydney Olympic filled me with doubt, had me believing, rightly or wrongly, that perhaps I wasn’t ready, that perhaps what the coaches were saying was true—I wasn’t tall enough, strong enough or fast enough.
After completing the initial assessment at the institute, I was given a program to rework my body mechanics. “We’re going to change the way you run,” one of the instructors told me.
They replayed the video of me, showing me how my arms flew out too wide, how my thigh movement could be improved. They had me change my running style by keeping my arms and legs in tight, close to my body, moving like a track-and-field sprinter: right-knee left-arm, left-knee right-arm.
In reality, you don’t need blazing speed over distance to be a top footballer. Very rarely in open play are you covering fifty metres of the pitch at a full sprint. You only need to have explosive pace in those first ten or fifteen metres.
That’s where the scientific analysis of my running paid dividends. Being quicker off the mark helped me beat my opponents and put me in position to receive a pass.
Changing my running style didn’t come easily, but by working tirelessly on my coordination and rhythm, I made my running style more complete.
My parents bought a small trampoline, which the instructors told me I should put in my bedroom, in front of the mirror, so I could watch myself. They recommended this as a way to study my form, running until I was out of breath. I also did lunges and sit-ups and push-ups and box-jumps—the basics of plyometrics.
I went a bit crazy with it, I suppose. I did this same bloody routine every day until I was drenched in sweat. I can be an extremist when I’m trying to improve something and I reckon my friends and brothers, maybe even my parents, were looking at me saying, “Timmy’s finally gone round the bend.” While other kids were off doing what normal teenagers do after school—watching TV, hanging out at shopping centres—I was working out in the bedroom, sweat pouring off me.
At the institute, they shot more video and we analysed it. I returned home and kept working on my form, kept telling myself, “I’m going to be a machine.” The institute, the plyometrics, the trampoline workout—they all helped.
But I still needed to play football. Since I couldn’t play for Sydney Olympic, we had to find a club that would take me. My dad found yet another Greek club, Belmore Hercules, which played two divisions lower.
Belmore Hercules is