Flipping fantastic: Sam Kerr claims cup win, now for Matildas glory

Chelsea grabbed the Women’s FA Cup in front of a world-record crowd at Wembley early on Monday

Sam Kerr performs a customary backflip after scoring the winning goal in the FA Cup. Picture: Getty Images

You’re a hot athlete when you’re immune to the mock. When you talk yourself up without fearing the consequences. Sam Kerr’s cockiness, gravitas and big-match prowess will be priceless for the Matildas at the World Cup.

The self-belief is, well, un­believable. Infectious. Kerr’s the sort of player who makes every player better. Her team thinks it can win any match because she’s in it. They invariably do so because she’s done it.

She was the only goalscorer when Chelsea grabbed the Women’s FA Cup in front of an English-record crowd at Wembley early on Monday (AEST).

As proof of the confidence, she’d texted a mate before the game: “Backflip incoming.” The backflip came in.

The biggest story in Australian sport this year? Kerr and the Matildas if they win the nation’s first football World Cup. Already with an eye towards the opening match against Ireland in Sydney on July 20, the Matildas captain said: “It’s going to be massive. Hopefully we’ll all be fit and firing in front of great crowds like this. I think the Australian nation will be shocked by the amount of interest there is in the women’s game, and football in general.

“It’s going to be an amazing tournament.”

Only true sporting superstars can talk the talk and then deposit it in the back of the net. Shane Warne, Brian Lara, Usain Bolt: there are a few names off the top of the head who predicted great performances before dishing them up. They were so damn good, and knew it, backing themselves to be exceptional as a matter of course. Kerr is cut from the same strutting cloth. Up, up and away. The mock’s a crock.

“I’ve never been to Wembley and not won a trophy,” she said before the FA Cup final attracted an English-record crowd of 77,390, including Prince William, who might have recognised her as the flag-carrying Australian from his old man’s coronation.

She nudged home the matchwinner with the outside of her pink right boot in Chelsea’s 1-0 triumph over Manchester United before wrapping herself in another Australian flag for the celebrations. Unless she has just the one flag. A flag for all occasions.

Her match-eve comments had been Warne-esque, Lara-esque, Bolt-esque. “I love the pressure, love big games, love being able to have a moment in your hands and do something great.”

Backflip incoming.

Kerr with Prince William. Picture: Getty Images

She might love the pressure, but it was building in the 68th minute. Man U’s gun young defender Maya Le Tissier wasn’t giving her a centimetre of room. Kerr might love the big games, too, but this one hung in the balance. You sensed a moment of magic and so it came to be.

Kerr wriggled free of her tagger, found space, had the moment she wanted in her hands. ­Converted it with her foot.

No backflip on the promise she made in her text, celebrating energetically and extravagantly before the biggest ever crowd for women’s domestic football.

“Yeah, I mean, the occasion just needed a backflip, didn’t it?” she said. “I’d been asked for it by a few friends, so it was the day.”

Kerr received the player of the match award and reckoned she didn’t deserve it. She’s picked up something else in the Old Dart. Listen to her post-match interviews. Is that a hint of a posh Eng­lish accent? She claimed post-match revelry would be muted because Chelsea’s charge to the Super League title resumed on Wednesday.

“Oh, do we have to talk about the league?” she said. “Let me have one day off. We have to enjoy winning trophies because they don’t come around often but it will definitely be a tame one because we have Wednesday and there’s another trophy in two to three weeks.”

And an even bigger one in two to three months. Drum roll continues.