Interim Matildas coach Tom Sermanni says he expects star striker Sam Kerr to be back playing soccer again next month as the captain fights to clear her name.

The 31-year-old forward is in court in the UK this week, facing a charge of racially aggravated abuse of a police officer following a night out in London in 2023.

Footage played in court in England on Tuesday (AEDT) showed the Matildas star labelling a police officer “stupid and white”.

The half-hour video came from body-worn camera recordings on one of PC Lovell’s colleagues.

Kerr denies the charge.

The incident, which happened early on January 30, 2023, came after Kerr had been out with partner Kristie Mewis celebrating a hat-trick scored by Kerr in a Chelsea victory.

Both were described by police witnesses as “inebriated, emotional” and in a “distressed state”.

Jurors watched footage of Kerr telling officers she Mewis feared they were being kidnapped after the taxi driver refused to let them out of his cab following a row over compensation for vomit in the back of his vehicle.

Kerr and Mewis are seen arguing with Lovell and his colleagues.

They were sometimes abusive and teary as they explained they thought the driver was kidnapping them and feared they would be raped, which is why they were trying to break the window to escape.

“I hate to break it to you, but when a male is driving a f—ing car, for us, for two women, it’s f—ed, it’s f—ing scary,” Kerr says.

The women make several references to the 2021 rape and murder of Sarah Everard, 33, who was abducted in London by then-serving police officer Wayne Couzens.

“This taxi driver held me and her hostage for about 15 minutes,” says Kerr, now 31.

“I was like, ‘Please, let us out and I will pay whatever you want’.

“We were begging to get out of there. We were trying to escape – we were trapped.

“You have to understand the emergency that both of us felt. What do you expect us to do, as women in that situation?”

In the video Lovell says that while he understands their fears, they were hypothetical and “did not happen” while the damage to the taxi “did happen”.

He offers them two options: Pay the fare, the cleaning fee and for the window damage, which totalled just under $A2000; or be arrested, charged with criminal damage, and state their case in court.

“I’ll take option two,” says Kerr, who a few moments earlier had said: “I’m not paying some dodgy c—‘s window. I will sit here until four in the morning and get the Chelsea lawyers on this. I am not backing down.”

She then calls Lovell “f—ing stupid and white”.

Kerr was then arrested on charges of criminal damage and racially aggravated public order.

Kerr and Mewis subsequently paid for the damage and that element was dropped.

Kerr’s lawyer Grace Forbes told Kingston Crown Court on Monday (local time) there was no intention to “cause harassment, alarm or distress to PC Lovell”, and even if that charge was made, it was not racially aggravated.

“Samantha Kerr did not feel hostile to this officer because he is white. The words, however poorly expressed, were a comment on positions of power, privilege, and how things might colour perception,” she said.

Kerr faces a maximum penalty of 26 weeks in jail.

Kerr, who has pleaded not guilty, sat in the dock wearing all black as KC Bill Emlyn Hughes laid out the prosecution case.

Kerr’s future

On Tuesday (AEDT), interim Australia coach Tom Sermanni said he was confident Kerr would be physically ready to return to the field as soon as March.

Kerr is still recovering from an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury and wasn’t included in a Matildas squad named by Sermanni for SheBelieves Cup fixtures in the USA later this month.

“She’s in the process of coming back, but I would still suggest, from an injury perspective, it will probably be sometime in March before she’s back on the field,” he said.

Kerr’s return to full fitness with Chelsea, who lead the Women’s Super League, and the impending conclusion of her court case will lead to questions as to how Football Australia (FA) handle her comeback to the national team set-up.

The Matildas are expected to play friendlies at home in the first week of April when, going off Sermanni’s timeline, Kerr could come into consideration for her first call-up since she was hit with her police charge.

FA has held off conducting any investigation into Kerr’s alleged behaviour until a verdict is reached in her court case.

The striker is the incumbent Matildas skipper and has a significant influence on the team both on and off the pitch.

Sermanni, who remains unclear how much longer he will have to fill in as interim coach, refused to speculate as to whether Kerr would remain the team’s captain.

“It’s difficult for me to answer that, to be perfectly honest,” Sermanni said.

“The court case that’s going on at the moment, it would be to comment on that.

“I think it’s a case of waiting to see what happens and move on from there.”

In her absence, Sermanni says he will be looking to Mary Fowler to carry her club form back into the national team environment.

-with AAP