Sam Kerr could head to USA to play with Kristie Mewis after not guilty verdict

Sam Kerr has made her career, reputation and fortune through her sharp-shooting in the penalty box; she may have saved them with her straight-talking in the witness box.

She did not leap from the dock with a trademark backflip celebration upon her acquittal by a British jury on charges of racially aggravated harassment but make no mistake, this was her biggest victory.

The feted captain of Australia women’s soccer team has taken a big hit to her reputation - even the judge said, “her own behaviour contributed significantly to the bringing of this allegation,” but it could have been so much worse for the West Australian.

With the words “not guilty” the jury probably ensured she retains the Matildas leadership, and most of her sponsors, besides her liberty.

Few emerged well from this trial and the Sam Kerr caught on police body-cam - and those in court saw far more than the small snippet released to the wider public - was deeply unedifying. Her expletive-ridden tirade against a London police officer will never be erased, from memories or the internet.

But if she appeared drunk, truculent and obscene the evidence also showed she was scared, protective of her partner, American international Kristie Mewis, and feeling she was, once more, being treated differently because of her colour.

Kerr spent more than a day in the witness box at Kingston Crown Court and stood up well to a fierce cross-examination, showing composure, contrition, vulnerability and a hint of her spikiness.

Her testimony offered a window into a world that may seem gilded on the outside but, as with any young woman overseas in a big city, carried insecurities.

In her case this was compounded by the spectre of the Claremont Killer that haunted her youth in Perth, and the murder by a serving London policeman, 18 months before the taxi ride, of Sarah Everard, a young women only a few years older than Kerr and Mewis.

The pair were convincing when they spoke of being so terrified in the taxi they felt they needed to break a window to escape. To the outsider it could seem, in their inebriation, they misunderstood the situation and overreacted, but their fear was real, and so was their anger and anxiety when police did not understand it.

The prosecution had to clear three hurdles and we will never know why the jury acquitted. Did they believe Kerr was referring to the concept of white privilege when she referenced PC Lovell’s colour, whether she did not intend to hurt him, or whether he did not suffer the distress he claimed? It could be all three.

It does not matter. What matters is they acquitted.

But while she can now focus on the latter stages of her recovery from the knee injury that has kept her off the field for more than a year the case has tarnished Kerr’s experience of London, where she had previously come to wider attention carrying the Australian flag at the coronation of King Charles III.

How long she remains in England is debatable. Chelsea will welcome her back, as early as next month, but they have not missed her - this season without her they have played 23 games and won 22.

Kerr is the finest goalscorer of her generation but ACL injuries are not easy to come back from, not at the age of 31.

She has another year on her contract but has never played under current coach Sonia Bompastor and Chelsea have other options. It may suit all parties if she moves on at the end of this season.

The US is the most likely option, not least as Mewis is due to give birth in May. Kerr was top scorer in the American league for five seasons before joining Chelsea and should have no shortage of suitors.

Eventually she will return to Perth, and her family. For parents Roger and Roxanne, who had already spent too many days in Australian courts watching their son Daniel, a former West Coast Eagles AFL player, in the dock, this trial will have been an ordeal.

It is over, she was acquitted, but as Kerr’s lawyer Grace Forbes said, it will “leave a lifelong mark”.