By Emily Goddard
March 14 – Australia’s top 16 footballers span six decades and several generations of the game, with the likes of Joe Marston (pictured), Tim Cahill and Mark Bresciano making up the top players, according to a poll conducted to celebrate the centenary of organised football in Australia.
Reading like a who’s who of football over the past 60 years, the top six players include Marston, the first Australian to play in an FA Cup Final when his team Preston North End lost to West Bromwich Albion in 1954.
The 86-year-old is famed for a career spanning 26 years from 1943 – he first played for Australia in 1947 – to 1969 and the Marston Medal for the player of the match in the A-League Grand Final is named after him.
The youngest player on the list is recently returned Socceroo Bresciano, who now plays for Al-Nasr in the UAE Pro-League.
He is joined by other current Socceroos players Brett Emerton, Harry Kewell, Lucas Neill (pictured right), Mark Schwarzer and Tim Cahill (left), often referred to as the nation’s “golden generation” owing to their high level of participation in tournaments such as the two most recent World Cups and the 2007 and 2011 Asian Cups.
Collectively, the poll’s top 16 footballers have represented Australia in 798 international matches and scored 109 goals between them, with the highest goalscorer being Cahill, who manages almost a goal every second international match, followed by Kewell and Frank Farina.
More than 1,260 people voted in the poll, which was performed by Football Media Association (FMA) to give fans, players and the media the chance to name who they consider to be the top 100 footballers to have pulled on the green and gold in the hundred years since the formation of what is now Football Federation Australia (FFA) in December 1911.
The complete top 100, including the order of the top 16, will be announced by the FMA at a special event set to be held in June.
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