Just three months before their hosting of the Asian Cup begins with a group match against Kuwait in Melbourne on Jan. 9, the Socceroos kept their all time leading goalscorer on the bench until 13 minutes from time.
Australia's attack did improve after Cahill came on as a substitute but the 34-year-old forward was unable to add to his tally of 35 international goals in his brief cameo.
"It was a tough game obviously with conditions, I thought for the most part we controlled the game okay but we didn't really have a threat up front," coach Ange Postecoglou told a post-match news conference in the Emirati capital.
"We didn't look very threatening up front until the last 10 minutes," he added. "I would have liked us to be more cutting edge but we had a pretty young team out there and I think they acquitted themselves pretty well."
Australia have scored 11 goals in 10 matches since Postecoglou took over last year with Cahill contributing seven of them.
Skipper Mile Jedinak has chipped in with three of the others - two from the penalty spot - while the final score came courtesy of another defensive player, center back Bradley Wright.
On Friday, Postecoglou experimented with a new forward line in the experienced Bayer Leverkusen forward Robbie Kruse, who missed the World Cup because of a cruciate ligament injury, and debutant Nigerian-born striker Bernie Ibini-Isei.
"Tim's played a lot of football recently and for us, it's important we learn to play without him so we want to give some of the other players an opportunity tonight," he said.
"We know what Tim can do, he's still world class, but we want to protect him too, we don't want to play him all the time.
"We've just got to be smart about how we use him between now and the Asian Cup and it gives other players the opportunity."
Postecoglou was not overly perturbed that his team failed to get on the scoresheet for the third time in their last four matches.
"It was Robbie Kruse's first game in more than a year ... and Bernie's first game, so it's not surprising we looked a bit disjointed up front," he said.
"Hopefully that experience will mean they'll get stronger from it. We've got some work to do but we haven't had too many problems scoring goals so we know we have that there."
Australia play Qatar in a friendly in Doha on Tuesday.
(Reporting by Nick Mulvenney in Sydney, editing by Patrick Johnston)
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