Ginninderra Post: you can stick your luck table up your...
Ryan CRAIG
SSL2001 Premiership
Dublin Sheisskickers 1 – 1 Ginninderra Wildcats
Trout 68’ | Aydelotte 81’ | Man of the Match: A. Lagos (Dublin)
The Wall Amphitheatre, 52,580,
There is, apparently, a table somewhere—maintained by people who describe themselves as “stats guys” without irony—that insists Ginninderra are riding their luck this season. High on the “luck index”, overperforming, due a correction. That sort of thing.
You watch this, and you wonder if they’ve confused us with someone else.
Ginninderra finished with four shots on target from seven attempts. That’s a better on-target percentage than most teams in the division, and one of the worst conversion rates to go with it. Again. Which is to say: when we shoot, we tend to hit the goal. We just don’t tend to score. It’s not luck. It’s something else, and it’s starting to feel structural.
The game itself never quite settled into anything clean. Dublin had more of the ball (56%) and more of the attempts, but a lot of it felt like rehearsal—Eakin busy, Lyons drifting, Batts linking things together without ever quite finishing the thought.
Martin, meanwhile, was doing that thing again where he makes saves that look routine until you realise they’re the reason you’re still in the game. Early spill aside, he kept Dublin at arm’s length for most of the first hour. One fingertip push in particular, low and awkward, drew a kind of polite murmur rather than applause, which felt slightly unfair.
Ginninderra’s moments were… there. Pellegrino trying his luck from distance, Beltran getting half a sight of goal late in the half, a deflection that nearly looped in but didn’t quite have the conviction. It was all slightly incomplete, like a sentence that keeps stopping just before the verb.
0–0 at the break felt about right, though not necessarily reassuring.
Dublin eventually broke through in the way goals tend to arrive in these games—slightly scrappy, slightly delayed, and with just enough technology to make it official. Trout’s effort hit the bar, then the line, then crossed it in a way that removed any lingering argument. 1–0, and it felt like the correction the numbers people had been waiting for.
Craig reacted in the way he tends to—visibly, and with a certain amount of theatrical distress. Shape changed, energy pushed forward, Durbin and Kazaku introduced. There was a brief spell where Ginninderra looked like a side that had remembered what urgency was supposed to feel like.
The equaliser, when it came, was one of those moments that doesn’t quite match the preceding pattern. Aydelotte, not obviously the most likely source, lifted one over the keeper after a flick-on and a slight defensive hesitation. It hit the bar, then went in, which seems to be a theme this week. 1–1, suddenly, and the game tilted just enough to make you wonder.
And then, for about six minutes, Ginninderra remembered how to create chances properly.
Beltran’s bicycle effort nearly found the corner. Durbin forced a double save that probably deserved more than it got. Maracle, late on, produced the cleanest moment of the night—through, balanced, the kind of chip that looks right from the second it leaves the foot—and it hit the post, bounced on the line, and stayed out. Not even given, this time.
That’s the bit the “luck table” doesn’t capture very well.
Because if this is luck, it’s oddly consistent. High on-target rate, low conversion, repeated near-misses that are just structured enough to be concerning. It’s not variance if it keeps happening in the same way. It might be shot selection—too many central efforts, too readable. It might be composure, the extra half-second that turns a goal into a save. It might just be that the forwards, as currently configured, are very good at finding the goal and not quite as good at beating the goalkeeper.
Or it might be something simpler: a team that gets into the right areas without quite committing to the final action. Half a decision short, over and over.
Full time, 1–1. Dublin probably feel they should have won it. Ginninderra probably feel they might have. The numbers will say something in between.
The “luck table” will say whatever it was already going to say.