10/4/2023 0 Comments Magic tiles 3 icon![]() There is a photograph in the State Library of Western Australia of a horse, Barney, guiding a rickety cart with “Bakers” painted on one side in white. “They used to deliver the bread by horse and cart,” says Roxanne. It is a museum now thanks to restoration by the local council circa 1988, and you wonder how many of those who walk between the shelves lined with pewter kettles and ersatz bread know it was run by Kerr’s great grandparents in its heyday. On Baal Street, Palmyra, tucked behind spindle-fingered trees, stands the russet silhouette of the Sunlight Bakery. “Fremantle is where the heart of football is,” Roxanne adds. After the First World War, Australia sought to expand its population in the event of further conflict and its government offered assisted passage, jobs and land grants to potential arrivals. Many who made the journey to Australia in the early 20th century were British migrants seeking a more prosperous life in another part of the Empire. Kerr’s grandmother on her maternal side was the only child of six to be born in Australia as both families emigrated by ship - “It took forever and I suppose half of them were convicts,” says Roxanne - landing in Fremantle, near Perth, with a £10 stipend. Roxanne’s father hails from Cork, Ireland - born in 1931, the oldest of 101 (yes, 101) grandchildren - and her mother’s side are from England. She always says, ‘I don’t realise how much I love football until something like this happens’.” Kerr made it to the Olympics, though, later saying: “I had many conversations crying on the phone to Mum, telling her I didn’t want to do it any more.”Īnd there is the fact that Sam might not have ended up in Australia at all had her ancestors not upped sticks decades before she was born. Roxanne drove her to the local park and would “video her running so they can see how she was and I could just tell that there was no way she was going to get there. She had a plate fitted in her foot and the Australian Olympic Committee wanted her back for their Olympic qualifiers in Japan. It nearly was for Kerr, whose Olympics dream in 2016 was left hanging by a thread. Or, in Roxanne’s words, the bones “spread like there’s no support. Then there was the injury in 2015: a Lisfranc fracture, where the metatarsal bones are dislodged and the foot, to put it simply, falls apart. over the summer and then, come October, return home to Australia to compete in the W-League.Ī young Kerr on the programme for the 2006 Qantas National Youth Championships for Girls Her itinerant career comprises a shower of titles from three continents, her spell at Chelsea providing more than half the silverware. You wonder if Kerr Junior would describe a home World Cup in similar terms. Roxanne called Sam, who said, simply: “It’s nice, isn’t it, Mum?” She must have seen the Opera House on Facebook.” I have a friend who cuts out every single newspaper article. “She never tells me anything because she’s too embarrassed, too shy. “She loves us to travel and watch her games, but she doesn’t like a lot of fuss,” says Roxanne. Normal, too, are the texts from family and friends captioned: “Look who I’ve bumped into.” But the small matter of her springing from the side of the continent’s most iconic building slipped Sam’s mind, as did her international debut in Canberra in 2009. Roxanne is used to seeing Sam stare back from banners in Australian shopping centres. Yet her daughter is just like every other, in that she often neglects to keep her parents in the loop. The first time she did it for the Matildas, she didn’t land properly, but now that’s all people want to see.” “It amazes me that she can still do it at her age. “And she just taught herself,” says Roxanne. The family treasure it all the more because through it, they glimpse Sam as she was when, aged eight, she walked through some hills and decided that if the other kids were rolling down, the least she could manage was a backward tuck. “Your daughter’s on the Opera House - how is that?” says Roxanne, dreamily.
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