As we limp, sprint, idle or crawl to the end of the football season, our opinions on players have hardened into stone-cold certainties. Some players we’ll judge to be excellent, others merely competent. Then there’ll be those – probably the majority – deemed to be just plain useless.

I can think of no other walk of life where you have to work so hard for so long to beat extraordinary odds, only to be judged with such merciless harshness when you get there. I know politicians, singers, actors and so on often get it in the neck, but I don’t think any of them have to show quite the resilience of a footballer trying to make it in the professional game.

Here’s how it was when I was a kid: if you were one of the dozen best players in your school, you’d get in your school team. I remember three of our school team got picked for the district side (I wasn’t one of them). Maybe two of that district side would get chosen to play for the county. Perhaps two of that county side might have got scouted and been offered a trial with a professional club. Of all the hundreds of kids I played football with and against in my teens I can only think of one who was called for a trial. He wasn’t called back.