Lucas Neill should end self-imposed exile from Australian football after $40 million bankruptcy and “lost at life” interview

For those who haven’t heard it: I was having a coffee with Phil Moss at our local shopping mall a few years back when Mossy spotted Lucas walking in our direction. Before I could turn around, Lucas had seen us and darted into the Woolworths, presumably to avoid us noticing him.

I couldn’t believe it. Lucas and I went way back. I knew him as a kid in Belrose, tried to help him in his early days in the UK when he was depressed and trying to leave Millwall and briefly crossed over with him at the Socceroos when Terry Venables called him up as a teenager.

I walked over to the Woolies to find him.

What follows is a sentence I never thought I’d utter.

The Socceroos’ most capped captain – a man who went to two World Cups and played for three Premier League clubs – saw me approaching and hid behind one of those tall Woolies bread carts.

He stood completely still in the hope I wouldn’t see him

There was no point pushing it.

I walked away.

I’ve spent a long time wondering what was going through Lucas’ mind that day. Was he upset with something I had said as a Fox Sports pundit towards the end of his Socceroos captaincy? Did his bitterness with Australian football extend to wanting to sever ties with literally everyone in it? Was there something I wasn’t aware of?

I still don’t know for sure but his dark, deeply personal interview in the UK over the weekend provided me with an insight I had not considered before. Upon explaining his bad investments, ensuing bankruptcy and close shave with a stint in prison, Lucas offered the bleakest of personal assessments:

“I’ve won my freedom, but I feel like I’ve lost in life.”

That line really hit me.

The shame it implies.

The sense that his story is over.

I don’t know what it is like to walk in Lucas’ shoes, but I can certainly relate to dark periods after my playing career was over. It isn’t easy. You feel like a big part of your identity is gone. You wonder if life can ever be as meaningful again. And that must only be magnified when you have earned and lost a fortune estimated at $40 million.

So, perhaps Lucas wasn’t just wanting to hide from me at the Forestway Mall that day. Maybe he was trying to hide from the world, embarrassed and distressed at his position in life. That could go some way to explaining his self-imposed exile from Australian football all these years. As disappearing acts go, his has been almost without parallel.

But this doesn’t have to be the final chapter for Lucas.

Indeed, at 45, you could argue his best ones are still to be written.

Australian football is desperate to have someone like Lucas back in the fold. Nearly every member of the Golden Generation left these shores and never returned upon the end of their playing careers. The amount of knowledge and insight that went with them is incalculable. To have our most experienced captain involved again and passing on those lessons? You couldn’t put a price on it.

Now, this is easy to say and harder to do.

Lucas is a complex character. He has rubbed some people up the wrong way over the years and is a known harbourer of grudges: from his freezing out of Ange Postecoglou upon being told he would not be selected for the 2014 World Cup, to the critics who questioned his motives when he chose West Ham over Liverpool and many things in between.

Those chapters have been written. There’s no taking them back.

But new ones are possible. Australia, like few other countries, loves a comeback story and Lucas has an opportunity to re-engage with the country he left behind and take up the leadership role many had hoped he would occupy. Imagine the experiences he could pass on: he lived through Socceroos hardship and glory, he played professionally in England, Turkey, Australia, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Japan, he earned $80,000 per week at his zenith and $1,700 per month at his nadir.

Very few have lived a life like his.

The stories behind his losses could help a new generation win.

Of course, it might not be that simple. He has lived in the UK for a long time now and his son is apparently a gun in Liverpool’s junior system. And it maybe that his personal sense of shame and/or bitterness is so profound that he wants to keep hiding.

But if it turns out that interview with The Times was Lucas’ way of taking his first, tentative steps back into the world, I have no doubt Australia would welcome him back with open arms.