What is all this fuss about penalty shootouts? Put the ball on the spot, take five paces and smack it as hard as you can. Simple.
No one needs a sports scientist to tell him that.
Now, I'll be the first to admit that I'm more accustomed to giving penalties away. When the coach or captain looks around our team to find out who's up to the mental task of a shootout, he'll find my eyes fixed firmly on the ground.
But then again, given my limited footballing ability, I wouldn't be picked even if I was leaping around on the spot waving my arms in the air yelling: 'Me, me, me.'
Having scored just two penalties in competitive action (I suppose the three I scored against my eight-year-old nephew last week don't count) it would take an emergency of extraordinary proportions to push me up the order.
So despite my firm belief in hit and hope, I figured anything which might improve my technique was worth a try. What I didn't realise was that I would have to dress up like Lawnmower Man to do so.
More than 20 luminous spheres, roughly the size of a squash ball, were taped to different parts of my body. As if that wasn't embarrassing enough, I was then handed a sweatband with four more on, to wear on my head. By this point I realised I had no dignity left to lose and got down to the business in hand.
The setting for the experiment was a converted high-voltage laboratory, previously used by Swansea University's physics department.
The generator had been removed and the space left set up to allow sports science students to examine the motion of the human body in a variety of different sporting circumstances.
Golf, gymnastics, weightlifting, karate, as well as football, have all been analysed by undergraduates since it was opened in February.
At one end of the building, a full-size goal is marked on the wall, similar to those in a school playground. Hanging a few feet in front is a massive net, placed there to stop the ball ricocheting and hitting one of the 12 high-speed digital cameras set up to capture my every movement.
After a quick warm-up I was told to put three penalties in the bottom right-hand corner before slotting another three in the opposite side.
No problem, especially with no goalkeeper to beat. And it wasn't as if I could fail to hit the back of the net. But we've all seen what pressure can do to the country's best players. Chris Waddle, Stuart Pearce, Gareth Southgate, David Batty - all big stars who have wilted under the intensity of a spotkick.
Much to my relief my six shots comfortably hit their target.
But what if a keeper had been standing between the posts? Would my body language give the game away? Would my run-up tell him where I was planning to send the ball?
After a couple of minutes, student Martyn Williams, whose final year project on penalty taking has attracted so much media attention that he has been given extra time to finish it, had a computer-generated image of yours truly on a 3-D grid.
Playing back my approach to the ball it was perfectly obvious what I was trying to do. With the three shots to the right I ran at the ball from a wider angle and opened my hips a long time before taking my shot.
Never mind the keeper, fans sitting in Wembley's Olympic Gallery would know exactly where the ball was heading.
With my shots to the bottom left, my run-up was far narrower and at the point of contact my hips were straight, facing the goal. This might all sound like the sort of basic common sense any coach with a Camcorder could pick up.
But the accuracy with which the programme plots your movements in relation to the time a goalkeeper has to make a decision is what makes this experiment so effective.
Suddenly the perfect penalty became blindingly obvious. Use the same approach each time and leave it until the last possible moment to declare your intentions.
By that time the keeper will have had to make a choice and you should have the simple job of either changing your mind or going through with your original shot. Armed with this new-found knowledge I had another go.
Running up from a wider angle I left it as late as possible before swivelling my hips and changing direction. In my mind I could sense the crowd holding its breath as the keeper jumped to the right. The goal was at my mercy, behind me the German players knew the game was up.
All looked on as I scuffed the ball and sent it wide of the left-hand upright.
I knew I should have thumped it.
How the boffins are so spot on
The penalty-taking technology at Swansea University is the same as the equipment used to produce blockbuster films like Star Wars and Titanic.
The university's Sports Science department laboratory analyses the motion of the human body. Luminous balls are fitted to the athlete and then 12 digital cameras take 120 shots per second.
From this data a three-dimensional map of the body can be produced on a computer screen and used by athletes, scientists and coaches to analyse technique.
The same high-tech equipment was used to produce the realistic movements of animated characters like Jar Jar Binks in the Phantom Menace. Science undergraduate Martyn Williams has used it to analyse how footballers run up and kick a penalty. He proved that players repeatedly used the same method and, without realising it, would give hints to any goalkeeper trying to save the shot.
The technology has also been used to analyse golfers, gymnasts, weight lifters and rugby players. Any professional team wishing to use the laboratory and the equipment, the first of its kind anywhere in the world, will have to pay £1,000 a day.
Given England's record, the FA will be wise to put the money aside before the 2002 World Cup.
A history of horrors
No team, let alone England, can seriously contemplate going to Euro 2000 without practising penalties.
The shootout is now such a common and critical part of international football that any side with aspirations to win a major tournament must devote hours to perfecting the art of the spot-kick.
That's why the comments of former England coach Glenn Hoddle during the World Cup in France in 1998 caused such controversy.
He said: 'It's a mental thing. It's the pressure you're under and how you feel at the moment. There's a world of difference between whacking them into the net in training and that of a big match situation.
'Nothing can prepare you for that long walk from the centre circle to the penalty spot.'
True enough. The trouble was his remarks were made hours before David Batty had his penalty saved in the second round shootout with Argentina condemning England to more heartbreak.
Two years earlier Gareth Southgate was the fall guy against the Germans in the semi-final of Euro 96. And back in 1990 in the semi-final of the World Cup in Italy, it was Chris Waddle and Stuart Pearce who missed vital kicks, once again, against Germany.
Bobby Robson, coach at the time, said recently: 'When we lost again in 1998, I thought we are never going to win this way, we are cursed.'
But it's not just our national side who have encountered a spot of bother. Arsenal lost the UEFA Cup Final 4-1 on penalties against Galatasaray last month after Davor Suker and Patrick Vieira lost their nerve.
As heartbreaking as it must have been for Arsenal fans to endure, it was reassuring to see two of the world's finest players struggling with what we have come to assume is an English problem.
If Kevin Keegan intends to practice anything when he arrives at his training base in Spa, Belgium later this week, it will be how to beat a goalkeeper from 12 yards.
Although his captain Alan Shearer, one of the squad's most accomplished penalty takers, has said it is just as reliable to toss a coin, Keegan should heed the words of Berti Vogts, Germany's Euro 96 winning coach.
'It is all a matter of being thorough,' he said. 'If a player becomes used to a particular discipline, of course, it becomes easier.'
At least our Group A clash against them on 17 June should be settled without the need to put his theory to the test.
