Lleyton Hewitt, the scrapper who refuses to lie down, was finally heaved out of the tournament last night by the inexhaustible Andy Roddick and his 140mph serve. It took the American just short of four hours and all the power and ingenuity that he could muster in a five-set victory of 6-3, 6-7, 7-6, 4-6, 6-4.

These days it seems to take adversity to get Hewitt properly fired up. Recent evidence suggests that, given the choice between cutting the shortest path or waiting until he is up to his chest in a hole and scrambling out, the Australian will take partial interment every time. Roddick, commanding and brutally quick in the first set, was 5-2 up in the second-set tie-break, but Hewitt launched back at him to level the match.

Later, now down by two sets to one, Hewitt lost his serve straight away and — just to make the battle tougher — clearly began to feel the impact of the thigh injury that he needed treatment for this week. It did not stop him breaking back in the fourth game, though. Nor did it prevent him finding the energy to level the match at two sets all.

The fifth set, featuring individual games as long as 12 minutes, threatened to require the swift improvisation of floodlighting on No 1 Court, until Roddick eventually broke in the eighth game and served out to end Hewitt’s highly commendable and widely appreciated Bruce Willis impression. Roddick now faces Andy Murray in the semi-finals.

Cut it how you will, though, this was a disappointingly subdued performance by the Hewitt faithful — the choir of 20 travelling Australians in their carefully co-ordinated outfits of yellow and green T-shirts, who have not only borne witness to the former champion’s dramatic rebirth during these championships, but may even have been worth a game or two on a couple of occasions.

In the previous round, against Radek Stepanek, it was hard not to credit these carefree users of sunblock and old Gary Glitter anthems with a pivotal part in the demolition of the Czech player’s self-confidence. Two sets down, Hewitt looked done and dusted, only to revive and be carried victorious over the line by — as much as anything, one felt — the power of simple, Australian-inflected song. Too much credit to lay at the door of a tuneless rendition, during change-overs, of The Jacksons’ Can You Feel It? Maybe you had to be there.

Either way, one had expected the choir to deliver more of the same yesterday, but, in the afternoon’s heat, their encouragement never rose to earlier levels. Perhaps it was the scale of the venue. Also, we know how hard it is for all performers to sustain their energy and carry themselves deep into the second week of a grand-slam tournament. A certain amount of fatigue was inevitable.

And let’s not overlook the mounting pressure of expectation on those fans. Only the other day, the BBC took the trouble to visit the Australian diehards, beside their tent in Wimbledon Park, where they gladly revealed to the cameras the contents of their cool-box. (Surprisingly, it proved to contain a small selection of cheeses, some cucumber sandwiches with the crusts removed and an expensive French dessert wine. Oh, all right. No it didn’t. It contained cans of Fosters — almost like these people were happy to embrace the stereotype, or something.)

Anyway, the point is, when the media pressure starts to build like this, and the hype starts to take hold, it can be hard to shut out all that extraneous stuff and concentrate on your adapted Survivor numbers. It’s a learning curve, though. They’ll come back — and quite possibly stronger. If you can bear to think about that.

Sadness will be widespread that we will not get to hear the riff from Eye Of The Tiger on the hallowed Centre Court — perhaps even under the new roof, where the improved acoustics could have helped it to come alive in an all-new, dynamic way.

Furthermore, the dream ticket — a match-up between the shriekers for Murray and Lleyton’s yellow army — will have to wait for another year. But Murray versus Roddick should be special enough, even without the singing.