The most famous plea on behalf of the goodness of sport supposedly was uttered just more than a century ago on the steps of a Chicago courthouse as one of the principals of baseball’s Black Sox match-fixing scandal, “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, emerged and a little boy grabbed his coat sleeve and said: “It ain’t true, is it, Joe?”

That’s pretty much all of Australia today, staring dully at the headlines about the Matildas superstar and taliswoman Sam Kerr and feeling the ache in our heart and saying: “It ain’t true, is it, Sam?”

Sam Kerr in London two weeks ago.Credit: Getty Images

The first thing that needs to be said is that no one should trivialise the charges that have been laid against Kerr. “It’s a very serious allegation – it regards racism, and there’s no place for racism in our sport,” Football Australia CEO James Johnson said. He might have added that there is no place for racism anywhere, and soccer people know that better than most. Kerr has pleaded not guilty to the charge.

The next thing that needs to be said is that the details are sketchy and the timeline puzzling. The alleged offence took place in January 2023, but Kerr was not charged until January this year, and did not tell FA until this week (and just as confoundingly will not be tried until February next year).

That six-week lag between learning of the charges and informing FA probably constitutes a code-of-conduct violation in itself and may be grave enough to jeopardise Kerr’s captaincy of the Matildas regardless of the trial’s outcome. If it was Pat Cummins, say, you’d think he would be out of the job already.

This is the narrative as we know it, and at one level it’s all too sordidly familiar. But it’s the meta-narrative that is so transfixing.

Between the day of Kerr’s alleged criminal insult and now, the Matildas have grown into arguably Australia’s best-loved national team, filling stadiums wherever they go, inspiring women, converting men and re-defining our national vocation for sport, and Kerr – despite a wretched run with injury – has been the face and figurehead of a phenomenon.

Sam Kerr scores against England in the 2023 Women’s World Cup.Credit: Nine