When Saturdays come again we’ll have cardboard cutouts in the stands | Matt Mohan-Hickson

It was during Juniniho’s first stint at Middlesbrough so sometime in the mid-1990s.

I remember the huge crowd, the hustle and bustle, the happy voices. That and my dad saying my hair was strawberry blond not ginger.

Probably because of that when I think of sport, I think of the crowds and the emotion that comes from being part of that community.

But like pretty much everything in 2020, that will be a thing of the past, for the foreseeable future at least.

We have been without football for what feels like decades, but is only about two months. Yet, if and when sport does return it won’t be like we remember, initially anyway.

For a glimpse into the near future of sport here, we only have to look at South Korea. The country was hit badly in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic but was able to get on top of the outbreak and contain it.

Live sport has now returned to South Korea with the Korean Baseball Organization (KBO) getting its season under way last week.

If the opening games of the KBO season are anything to go by, it gives us a hint of what sport will look like in the coming months.

The stands are empty, devoid of supporters, with only players, playing staff and other essential personnel in the stadium. Ball boys practise social distancing when a fly ball is sent spinning wayward towards the stands.

Other changes include zoom calls featuring fans projected on to the big screens in stadiums and cardboard cutouts in the stands.

There is a concept called the uncanny valley which is used to describe the feeling you get when a robot or computer animation looks like our reality but not quite enough and leaves you feeling uneasy.

It's safe to say that for 2020 sport will have to pass into the uncanny valley if it is to return at all.

As a Boro fan I’ve discovered one benefit of coronavirus…

So, I’ve outed myself as a Middlesbrough fan. Insert cliches about parmo, Steve Gibson and Johnny Woodgate’s red army.

But I genuinely haven’t missed football these past few weeks. Sure, I want to see it return, but with my team having a diabolical season it has been a nice break.

Saturdays pass without having to check my phone for the inevitable disappointing result. No mental arithmetic trying to work out how many games we need to win to avoid relegation.

If we’d been challenging for promotion I’d call for the season to resume as soon as possible.

But for now I’m happy not to have to worry about Boro ruining my Saturday afternoons.

Don’t blame ordinary people for their government’s actions

The pandemic has brought a wave of fear. And when people are scared they can behave in unusual ways.

For example, blaming Chinese people living in the UK for the coronavirus. According to reports, Chinese citizens living here are too scared to go out alone. Yes, the Chinese Communist Party has questions to answer about its role in the pandemic. If it had been open from the start would we have contained it better? We’ll never know.

But ordinary people are not to blame for the actions of a government. The British people were not responsible for the invasion of Iraq. It was the government. So we shouldn’t blame Chinese citizens for this disaster.