The problem with sport is that on-paper certainties are on-field opposites. Take the Roar Women v Sydney FC opening W-League match this weekend.
With both teams boasting the bulk of the Matildas and with all-round favourites Roar Women sure to be out to avenge their end-of-season-two stumble, the grand final rematch was being tipped as an evenly matched corker.
But having been put on the spot a few times over the previous days I eventually, reluctantly, and hesitantly leant towards tipping the Roar to get up. After all, they had the home ground advantage, were likely to be hungry after narrowly missing out on grand final glory, and Sydney were missing Sarah Walsh, their game-changing striker.
Of course, the moment you stop sitting on the fence, you're sure to end up with egg on your face. Which is precisely what happened to me.
Sydney proved that their runaway grand final success wasn't a one-off. They are structurally and technically solid across the park and captain Heather Garriock, who's not traditionally a striker, stepped up in Walsh's absence and struck in two of the team's four goals. That wouldn't be entirely surprising, except that in a kind of bad-games-happen-to-good-teams moment, the Roar failed to fire and match Sydney's pace and panache.
Which is why I don't dare try to predict winners.
In the Roar's defence, at least half of them have been overseas on the Matildas' Peace Queen Cup campaign and later friendly against world number two team Germany, so their pre-season preparation has been disrupted. The backline is green after the retirement of the incredibly experienced lynchpin Kate McShea, as is the frontline, with the towering Emily Gielnik, who we can assume coach Jeff Hopkins will be looking to to perform a sort of Kate Gill aerial striking role, yet to find her feet.
We can also attribute some of the normally outstanding Roar's lethargy to the heat. Queensland has been uncharacteristically rainy and cool in preceding weeks (I should know—I arrived back from 35 degrees in South America expecting similar temperatures here only to have to dig out my winter boots and jackets and just about find a boat to paddle my way through biblical-proportion rain and resulting lake-sized puddles) and the suddenly warm day was energy-sapping even for those of us in the shade. Couple that with the Matildas' recent long-haul travel and the fact that they'd just arrived from the even colder Germany, where they'd had to play in thermals, and it's unsurprising they struggled.
That's not to take anything away from Sydney. If anything, their excellent form is a reminder of the high W-League benchmark and that teams really need to hit the ground running in such a short, sharp season. They're looking seriously well prepped, well drilled, and cohesive, and I wouldn't be surprised to again see them in grand final contention. But that's as far as I'll go with my who'll-get-up W-League predictions. I'm absolutely determined to spend the remainder of the season solidly fencesitting.
