Warner slams Socceroo Slater over 'incredibly sexist' story on Sam Kerr

Candice Warner and Robbie Slater are colleagues - but it didn't stop the former Ironwoman hammering the Socceroos legend on live television on Tuesday night.

In tense scenes on The Back Page, Warner, a mother of three daughters, called out Slater for his now infamous News Corp column in January last year where he said the feats of Matildas superstar Sam Kerr don't compare to those of Socceroos icon Tim Cahill.

Slater, 58, wrote an opinion piece stating that Cahill's goal-scoring record for Australia is superior to Kerr's stunning international success as a striker.

It came after the Chelsea forward surpassed Cahill's record of 50 goals for his country.

Kerr was furious, and in the Disney + documentary Matildas: The World at Our Feet, she labelled Slater's comment 'literally the most sexist thing you could say — not equal'.

'Imagine little girls reading that,' Kerr fumed.

'I cannot believe, in this day and age, that someone could write this, and have young girls read it, and that they [News Corp] would actually publish such a sexist comment on the front page.'

Warner didn't mince her words on the show either, declaring Slater was 'out of line' and 'incredibly sexist'.

'Robbie, I don't really agree with you,' she said.

'I thought it was out of line. You've got two young daughters. I thought it was incredibly sexist.

'What are you saying to young girls who might be aspiring [to be professional footballers]?'

Warner then asked Slater if he regretted his opinion piece - which he didn't, even if it got him offside with his own daughter Indigo.

After the story was published last year, the youngster told her famous father Kerr was 'so much better' than him as a footballer - despite her old man winning a Premier League title with Blackburn Rovers in 1995 and representing the Socceroos on 44 occasions.

'I don't regret the column because I stand by that I separated Tim Cahill from Sam Kerr and said Tim's our greatest ever Socceroo goalscorer and Sam is our greatest ever women's goalscorer,' Slater said.

'I don't think that was out of line.

'But if I listened to my nine-year-old daughter, maybe I did do wrong. She [Indigo] came up to me and said, 'Dad, what have you done to Sam Kerr, she's so much better than you?'

'She's got a poster of Sam Kerr on the wall.

'I've had to answer some questions. But I think the column was balanced.'

Slater went onto state his belief that Kerr is the best female player in the world and the Women's World Cup in July and August - to be co-hosted by Australia and New Zealand - will be the biggest sporting event on local shores since the 2000 Olympics in Sydney.