‘The only girl’: Kerr opens up on junior football ‘secret’ — and ugly moment she was forced to quit

Sam Kerr is known the world over as one of the greatest strikers the game has ever seen, and this World Cup has shown the embrace of a nation that truly cares about the Matildas.

It comes after a generation of fighting from pioneers of women’s football for things like equal pay and conditions – fundamentally, the right to be seen equally.

When Kerr was growing up in East Fremantle, south of Perth, however, this wasn’t the case.

Growing up playing junior Australian rules football for South Fremantle, Kerr said she kept her gender a secret as a “five or six” year old after being allowed to play in one of the boys’ teams.

“I knew I’d be the only girl on the team but that didn’t worry me at all,” Kerr wrote in her new book My Journey to the World Cup.

Kerr said her teammates assumed she was male because of her “short hair and blonde tips”, but was comfortable with it, and decided to “keep (her) gender a secret because I didn’t want them to treat me any differently just because I was a girl.

“I remember one of the boys crying when he found out.

“But as good as I was out on the field, and as much as I loved playing the game, the physical differences between the guys and me eventually became too pronounced and the play was too rough.

“One day, I came home from a game with yet another black eye and bloody lip, and that’s when my dad and brother both said, ‘Nup, this isn’t happening anymore’.

“I was getting battered around so much out on the field that it was getting to be a big problem. Dad and my coach both sat me down then and said it was getting far too dangerous for me to continue to play.

“They said they were sorry, but that I wasn’t allowed to play football any more. I understood the reasons why, but I was