RASHFORD BOSSED THE FIRST HALF

NO that wasn’t the final whistle. But let’s hope it’s half-time.

Some people do think it’s over. Some sports are back on the road. Some faith groups too. The sunworshippers are queueing again on the ancient ley lines down to Nappysack Bay and the sea.

Crowding onto the sacred shingle to share billions of vapour droplets, eat a Babybel and do a poo behind the car.

Health secretary Matt Hancock strikes me as a man who would love to come across a professional footballer curling one into a carrier bag – and the sooner the better.

Anything to distract attention from the three-month long skid mark he’s left behind himself.

You’ll remember Hancock had the job early-doors of pointing the finger at footballers for ‘letting their country down’.

That didn’t age well, did it?

This is our last Home Team, and the good news that football is returning adds to the good news that football’s community spirit never went away, it blossomed. Something in these team games.

In a huge, strong field, Marcus Rashford (left) wins the lockdown Ballon d’Or for helping raise nearly £20million for FareShare, a charity fighting UK food poverty. Rashford, 22, said: “From being young I knew that if I ever got in a position that I could help, I would.”

Players who share that sense of duty and ‘take a knee’ in the coming weeks against racists and the police killing of George Floyd, know haters and finger-pointers will be sent in again to attack them.

When our young men like Marcus aren’t safe if they meet the wrong policeman? Let them come.