Inside Sam Kerr's trial and what's next for 'the best thing to happen to Australia since Shane Warne': The truth about that night in the police station, the key evidence that social media clips missed and why the storm isn't over yet

It’s been a challenging year for one of Australia’s biggest sporting stars, to say the least. Over the course of two weeks in January 2024, Sam Kerr ruptured her anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) and was charged with racially aggravated harassment against a police officer, and she has spent the last 12 months picking up the pieces as off-field events threatened to derail everything she had worked for on it.

Now a jury has delivered a unanimous not guilty verdict and the 31-year-old can look forward to moving on with purely footballing matters. It’s worth mentioning that this may hang over her for some time, though, as there’s no denying that Kerr – who one Australian journalist described at the start of the trial as the ‘best thing to happen to Australian sport since Shane Warne’. The social media frenzy that has followed the Matildas captain’s experiences in court both in the UK and in her homeland highlights the persistent challenge women’s football faces in preserving its largely spotless reputation.

Kerr was filmed on bodycam footage calling PC Stephen Lovell ‘stupid and white’ and claiming she would ‘get the f***ing Chelsea lawyers on this’. Matildas star Sam Kerr was found not guilty of racially aggravated harassment on Wednesday. It took the jury took just over four hours to return a unanimous not guilty verdict. Her fiancée Kristie Mewis (left), who is pregnant with their child, broke down in tears in court.

After winning one battle off the pitch, the focus for Kerr (right) will now shift to her challenge on it, with the Australian set to return to action after a year on the sidelines due to an ACL injury. Far from it, Kerr came across as arrogant and entitled. But as many professional athletes and football managers will attest to, one-liners can often be blown out of proportion to fit a news agenda and it seems Kerr has been judged more harshly by the Australian public than in the UK.

In the wider context of the entire 30-minute bodycam footage that was played to Kingston Crown Court on day one of the trial, the one-minute clip that was widely circulated is the climax of a long and often two-sided debate between Kerr and PC Stephen Lovell. Yes, Kerr called PC Lovell ‘f***ing stupid and white’, but what wasn’t included in that clip was PC Lovell patronisingly calling Kerr ‘missy’, as well as saying ‘I haven’t had a choice to listen to you, you’re very loud’.

Without overanalysing the intricacies of the case again, many of which have been incredibly well covered in the media this last week, there was clearly context to Kerr having found herself angered and in this situation. The world has so often seen Kerr as an outgoing and confident individual. The backflips on the pitch, the amusing replies to her Australia team-mates on social media, the audacious goals from distance – including one that almost broke English hearts in the semi-final of the Women’s World Cup.

But at Kingston Crown Court Kerr’s bravado melted away as she relayed the details of a clearly distressing evening. They saw how she possessed a heightened sense of security – exemplified by her fear of black taxis due to her being unable to share her ride with friends when she’s travelling home late at night, as is possible with Uber. In the aftermath of Sarah Everard, so many women were understandably moving about the streets of London in a hyper-sensitive, paranoid way, and Kerr numerously referenced this when she was at Twickenham Police Station.

The court had been shown a video clip of Kerr calling PC Lovell ‘f***ing stupid and white’, but what wasn’t included in that clip was PC Lovell patronisingly calling Kerr ‘missy’. Over the course of two weeks in January 2024, Sam Kerr ruptured her anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) and was charged with racially aggravated harassment against a police officer. It has been a challenging year for one of Australia's top sporting stars, who has been called the 'best thing to happen to Australian sport since Shane Warne'.

The footballer had even set up a system in her phone where she could send emergency alerts to people in three different time zones - New York, London and Perth - so that at least one of them would be awake if anything were to happen. She kept referring to herself as a ‘girl living on my own in London’. It was with these elements working together in the background that she tried to drunkenly explain to PC Lovell, saying: ‘Put your shoes in some female shoes. We were trapped for 20 minutes in this guy’s car. You have to understand the emergency we felt in’.

Taken out of context, ‘you’re f***ing stupid and white’ was used as an insult. From Kerr’s point of view, this was her way of expressing why three white, male police officers couldn’t understand her – a woman who identifies as white Anglo-Indian – point of view. ‘The way he was accusing me of lying, and later arresting me for criminal damage even though Kristie said it was just her (who smashed the taxi's window). At the time, I thought they were trying to put it on me,’ she said.