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With A combined total of 35 years as professionals, you might expect Waitakere's Darren Bazeley and Neil Emblen to have won a few titles.
Emblen remembers winning the Beazer Homes league title with Kent side Sittingbourne as a 21-year-old in 1993, while Bazeley was part of the Watford side in the late 1990s which won back-to-back promotions that earned them a spot in the Premiership. In the second season, they won the Championship playoff final against Bolton in front of 80,000 fans at Wembley Stadium.
There might be 2000 at Trusts Stadium for this afternoon's NZFC grand final against Wellington, but it won't diminish the pair's desire to achieve a rare success.
"I want the medal," says Bazeley. "I want to look back and say I played NZFC that year and we won the league. That will go up there with a few other bits and bobs I have collected over the years. I will be really proud, especially coming off the back of two lean years when I've won a couple of wooden spoons."
The wooden spoons he's referring to were picked up with the ill-fated New Zealand Knights in the first two years of the A-League.
Bazeley still feels like using those wooden spoons to hit a few people, admitting to "anger and frustration" that the venture ultimately failed.
They became the whipping boys of the league on and off the pitch and Emblen and Bazeley were often singled out because they were 'old, English pros' in New Zealand, seemingly to finish their careers.
That criticism stung then and now but both have earned residency and don't plan on returning to the UK.
Football still dominates their lives, however. After missing out on contracts with the Wellington Phoenix, they played for Waitakere City in the Northern Premier League last year before being recruited by Waitakere United for this season's NZFC.
It could well be Bazeley's last as a player. The 35-year-old, employed by United Soccer 1 as the Waitakere area coach, is likely to call it a day after the two-leg O-League final against Kossa FC of the Solomon Islands starting next weekend.
The body is not always doing what the mind tells it and the seven operations he endured as a player with Watford, Wolves and Walsall are starting to catch up with him.
Emblen, though, is not yet ready to join the retirement club, even though he's only two months short of his 37th birthday and last week signed with Waitakere for another year. He still fills in his immigration forms when travelling as sportsman/coach (he's assistant coach at Waitakere United, community coach in schools in the area and head of Waitakere youth development) and can't imagine not lacing up his boots for a game each weekend.
Part of it is about proving to locals that he is a good player - better than many give him credit for - and one who was good enough to play in the Premiership for Crystal Palace.
"I want to show players who have probably looked at us in a different light what we are actually like when they play against us," he says. "That keeps me going.
"If I get some NZFC player who wants to give Neil Emblen a really hard game, I'm going to show him what he has to do to do that. I want to give the opponent I play against the toughest game he's ever had."
Emblen is part of a three-man defence alongside former All Whites captain Danny Hay and Jonathan Perry that has not only been the stingiest in the history of the league but also one of the most robust.
They are favourites to beat Wellington today and, if they do, you can bet Emblen and Bazeley will be just as eager to get their hands on a winner's medal as their team-mates.
