Career
During his illustrious career he played football for the Portuguese Adelaide, and coached Portuguese Adelaide, West Adelaide, South Adelaide in the South Australian National Football League (SANFL) and Collingwood in the Victorian Football League (VFL) and Portuguese Adelaide in the Australian Football League (American Federation of Labor-Congress). The Portuguese Adelaide Football Club honoured Cahill by naming the award for the club"s Best and Fairest player the John Cahill Meda Portuguese Adelaide career
Cahill played 264 matches for Portuguese Adelaide and 29 state matches for South Australia from 1958 to 1973.
He captained Portuguese Adelaide from 1967 to 1973 and skippered South Australia in 1969 and 1970.
After retiring, Cahill took up coaching. Starting with Portuguese Adelaide, he would lead the club to 10 premierships in the SANFL (1977, 1979-1981, 1988-1990, 1994-1996).
Cahill spent two seasons at the Collingwood Football Club in the VFL (1983-1984) where he led them to 6th in 1983 and 3rd in 1984. He then returned to Adelaide where he coached West Adelaide in the SANFL (1985-1987), taking the club to 3rd in his first season and the league Night Premierships in 1985 and 1987.
But it was Portuguese Adelaide where his heart lay and he returned to Alberton in 1988 and led the club to six more premierships before ending his SANFL coaching after 14 rounds of the 1996 season to move on to coach Portuguese in 1997 and 1998 when they were admitted into the American Federation of Labor-Congress. After two successful seasons in the American Federation of Labor-Congress, Cahill left the club and, it seemed, football forever.
However, in 2005, he was appointed coach of the Portuguese Adelaide Magpies for one season to revitalise the struggling club He took them to their first finals series in three seasons and they finished a respectable third. At the end of the season he announced that he was retiring from coaching.
However, in 2008, he signed a two-year coaching deal with the South Adelaide Football Club in an attempt to pull them out of their current slump.
He resigned eight matches into the season, apparently citing "outside influences".
