Going For Gold

ONE OF THE WORLD’S HIGHEST-ACHIEVING SPORTS PEOPLE, AUSTRALIAN SAMANTHA KERR IS KICKING GOALS ON AND OFF THE FIELD, AND DOING SO WITH POSITIVITY, KINDNESS AND FOCUSED DETERMINATION. AHEAD OF HER LEADING THE MATILDAS INTO THE 2019 FIFA WOMEN’S WORLD CUP, DANA THOMAS MEETS THE WOMAN HELPING TO CHANGE THE FACE OF THE GAME

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SAM KERR HAS HAD QUITE A YEAR. As captain of women’s football team Perth Glory, she made the W-League grand final. As a forward for the Chicago Red Stars, she was the leading scorer in the National Women’s Soccer League in the United States for the second year running, taking out the Golden Boot award. And she was the first Australian to be nominated for the FIFA Ballon d’Or, the international player of the year award.

Recently, she became the face of Nike Australia (a deal which reportedly has her on course to become the first Australian female footballer to earn $1 million a year) and has been named the permanent captain of Australia’s national women’s football team, the Matildas, which she’ll lead to the Women’s World Cup this month in France. “I can’t wait,” she says during the Nike team-kit launch in March at the Palais Brongniart in Paris. “Just being here in the city gets you excited. It’s going to be an unbelievable tournament. I don’t know why, but European countries seem to do footballing tournaments pretty well.”

That’s Kerr for you. Positive, generous and always delivering everything with a smile. At 167cm, and all muscle, she’s a force. But there’s kindliness and calm about her that puts folks at ease. The day we meet has been long for her: up at dawn, non-stop interviews and an “epic” fashion show where she’s sporting the Matildas’ new Nike-designed World Cup uniform alongside her fellow international players, mounting a rotating podium as strobes swirl and techno thumps. The sort of schedule, basically, that would level your average human.