Nikki Stanton raises her arm and pauses. The players of Perth Glory and Canberra United jostle around the top of the 18-yard box, their faces turned towards the shaded corner of Dorrien Gardens football complex in Perth.
Stanton sends the corner curling towards the throng of purple and green. Sam Kerr, Perth Glory’s captain, takes two steps into the box and leaps. She almost disappears in the low sun that slices across the field and flares in the lens of the single broadcast camera.
You would have expected Kerr to bury the header, as she has done dozens of times. But here, she’s nudged slightly off-balance by a defender she knows all too well. Ellie Carpenter, dressed in Canberra green, rises alongside her Matildas captain, contesting the ball in the air. Their two bodies collide and Kerr’s header loops harmlessly into the arms of the goalkeeper.
That game – in early January, 2019 – was the last time these two players faced each other in the W-League. A lot has happened to them since then: Kerr would sign with English heavyweights Chelsea FC less than a year later, while Carpenter stayed in Australia for another season, completing an undefeated double with Melbourne City before joining the biggest women’s football club on the planet, Olympique Lyonnais.
Their respective moves, which liberated the pair from the exhausting back-to-back W-League/NWSL cycle, were used as a kind of weather vane; a sign for the direction in which the women’s game was headed. Europe had finally realised the growth potential of women’s club football, and those that could afford to do so began to invest.
Chelsea and Lyon, though, were already there, having anticipated the wind change years ago. They had put long-term strategies in place to ensure that, when the breeze turned their way, they would stay at its foremost edge.
Some of the world’s best players – Wendie Renard, Fran Kirby, Ada Hegerberg, Ji So-Yun, Saki Kumagai, Maren Mjelde, Amandine Henry – had been there for some time. But as more money and more attention whirled their way, each club recognised the need to evolve. Their recruitment strategies over the past two years reflect their desire to avoid complacency, combing the globe for the players who will help create their next dynasties.
Kerr and Carpenter were two of the players flown across the sea to do just that. While they took some time to relax into their new surroundings, there was little doubt – particularly from those in Australia and the United States who had watched these two women’s talents balloon beyond what their leagues could contain – that they would rise to the challenge.
Both Kerr and Carpenter are now regular starters for Chelsea and Lyon, both in their domestic leagues as well as other competitions. Kerr is second on the FA Women’s Super League golden boot race with 12, just two behind all-time record holder, Vivianne Miedema, and is equal fourth for assists (5) alongside fellow Australian, Caitlin Foord.
Carpenter, meanwhile, has been earning regular praise in France, having started all of the past 13 games and scoring once. She was also named player of the match in Lyon’s first-leg victory over Brøndby in the round of 16 of the UEFA Women’s Champions League.
Indeed, it is in the UWCL final scheduled for 16 May where these two players plucked from half a world away could meet again. This week the competition’s quarter-final matches were decided, with both Chelsea and Lyon positioned on opposite sides of the draw.
The course each must take to get there, though, heaves with difficulty: Chelsea face last year’s finalists, Wolfsburg, while Lyon will likely play domestic rivals PSG, who handed the reigning UWCL Champions their first loss in almost four years last November.
Even if neither of these two players make it to the final, there can be little question that their moves abroad have been vindicated by the opportunity to do so. If they do, though, each will go down in history as the first two Australian women to face each other in a Champions League final.
While the location is yet to be decided, it will be a far cry from that blazing afternoon at Dorrien Gardens over two years ago. Perth, as it happened, came away 1-0 winners that day; Kerr was bundled over in the box and scored the resulting penalty in the 84th minute.
It’s easy to imagine that the two players who contested the header barely captured by the W-League broadcast camera will, in just a few months, play a role in arguably the biggest game in women’s club football. Only this time, thankfully, the entire world will be able to see it.
