We've all done it at least once.
Every single soul who has ever kicked anything around, from the very best to the very worst (trust me, I know), has missed the quintessential open goal, either so far wide of the upright that it hit the corner flag, so high over the crossbar that your teammates thought you were playing rugby instead of football, or missing the whole blimmin' ball altogether with such a violent kick that it left enough water in your knee to fill the cooler on the touchline to overflowing.
Everyone has one or two examples that really stick out. I can still see Steve David rounding the Barbadian goalkeeper and failing to find the back of the net from inside the six-yard box in a 1978 World Cup qualifier at the Queen's Park Oval, and Philbert Jones almost ten years later at the same venue blazing over against the United States and leaving former national striker Everald "Gally" Cummings in disbelief on the sideline in his first game as head coach of the senior national squad.
Before the super-sensitive types believe that this is about humiliating people, let me just point out that David scored 16 goals in two World Cup qualifying campaigns (1974 and 1978) ahead of a successful stint in the North American Soccer League, while Jones was a key forward in the era of the "Strike Squad" that came within a point of getting to Italy in 1990.
He could also hit a cricket ball very, very hard, once depositing one of my jokey offerings at the base of the silk cotton tree that once stood over the road at the north-eastern corner of the Queen's Park Savannah during a match between the Parkites and Petrotrin.
However, the real reason for focusing on those notable misses by Trinis is to raise the issue in the context of what seems to be a long-established tradition of failing to finish, often at the most critical time. Look, as well as they played and as deserving as they are of a place in the Under-20 World Cup finals later this year in Egypt, to see chance after chance being wasted in the five games played by Trinidad and Tobago in the CONCACAF qualifying tournament was like history repeating itself over and over again.
For the older fans at the Marvin Lee Stadium on any of those nights last week, it would surely have been reminiscent of earlier occasions when national teams ran rings around the opposition with pace and skill for so, only to finish up on the losing end because the other side, as Paul Caligiuri did on November 19, 1989, managed to do what really matters at the end of the day-score.
Is it something about the national psyche that finds it extremely difficult to marry style and substance, flair with pragmatism, and not just on the football pitch? I mean, when you see the national men's hockey team going down to the USA despite leading 3-1 with a few minutes to go in a preliminary group game, and then rebounding to overturn a 0-3 halftime deficit and claim fifth spot at the Pan American tournament in Chile by a 5-3 scoreline over Mexico, you really have to wonder what goes on in the heads of our sportsmen and women in pressure situations.
Maybe it has something to do with our small-goal upbringing, where it has always been a case of skills and gallerying as much as rolling the ball between the two old shoes or the two rocks or whatever suffices for goalposts in the schoolyard or the street.
In keeping with our Carnival mentality, it can be argued that we like a grand spectacle, to put on a show for its own sake.
That's fine, except that in the sphere of sport, as in so many other aspects of everyday life, it's the results that ultimately matter. How many brilliant students do you know of who just can't cope with the regimented nature of exams, or bright, bright IT specialists who never get to work on time and eventually lose out to less gifted but more disciplined contemporaries?
As much as it was cause for nationwide celebration to see the national team at the 2006 World Cup finals in Germany, many fans maintain that Leo Beenhakker's tactics, especially ignoring Russell Latapy until the final 20 minutes of the last group game against Paraguay, left them with a bittersweet feeling: joy that we had reached the Big Yard but disappointment that the enduring images were of a Trinidad and Tobago team playing not to lose instead of playing to win.
There's no easy resolution to this because the valid argument can be put forward that our game is still so naive, as I recall Italian football writer Giancarlo Galavotti saying after the November 19 let-down, that any attempt to play "our" game as it now exists at the higher level will result in a succession of humiliating scorelines. And then everyone will forget about style and cuss the coach for not trying to frustrate the big boys.
Still, there's one reality we can't get away from however you look at it--you don't score, you don't win.