OK so I went to the Pinball wizard section of the ini did as instructed. Must work for any gamepad but mine no luck
turns out the solution was very simple in the [keyboard] section of the settings.ini i changed the default Left shift to the 'a' key and mapped my left flipper to 'a'
Thanks again Koadic for all your support, the great gamepad support in the upcoming VPinball and putting me onto the latest FPlaunch