The Ultimate New Zealand Soccer Website | home
2006
Rare Milestone For Terry McCahill
by Jeremy Ruane
Twenty years is a long time in football, especially when you've been playing at the top level year in, year out, for club, province and country.
And when you can count on one hand the number of games missed through injury in that time, that amounts to a fair amount of matches played.
The magic 500 mark, to be exact.
Unbeknown to all at the time, Auckland women's soccer stalwart Terry McCahill played her five hundredth game in top-level football earlier this season, fittingly in a classic blood-and-thunder battle between her beloved Lynn-Avon United and arch-rivals Three Kings United.
Just a week later, in a match against Western Springs, she made her 250th appearance for Lynn-Avon's Premier Women's team, having played in all but two of their games since they first appeared in the Northern Premier Women's League in 1993.
The forty-times-capped New Zealand international first appeared on the scene in 1987, gaining a gradual introduction to top-flight football alongside some of the legendary players of the game in this country who made up the all-conquering Eden combination that year.
Playing alongside the likes of Wendy Sharpe, Donna Baker and Debbie Pullen clearly rubbed off on McCahill, who went on to make 89 appearances in gold and black before switching to Avondale United - later Lynn-Avon United - in 1993.
On the representative front, she is still adding to her century-plus of appearances for Auckland's “A Team”, having made four appearances for the province's Under-19 team in 1989.
Two years later, she made the first of her fifty-three appearances all told for the national side, thirteen of which were in non-cap-earning matches such as those played at the 1998 National Tournament, and on the 2003 US tour, when New Zealand took on college-based opposition.
Even though she's played more top-level games than most would even dream of taking part in by the time they reach their mid-thirties, McCahill is showing no signs of calling time on her career, and why should she?
“I just love playing”, she happily declares whenever the issue of the twilight of her career is tentatively broached. “I've played with and against some of the best players in the game - the likes of Amanda Crawford, for instance - and, just as importantly, I'm still enjoying it”.
|
 Terry is pictured with a commemorative trophy acknowledging her 500 top-flight appearances, and a specially commissioned Lynn-Avon United shirt depicting the details of the day she reached the magic 500 mark, 7 May, 2006.
|