Sam Kerr court case: Matildas star hires management consultant as tricky decision looms for Football Australia
Team Kerr has hired a reputation management consultant as a tricky decision looms for Football Australia.
Throughout her trial for her alleged racial harassment of a UK police officer, Matildas captain Sam Kerr has given the distinct impression she doesn’t particularly care what people think of her.
Someone in her team clearly does: a reputation management consultant has been front and centre at Kingston-on-Thames Crown Court in London each day that Kerr has appeared.
Lloyd Webb, of the Ashton Media Group, has been providing background information to reporters on the ground, although I’m told a few of them haven’t been in the mood for being spun a line.
Webb confirmed to me he had been hired by “Team Kerr” and not Football Australia.
Regardless of the outcome of the trial — and whether the incident warranted all this fuss in the first place — we’re about to see just how much spine Football Australia and its chief executive, James Johnson, have when dealing with its biggest star.
The worst kept secret in Australian football is how FA officials have for years walked on eggshells around their prickly striker, desperate to not upset her.
A platoon of spin doctors can’t erase the bodycam footage from January 30, 2023, that was aired in court this week. Kerr repeatedly calls the officer “f..king stupid and white”.
The agreed facts are she fronted the police station the day after the incident to apologise, admitted to having a “spit vomit” in or outside the cab. She paid for damage to the cab after her partner, Kristie Mewis, kicked out the back window of the vehicle after the driver took them to a police station.
Those actions alone would be enough to break a players’ code of conduct in most professional sports.
Kerr has defended her actions, telling the court racist incidents from her childhood, along with the Claremont serial murders in Perth in the mid-1990s, had been the triggers for her behaviour.
Mewis accused police of gaslighting Kerr, who she said was “speaking her truth”.
Remember, FA was completely blindsided by the Kerr incident and charges when news of them broke in March last year after she appeared in a London court.
It’ll be interesting to see how Johnson deals with it. Kerr isn’t the only one whose reputation is on the line in London when the jury delivers its verdict next week.
White’s world
UFC supremo Dana White was ringside in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, last Saturday night when his phone pinged with a text message.
It was US President Donald Trump.
“That was an early stoppage!” Trump insisted, referring to referee Mark Goddard’s decision to stop the middleweight fight between Israel Adesanya and Nassourdine Imavov.
Adesanya had worn a vicious right from Imavov, otherwise known as The Sniper, and then a flurry of punches to the head as he squirmed on the ground.
“No, Mr President, it wasn’t,” the CEO replied. “It was a good stoppage.”
White tells me this story in the bowels of Qudos Bank Arena in Sydney, which on Sunday hosts UFC 312, headlined by a middleweight fight between South African Dricus du Plessis and American Sean Strickland — two men who don’t seem particularly fond of each other, unlike Trump and White.
“He’s one of my really good friends,” White says. “I believe in most of what he does. You’re never going to agree with every president, but I’m very aligned with him in a lot of different ways.”
You mightn’t follow UFC. You mightn’t agree with a sport the late US Senator John McCain described as human cockfighting. And I admit, it’s not really for me.
But you simply cannot deny its mass appeal. Like Trump.
Consider this: White doesn’t want mixed martial arts to become an Olympic sport, even if it warrants far greater consideration than, say, breakdancing or climbing.
As brutal as it can be, MMA incorporates disciplines like wrestling, judo, karate, and boxing.
“I’m not interested in the Olympics,” White says. “I already do it. I find the best fighters from all around the world and bring them altogether.”
Tell me another sport that doesn’t want to be in the Olympics.
White has repeatedly credited Trump for showing belief in UFC when others found it too brutal.
In 2001, the real estate mogul hosted an event at his Trump Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City. UFC soon gravitated to Las Vegas and in the last 30 has been held in just about every corner of the world. Sunday’s event will be the 19th held in Australia since 2010.
White has never forgotten Trump’s loyalty. When Trump ran for president in 2016, he asked him to speak at the Republican National Convention.
“Everybody told me not to do it,” White recalls. “Not to be political, play both sides of the fence. I’m not a very political person, and every time you’ve heard me speak at any of the conventions, I’m not pointing at either side (of politics) saying this one’s bad and that one’s good. I’m right down the middle anyway.”
Earlier this year, White stood behind former presidents George Bush and Barack Obama at Trump’s inauguration. At a media conference open to the public at Qudos Bank Arena on Thursday, I spotted more than a handful of Australian teenage men wearing black “Make America Great Again” trucker caps. Weird times.
Much like Trump, White advocates free speech regardless of how low it can sink.
On Thursday night, Strickland blasted Australia’s strict gun laws introduced in the wake of the 1996 Port Arthur massacre in which 35 people were killed.
“You had one mass shooting and gave up all your guns, that was kind of pathetic,” he said. “It’s the lack of freedom, dude.”
Those comments were tame in comparison to those of American flyweight Bryce Mitchell, who last month told a podcast he liked Hitler and denied the Holocaust.
“Here’s what I say about (Elon Musk) heiling Hitler, heiling the Nazis,” he said. “I really don’t think that he was, because I honestly think that Hitler was a good guy based upon my own research, not my public education indoctrination … I really do think before Hitler got on meth, he was a guy I’d go fishing with.”
White released a statement condemning the remarks, adding: “That’s the problem with the internet and social media. You provide a platform to a lot of dumb and ignorant people.”
Many of his fighters seem to fit the bill.
Mitchell was neither fined nor suspended. It’s hard to imagine a professional league anywhere in the world allowing an athlete to continue after such comments.
Australian boxer Anthony Mundine was black-banned in the US for more than a decade after saying “America brought it upon themselves” after the 9-11 terrorist attacks. It cost him millions.
In the UFC, that sort of talk just adds another layer of subplot to an upcoming fight.
“I’m a big believer in free speech and unfortunately probably the most important thing that needs to be protected is hate speech,” White says. “As disgusting and vile as it can get sometimes, it’s the one that needs to be protected most. If I moved away from free speech, I go against everything I believe in.”
Wallabies in transition
Wallabies coach Joe Schmidt’s decision to stand down from the job at the end of the year doesn’t surprise.
He was essentially prised out of retirement to do the job and was a long shot to continue because he’s needed at home in New Zealand. His youngest son, Luke, suffers from severe epilepsy.
He’s had such a positive influence on the Wallabies set-up that RA chief executive Phil Waugh has been bending himself into a pretzel trying to find a “creative” solution to ensure he stays in some capacity for the 2027 Rugby World Cup on these very shores.
It says everything about Schmidt that he doesn’t want to announce any consultancy role until his replacement is found.
The jury is still out on whether Waugh is the right man for the job he’s held since June 2023.
He’s either going to be rugby’s saviour or fall terribly short, depending on whom you ask.
Nevertheless, the former Wallaby has every right to be up on his toes with a new broadcast deal with Channel 9 all but done and marquee signing Joseph Suaalii about to give us a reason to watch Super Rugby again.
Nine announced this week it had reached an in-principle agreement with RA. The figure reported was $210m over five years, although I’ve been told it’s a little more.
It’s still far less than the major codes of NRL, AFL, and cricket, but more than the current deal, which was estimated to be worth $150m.
The interesting part of the new agreement is cash incentives of more than $30m related to the performance of the Wallabies and Australian Super Rugby teams.
Former RA chief executive John O’Neill’s mantra was Australian rugby was firing if the Wallabies were firing.
That point was very much underlined late last year when victories against England and Wales on the Spring Tour sparked wild optimism about the national team and the sport in general.
It remains to be seen if Suaalii can live up to the enormous contract that lured him from the NRL, although he’s said more publicly in the past few weeks promoting the Waratahs than he did in four seasons at the Roosters.
The 21-year-old is a class act: long after others had left the Super Rugby Pacific launch at Little Bay on Wednesday, Suaalii sought out Indigenous leader Uncle Leslie McLeod to learn more about the smoking ceremony that morning.
During the off-season, he eschewed the common holiday destination — a Seminyak beach club — to travel to Costa Rica, Ecuador, and the Galapagos Islands.
AOC position vacant
Applications closed this week for the AOC chief executive position Matt Carroll will vacate later this year. All sorts of names have been linked to the job, including Cricket Australia boss Nick Hockley (who finishes up in coming months) and Commonwealth Games Australia president Ben Houston.
An appointment is likely to be made in March with Carroll expected to step away after the annual general meeting in May.
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