City fell 2-0 to Perth Glory at home on Sunday in the elimination final and Cahill said the triumph in November was something to be proud of.

“We won the first ever trophy for the men’s club, it’s massive,” Cahill said.

“The positive for this is we could’ve lost that and we could be standing here now with no silverware and we would’ve got smashed.

“We set up really well in training but when it comes to games and you don’t execute it, there’s nothing the manager can do.

“For us, we just have to be accountable and I said it from the start. We win together and we lose together, we won the FFA Cup and tonight was lost, that was all of us.

“But we walk away with our heads held high that we delivered something that no one thought we could do.”

Cahill was confident in the lead-up to their match about their attacking philosophy but he admitted they needed to be held accountable after being caught twice on the counter-attack against Glory.

Glory striker Andy Keogh had no problems saying they would be hitting them on the counter because of their selfishness and reluctance to defend.

But Cahill stuck up for his teammates and stressed credit needed to be given to Diego Castro who opened the scoring.

“I’m not going to put my teammates down or the club,” he said.

“We’ve been good this season and I know a lot has been said with the calibre of players we’ve had, we finished where we deserve and that was getting knocked out tonight.”

City only managed two shots on-target for the whole game, it resulted in centre-back Michael Jakobsen joining the attack towards the end of the match.

Jakobsen had a long shot which smacked Glory defender Dino Djulbic in the head, it then saw the Dane laugh as his opponent celebrated.

Cahill and Jakobsen battle with Castro

Jakobsen admitted they didn’t match the effort and want and even took ownership of the goals conceded.

“He’s a nutcase (Djulbic), the guy, standing there, putting his head in there and that’s what you want to have in your team,” Jakobsen said.

“You want to sacrifice yourself, even if it hits you in the head or somewhere else where it hurts… They put that effort in for today and we weren’t quite there.

“I’m quite disappointed I let my teammates down, especially the second goal. I made a sloppy pass in the middle which shouldn’t happen, but then we concede five or 10 seconds later, so I’ll take that on my shoulders.

“All in all we didn’t deserve to win this game, we conceded 13 goals against this team this season so we’ve struggled, they beat us and that’s how football is.”