It was announced on Sunday that Salisbury, the former Adamstown and Lambton Jaffas junior who represented Australia in 151 internationals, would become the first female footballer to enter the Hall of Fame, at an induction ceremony on October 10.

To cap a big week, Sport NSW also announced on Thursday she would be one of six new inductees into its Hall of Champions.

There can be no question that Salisbury's achievements compare favourably with any of the sporting luminaries who have preceded her.

In a remarkable career, she appeared in 151 international fixtures, a record for any Australian male or female player, and scored 38 goals, which at the time was also unprecedented.

She appeared at four World Cups, two Olympic Games, and was twice, in 2004 and 2007, chosen in FIFA Women's World XI squad. For seven years, she led Australia's national team, the Matildas.

All this was during an era when women's football was largely considered an afterthought and its players earned a pittance in comparison to their male counterparts.

The commitment shown by Salisbury and her teammates to the pursuit of excellence paved the way for the high profile and popularity her Matildas contemporaries now enjoy.

While the Socceroos have been largely making up the numbers at every World Cup since Germany 2006, the Matildas enter such tournaments with realistic expectations of winning medals.

When they return empty-handed, as was the case in France earlier this year and at the Rio Olympics in 2016, there is a sense of disappointment, as if they under-achieved.

With the men, it would be considered a triumph if they progressed beyond the group stages.

Yet of the seven footballers in Sport Australia's Hall of Fame, Salisbury is the first woman.

The most recent footballer inducted was Harry Kewell, last year. Kewell played 58 times for the Socceroos, scoring 17 goals, as well as famous stints with Leeds United and, to a lesser extent, Liverpool.

At no point in his career would he have qualified for a World XI, but having retired five years after Salisbury, he somehow beat her into the Hall of Fame by 12 months.

Browsing through the Hall of Fame's cavalcade of icons, which includes Novocastrians Mark Richards, Clive Churchill, Andrew Johns, Ray Baartz and Casey Stoner, it struck me that nobody was more worthy of inclusion that our Cheryl.

But then I realised there was a glaring, inexplicable omission. Coincidentally enough, it's another legend of the round-ball code who hails from our neck of the woods: the one and only Craig Johnston.

It's beyond me how arguably the most influential Australian soccer player ever does not warrant a place alongside more than 400 other Hall of Fame athletes.

During eight seasons with mighty Liverpool, he played in 190 first-team games and won five first-division championships, two League Cups, the European Cup and scored a famous goal in the 3-1 FA Cup final triumph against Everton in 1986.

No player from these shores has been more decorated. Nobody played a greater role in inspiring a generation of young Aussies to believe that they could live out their dreams.

And while he carved out a fairytale career, there was something uniquely Australian about how he managed to defy the odds stacked against him.

A promising junior who grew up in Lake Macquarie, he flew to England as a teenager to trial with the Middlesbrough youth team.

He could easily have come home after a couple of weeks, such was the culture shock. At one point Middlesbrough manager Jack Charlton told him: "As for you, you kangaroo, you can f--- off right now. You're the worst player I've seen in my life."

But through sheer willpower and commitment, Johnston became a first-team regular at Boro, before transferring to Liverpool, who at the time were the most dominant and glamorous club in England.

Johnston often joked that he was "the worst player in the world's best team", but in 2006 a poll of 110,000 Liverpool fans voted him No.59 on a list of the club's all-time top 100.

OK, so Johnston never wore the green and gold.

But that was a different time. He played long before FIFA international windows, when English clubs were reluctant to release their foreign imports to represent their countries.

That's incidental, anyway.

According to the selection critieria on the Hall of Fame website, athletes must have "been superior achievers at the highest level of competition in their chosen sport".

Representing Australia is not a pre-requisite. And surely playing for Liverpool in the mid-1980s outranked playing for the Socceroos.

Johnston left a priceless legacy by inspiring young Aussies to believe that anything was possible.

His absence from Sport Australia's Hall of Fame undermines its credibility. Like Cheryl Salisbury, he's waited far too long.