The look on Darcey Malone's face said it all.
As the referee's whistle rang out around Macedonia Park on Sunday afternoon, bringing 97 dramatic minutes of football to a close, the Melbourne City midfielder put her hands on her hips and stared, shell-shocked, into the middle distance.
All around her, the players of Perth Glory squealed and hugged in celebration. The home side had just secured their first victory over the A-League Women heavyweights in four years, having come from a goal down in the 70th minute to win 4-3.
Based on the pure numbers, this was not the way the game was supposed to end. The final score-line seemed like a typo: something copied and pasted from an entirely different game by accident.
Third-placed Melbourne City was, for the first hour, the vastly superior side. It totalled 32 shots to Perth's 7, including 11 on target to just four. It won 7 corners to two, completed 550 passes to Perth's 308, and racked up 64 per cent possession to 36, with a pass accuracy rate of 77.
In an era where data has revolutionised football, where methods of measurement like expected goals have become their own mini-industries, and where predictions and odds are spat out of sophisticated computer programs, these statistics pointed overwhelmingly in one direction.
But that is not where the game's final 20 minutes went.
Instead, ALW fans were treated to one of the most chaotic ends to a game in the competition's recent history, with six goals scored in the final quarter-hour, including two in less than two minutes.
It started with the unheralded Sadie Lawrence, the 29-year-old Perth midfielder who debuted for her hometown club all the way back in 2009. Coaching changes saw her fall off the ALW radar in 2011, but following impressive state-league performances, re-signed to the Glory in 2021 and scored her first-ever goal on Sunday as the clock ticked into the 70th minute.
That goal opened the cosmic floodgates. One minute later, a poor clearance from City goalkeeper Melissa Barbieri fell to New Zealand international Hannah Blake, who chipped the former Matildas captain from nearly halfway to take a 2-1 lead.
City struck back three minutes later through fellow Kiwi Hannah Wilkinson before Young Matildas midfielder Hana Lowry put Perth 3-2 ahead six minutes after that. Glory substitute Cyera Hintzen made it four for the home side, with City defender Julia Grosso clawing a goal back in stoppage time.
The result puts Perth within three points of fourth spot (with a game in hand, to boot), while City is clinging to third with just a one-point buffer between itself and Melbourne Victory below it.
But Sunday afternoon's chaos was not just localised to Perth's ladder-rumbling win over Melbourne City. The entire penultimate round of the ALW saw upsets everywhere.
The most significant was on Saturday afternoon as ladder-leader Western United was defeated 3-0 by an inspired Canberra United.
The drama on the pitch started with Canberra forward Vesna Milivojevic scoring in the 40th second after a poor clearance from goalkeeper Hillary Beall fell right into the Serbian international's path. The attacker doubled her tally just after the hour, while Chinese international Chengshu Wu made it three in the 74th minute.
This was an even more significant result, given the drama affecting both teams off the pitch.
Last week, Western benefited from a Football Australia decision to overturn a points deduction penalty on Canberra United, meaning second-placed Sydney FC fell even further behind in the race for the premiership.
But Canberra's win — coupled with Sydney's 3-0 defeat of Adelaide on the same day — means there are just two points between first and second, with the Sky Blues having an extra game to play mid-week against Perth.
The permutations of the top four were also rocked by 9th-placed Brisbane Roar drawing 1-1 with Melbourne Victory, who had been secure in fourth spot before the rest of the league erupted around it.
Heading into the season's final round next weekend then, just four points separate the teams from third to sixth, with at least one spot resting on the final game of the campaign between City and Canberra.
The race for the premiership will come down to the wire, too, as Sydney faces Perth before finishing its season against Newcastle — who won just its fourth game this past weekend against Wellington — while Western plays the Western Sydney Wanderers, who is one of the five teams to have defeated them all season.
And yet, who wins the premiership might not be decided by either of these teams at all. In yet another dramatic twist, and despite being out of finals contention itself, Brisbane Roar potentially holds the trophy's fate in its hands.
If the club successfully appeal a points deduction it copped for fielding an ineligible player in its 2-0 win over Western on March 11, its win would be restored, meaning Western would lose three points and thus drop down into second spot, one point behind Sydney FC heading into the final round.
It would be a fittingly dramatic end to a league that long-time fans watch with the almost guaranteed knowledge that a moment of chaos is just a game or two away.
The last two seasons have delivered these moments in spades, in part due to the lengthening of the season, giving more teams more time to speed up, slow down, and trip all over each other.
And that is the A-League Women's beauty — while global football has increasingly become a game of statistical outcomes and programmed predictabilities, there is something else that still burns alive within it that data points and best lines of code can never capture.
The league's penultimate round embodied this untouchable thing, reminding us that sometimes football is a game of pure chaotic chance; of a ball spinning one way and not another on the whisper of a breeze. And that, in the end, is why we cannot look away.
