Global star and Australian icon: Chelsea’s Sam Kerr has triumphed against the odds

About four years ago, as the 2017-18 Ashes reached Perth, someone organised a game of football between the travelling English media and their West Australian counterparts. We assembled on some nondescript piece of suburban scrubland, the standard was extremely mixed and after Michael Vaughan slotted home the winning penalty we all retired to the bar for the most important business of the day.

As we sat there with our schooners, a local women’s team was heading out to train on the pitch we had just vacated. One of them was incredible. She had feet like hands. She had a head like a foot. She had a shot like the lash of a velociraptor’s tail. Clearly, I extrapolated, this woman was destined for bigger things. Bigger stages. Someone needed to discover her, find her an agent, get her a trial and a boot deal. I hastily made inquiries behind the bar.

“That’s Sam Kerr, mate,” the barman said, carefully siphoning off another jar of frothy water. “She’s the best player in the world.” Something about this felt incongruous, strange, vaguely wrong on some level. How is it that the world’s greatest footballer has to share a pitch with a bunch of middle-aged cricket journalists? How is it right that Sam Kerr (Australia international, NWSL golden boot winner) has to use the same patch of grass as Jonathan Liew (falls over when trying to use left foot)?

And most pressingly of all, we were in the presence of greatness. Why weren’t we clambering over each other to watch it? I thought about that scorching afternoon in Perth while watching Kerr fire Chelsea to the Women’s Super League title on a scintillating final day of the season. In a way, everything about her – the adhesive touch, the movement, the sweet strike of the ball – was the