It always felt like Casey Dumont's luck was going to run out eventually.
The Melbourne Victory goalkeeper had been living a charmed, otherworldly life when it came to A-League Women finals games.
Having just scraped into fourth spot in the last round of the regular season, Dumont almost single-handedly carried her side through last weekend's dramatic elimination semifinal against Melbourne City, making a handful of crucial saves, including two in the white-knuckle penalty shootout to keep her team's fairytale finals run alive.
It was the same story last season, too. Despite finishing fourth, Victory wrestled past both Adelaide and City to qualify for the grand final, where Dumont's battle-hardened heroics secured Victory's second consecutive championship trophy against an otherwise-dominant Sydney FC.
Saturday afternoon's preliminary final, then, had an inescapable sense of deja vu to it. After the Sky Blues were stunned by Western United last weekend, they found themselves in yet another must-win match against a Victory team that had become an ever-heavier albatross around their necks, having lost to them in both of the past two grand finals.
Dumont has been a big reason for that. There has always been something different to the Victory keeper in these kinds of games; an enviable coolness, an unflappability, a casual shrugging off of the pressure that can sometimes flatten players in moments like this.
"Yeah, no worries, I'll do it," she'd reportedly said last week when asked to take Victory's first penalty in the deciding shootout, calmly rolling the ball past former Matildas goalkeeper Melissa Barbieri before immediately saving two more.
She must have thought, as she was catching easy long balls in the warm-up on Saturday, that this game would play out in much the same way. Like last week, Victory may not have the better players, the better record, or the better home support. They might not have the majority of the ball, the territory, or the chances. But they did have her.
And so it came to pass. For 88 minutes, at least.
Sydney controlled the game early, commanding possession, recycling the ball smoothly, carving clean shapes in the slick grass, dipping in and out of Victory's defensive third as they waited for the mistake that often decides games like this.
But Victory knew this was coming. Thin on personnel, they'd been set up to try to weather the storm. Winger Beattie Goad was reined into fullback to try to cancel out the deadly Cortnee Vine, while Natalie Tathem — who'd only ever played in the back four this season — plugged the defensive midfield hole left by the suspended Amy Jackson.
As the home side began to prod and probe, Victory's two defensive lines sat deeper and deeper. Anchored by centre backs Kayla Morrison and the stand-out Claudia Bunge, their only release valves were the scattergun breakaways of Catherine Zimmerman and Melina Ayres, whose darting runs were easily cleaned up by the impressive Sydney duo of Natalie Tobin and Charlotte McLean.
Sydney's opportunities increased in both regularity and conviction as the first half stretched on. Top scorer Madison Haley slipped through Rachel Lowe twice, Mackenzie Hawkesby and Sarah Hunter covered an entire postcode between both boxes, while Princess Ibini and Vine both muscled past their respective fullbacks to try to set up the final, decisive pass.
But there has always been something different about Casey Dumont in games like this. On Saturday, it was as though she had been magnetised. Despite the many angles and speeds at which Sydney sent the ball her way, it somehow always landed squarely in her arms.
And if it didn't — if she found herself flailing, caught somewhere she wasn't supposed to be, hesitating for a half-second — it was like there was an invisible hand somewhere above her, ready to flick or spin the ball beyond the posts or over the crossbar.
As the game ticked into its final 10 minutes, the Sky Blues had tallied over six times as many shots as Victory, with eight of them on target. As expected, they had more possession, more territory, more corners, more chances. And yet, no goals.
Panic began to set in. Sydney had been here before. They know what it feels like to do everything they can, to play as much of their game as possible, only for it all to crumble apart with a final, mysterious twist.
Again and again, Sydney threw themselves forward, battering down the door of destiny with waves of raw, ravenous attack. Centre backs charged upfield, fullbacks became forwards, midfielders dropped in to cover defenders.
And then, in the 88th minute, the ball fell to Sarah Hunter. The Young Matilda had been patient up until now. Each decision, each pass, each move had been calm, measured, wise. But with the seconds leaking away, knowing that luck was something earned as much as given, this time she simply put her laces through the rubber and hoped.
It's hard to know when Dumont saw the ball rocket out from the tangled forest of legs before it hit her squarely in the chest. Perhaps it was in that half breath that she lost it — both the ball and her luck. Because instead of staying there, as it had done all game and in so many games before this, it bounced off, spilling out of her arms and into the grass beyond.
Her eyes widened. The stadium gasped. Every player on the field froze — all except Haley, who stretched out a hopeful toe and poked the ball quietly, agonisingly, over the line.
"We try and win the game off our own backs and our own merit," Victory head coach Jeff Hopkins said afterwards.
"And if that isn't possible, we have the ability to dig deep into the depths of our resources, and we'll stand up and throw our bodies in there and do everything we possibly can to win.
"We do understand that there is an element of [luck] to that. With the results of the last two seasons in the grand finals, there's maybe a bit of baggage carried by some of the players, especially as the game goes on later and later.
"To lose the game to a goal like that — a real scrappy goal — was a bit disappointing, but that's the way it is.
"I'm proud of the effort of the players over the last few weeks because we've been running on empty. We've got players out there playing with injuries they shouldn't really be playing with, so it's down to their toughness and willingness not to let the team down that they're out there today.
"But I think we went to the well one too many times."
It always felt like Casey Dumont's luck was going to run out eventually. And now she is here, standing alone in the rain, staring out at the dead end of her season, feeling deeply and desperately human.
