The grubby, grungy horrible surroundings of The Penalty King firmly set this film in the realms of gritty drama. And if that wasn't enough the supporting characters are all fairly repulsive too. There's the irritating jobsworth boss (Clare Grogan) who turns into a promiscuous karaoke-singing tart when she's drunk, the brainless secretary (Tara Keatly) and the creepy old man (Frank Jarvis).

Early on in the film writer/director Chris Cook puts his characters through several unpleasant situations, scenes that contain excessive amounts of crude language and some that are frankly unwatchable - but this apparently is all semi-autobiographical events so perhaps we should have some sympathy for him.

Apparently he puts his characters through these situations so that come the denouement we might feel that they've triumphed over some great adversities, other than the guy playing football actually being blind. But the pay-off is so slow coming and so uninspired when it finally does arrive that basically you'll simply have lost interest.

The Penalty King will quickly be forgotten because the direction is languid and the film is unbearably uninteresting and slow.

They call football the beautiful game but I didn't enjoy watching this film. Give The Penalty King the red card and watch re-runs of your favourite games instead.