THERE are still three games to go of the season and it possible that we could get another penalty.

I would like to think if we did we would score because I have never suffered a season before of so many spot-kick misses.

There have been seasons when we have not had many but not one where we have missed everyone.

Tuesday night's miss by Michael Proctor against Carlisle was our fifth miss of the campaign.

It was his second miss of the seaon while skipper Chris Brass has also missed two and Graham Potter one.

Strangely, given that we have missed them all, four of the five misses were on target.

It poses the question about the techniques of taking penalties.

Is it wise to just blast the ball as hard as possible or should the player take the more cultured approach and go for accuracy?

I scored 20 penalties out of 21 while at Bradford City.

That total included 19 in succession and having missed my 20th I took the next one after that and scored.

I'd like to think I speak from experience and personally I always used to place them. I never blasted them.

Statistics may prove over recent years there are more and more penalties that are saved and missed.

Certainly, I think things have changed since my penalty taking days in that the goalkeeper is allowed to move now.

If a keeper does move earlier than normal then a good penalty taker should be able to keep his eye on the ball and spot the movement of the goalkeeper.

If he sees him going one way he should know to put it in the opposite corner.

It sounds simple enough of course, but there is still so much else to take into consideration.

For starters, the more power you put behind the ball the less accuracy there is going to be.

Goalkeepers reckon they can now tell where a player is going to place the ball by the position of his body as he comes up to strike it.

Because keepers tend to move first, there is another train of thought today that penalty takers should simply pass the ball down the middle of the goal.

You do tend to see that technique used quite often these days.

But in my opinion it is just as much a risk shooting down the middle as putting the ball in either corner.

There is also the timing of the penalty in a game to take into account. If a penalty is awarded in the last-minute and the score is locked 0-0 then obviously there is more pressure.

People are asking if we practice penalties and I can assure you we do.

Players are always practising penalties in training but it is relaxed and there is nobody else there.

It is a different matter when there is a crowd and points are at stake.

Quite a few players won't even contemplate taking a penalty in a match situation.

If that is the case, you are not going to force anyone to take a penalty.

We also do our homework on the opposition, including the penalties that have been taken by opposition players.

Obviously, if we see there is a regular penalty taker in the line-up and he has hit every spot-kick in the same position there is a good chance Alan Fettis will go to that side if they get a penalty.

However, you cannot legislate for the fact the penalty taker changing his mind or being clever enough to watching the movement of the goalkeeper and shooting in the opposite corner.

Ultimately, it is a game of cat and mouse between the penalty taker and the goalkeeper

And while there is so much to talk about on the issue of penalties, luck is still, in my opinion, perhaps the biggest factor.

We scored five on the bounce against Crewe in the Worthington Cup, we scored about ten on the bounce at Whitby in pre-season and won our penalty shoot-out against Colchester in the FA Cup.

That alone should emphasise how it is really just a case of hit and miss.

The fact that I scored 19 in succession wasn't because every penalty was brilliantly struck, it was because a lot of the time I was lucky in that the keeper guessed the wrong way.

Updated: 10:36 Thursday, April 11, 2002