Sam Kerr highlighted the importance of visualising herself scoring in the biggest moments after two outstanding volleys helped Chelsea to secure the Women’s Super League title.
Kerr’s first, which levelled the score with Manchester United at 2-2 50 seconds after the break, was a left-footed volley lashed into the top corner. Her second was even more special, controlled with her chest before she turned and looped a volley over the United goalkeeper Mary Earps.
“The second one was world-class, it was outrageous, audacious,” the manager, Emma Hayes, said. “She’s the best for a reason and she stepped up once again for this football club. I said: ‘Come to Chelsea and you’ll win trophies,’ and I can sit here confidently and say we both made the right decision. I don’t know what words I could use to sum up this person next to me.”
“Harry!” interjected Kerr, who was sitting with Hayes’s young son on her lap. “Apart from being the best babysitter in the world,” said Hayes. “She knows she can cope with these situations and deliver when it really, really matters. And, most importantly, have joy in what she’s doing.”
Arsenal began the day one point behind the title holders and needed Chelsea to slip up in order to overtake them on the final day of the season. But despite a 2-0 win at West Ham for Jonas Eidevall’s side, Kerr’s heroics were enough to seal a third successive title for their rivals.
The Australian forward said she knew the goal was coming: “Everyone thinks I was surprised at scoring that goal but I told Erin Cuthbert: ‘I’m going to score an unbelievable goal tomorrow, I’m going to chest it down and volley the ball.’ I said that yesterday to Erin. I visualise, but I actually think today it both worked in my favour and not in my favour because I visualised too much in the first half and it wasn’t going my way and I felt tired, I felt nervous, and in the second half we just cleaned it straight.”
With United twice taking the lead through goals from Martha Thomas and Ella Toone, Hayes was so unhappy with the way the first half was going that she thought about making changes early. “I really nearly did make subs [on] 30 minutes,” she said.
Instead, she waited and made two changes at half-time. “I wanted to give the team the opportunity to try and see if we could dig something out. I don’t panic. It’s not in my nature.”
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On came Ji So-yun and Beth England to link things together better, but it was the confidence which courses through the team that was the game changer.
“I’ve never, ever in my career been in a position where things are tight at 2-2 and a player [Kerr] has run over and said: ‘Today it’s our destiny, it was always our destiny today,’” Hayes said. “I said: ‘We’re not winning yet, it’s 2-2 not 3-2.’ But that’s confidence then, and I think once that set in, these guys know better, it was a good response from the dressing room.”
Kerr said: “Once we started playing in that second half I just kind of knew that we were going to come back, there was no stopping us, because when we get going like that I don’t think many teams can go with us.”
