Its a really interesting fact that the Aussies playing in England have largely been injury prone.
eg Viduka-Kewell- Cahill-Emerton-
Not so sure about Lucas Neil and Mark Schwarzer, someone may have to help me on those
I remember arriving in Australia from England at age 7 and have lived there for the past 40 years. In that era we took our soccer ball to school and there were no soccer goal posts so we had to put down jumpers as goal posts. In physical education classes occasionally we were allowed to play soccer, because we had an English born teacher, although it was normally aussie rules footy due to it being the national game here.
What used to happen was because the aussie kids were so uncoordinated playing soccer they would kick the sh*t out of you when they went in for a tackle, and they didnt like us poms too much because we would make them look pretty silly when we popped the ball thru their legs and ran around them leaving them spreadeagled on the ground after losing their balance. So maybe our aussies in England are still carrying those knocks from such experiences, well its just a theory.
Then you had days where you took a soccer ball to school and played soccer in your playtime. You recruited all the Italians, Greeks, Yugoslavs, and whatever poms you could muster and you just about had 5 a side, so the jumpers went down. The problem was that often you got set upon by 30 aussies wanting your ball because they didnt have the intelligence to remember to bring a footy to school.
One kid called Charlie, they would set upon, and often about 20 of them chased him wanting to bash him senseless. Because he lived close to the school he would run home and not come back for a couple of days, feeling too scared until the heat died down. He had Italian parents who couldnt speak English, and he would bluff them that there was an excursion on that he wasnt attending so there was no need for him to attend school on those days. It was all quite a laugh when you look back on it, but pretty scary at the time.
So we joined our local soccer club, Springvale City, and this was the place to find all the brits and europeans, a place of safety to practice our religion (football) My brothers and I played for many years, I was a striker who racked up plenty of goals playing club soccer. One team we regularly used to play was Doveton, where there were a lot of Aussie kids who had strangely adopted our game, but in truth we were back to the school days playing them, and once again we would get the sh*t kicked out of us. I always remember my dear old dad telling me to wear double shin pads the day we played Doveton.
Further reinforcement of my theory, perhaps this is where Cahill, Viduka and co all got their legs kicked to hell before migrating to England.
