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It may be the most obvious statement made about an A-League club all week, but the Central Coast Mariners have a problem with penalties.
It was hard not to sympathise when midfielder Michael McGlinchey stepped up to the penalty spot looking like a jumble of nerves at Hitachi Stadium on Wednesday night.
Knowing that his team had missed four important penalties in a row, McGlinchey drilled his effort straight down the middle and watched in horror as Kashiwa Reysol goalkeeper Takanori Sugeno blocked the spot-kick with his legs.
Sugeno is one of the better goalkeepers in Japan but the fact is McGlinchey fluffed his lines and the Mariners find themselves in desperate need of a reliable penalty taker with the A-League finals just around the corner.
It may not have been in a high-stakes clash like an AFC Champions League encounter, but I have some idea of how McGlinchey feels.
Like millions of Australians, I played club soccer as a kid and though there were better players in the side than me, I was captain of my team for several years.
I was particularly close to one of my coaches – an expat Geordie who emphasised passing football and whose son was a skillful winger in our side.
Annoyed at the lack of opportunities for his son at the biggest club in the district, he invited five of us to join six other newcomers at one of the smallest clubs in our division in an attempt to form a championship-winning team.
We won it at the first attempt as 13-year-olds and the following season we did the double, coming back from 3-1 down at half-time to win the grand-final 4-3 in extra-time before winning the Thistle Cup the next day.
Lifting the trophy to celebrate our Thistle Cup victory at Granville’s historic Garside Park is one of my most cherished childhood memories.
But equally, the memory of a missed penalty is one that plagued me for many years and gave me a sense of what it’s like to walk in McGlinchey’s well-worn football boots.
It was in a semi-final against our arch-rivals and if my memory serves me correctly, we were leading 1-0 at the time.
It had been raining in the build-up to the match and the heavens started to spit once again by the time we were awarded a contentious spot-kick.
I had already converted a penalty against the same goalkeeper earlier in the season, and I remember being vaguely troubled as I placed the ball by the notion that he might recall my simple side-footed style and make an easy save.
What I should have been paying more attention to was the fact that the penalty spot was muddy and as I came in to strike the ball, my foot slid just enough from underneath me to ensure I only connected with my heel.
I still remember the sickening feeling as I watched the ball trickle dismally into his astonished arms.
To make matters worse, we went on to lose the game.
We lost the sudden-death preliminary final a week later too and though I wasn’t entirely responsible, I felt for years like I’d let my team-mates down.
It wasn’t until many years later that I had the chance to exorcise my demons from 11 metres playing as a ring-in for a Japanese school teachers’ team down at the famous Shimizu Commercial High School.
I smashed home an unstoppable spot-kick as my humble team of P.E. Teachers, school administrators and the resident gaijin spouse of the Assistant Language Teacher triumphed in a tense season-opening penalty shoot-out.
Much as I was satisfied to help my team to victory, I’m not sure that it made up for my costly miss so many years before.
It’s just something I’ll have to live with – as will McGlinchey – but we all know it could be worse.
We could be Roberto Baggio.