Mrs Brown's Boys instead of football is a disaster! | Blaise Tapp

For the past 35 years, my weekends have revolved around sport; either playing it – in the days when I didn’t get out of breath walking to the fridge – or watching it.

While I attend football matches less frequently these days, my Saturdays and Sundays are largely dictated by the fixture list.

If family life permits, I take 90 minutes out of my Saturday to listen to commentary on my team’s exploits via my mobile. The result has a huge bearing on the rest of the weekend: win and there is a spring in my step and a willingness to do pretty much as I am told, while defeat can be pretty debilitating.

As we know, last weekend was different, following the historic decision by many sporting bodies to suspend the fixture programmes following fears around the spread of coronavirus.

Not having professional football in March is not something any fan can comprehend but only the completely unreasonable among us will argue that it was the wrong decision.

The trouble is none of us know when normal service will resume, although it might prompt us to discuss something else while making a brew at work.

We might even get used to not having Match of Day, as long as the BBC doesn’t replace it with Mrs Brown’s Boys again.

None of us have any idea how long we will be stuck in this surreal state of semi-limbo.

But it would be a lot more bearable for footy obsessives like me if we could lose ourselves in the agony of yet another dramatic season, rather than worrying about whether three jars of pesto is enough to see us through a crisis.

Sure, there are far more important things to worry about right now.

Anybody with young children will tell you that going to the toilet for a couple of minutes without interruption is impossible so how on earth will we manage a week?

We are currently enduring the strangest of times, which are only made stranger without footy-filled weekends.