Yes, they will pay less tax if they took a 30% pay cut, but it is no excuse for not making more effort in the present crisis.

For example, how many of players like Rooney and indeed officials of the Players Union like Gordon Taylor, have made a substantial donation to the NHS from their non taxable personal fortunes.

Today's overpaid prima donna's should consider themselves lucky that they were not living during the days of the maximum wage when even star players like Finney, Lofthouse, Matthews etc,etc had to have a job or small business to supplement their income and like Rugby League players lived in the same areas as the supporters and even travelled to a game on a bus with the supporters.

When Jimmy Hill and George Eastham of the Players Union got the maximum wage abolished, they later admitted that they had never even considered that it would lead to the vast salaries and lifestyles that players have today.

So you want them to take a pay cut which reduces the amount of money they pay towards vital services and then want them to give money to help towards vital services?

I have always thought it unreasonable, and frankly, lazy thinking, that it always seems to be footballers who get the stick for being overpaid, and this criticism often seems to come from media pundits who possess no great skills of their own. Wayne Rooney is (or was) paid what he is precisely because others couldn't do what he does. You or I could not replace Wayne Rooney, however much practice or training we had. And yet, I'm sure after a short training period, I daresay many of us could make a half-decent fist of doing the job that Ant and Dec, Schofield, Eamonn Holmes etc , do. The ability to read an autocue is not rocket science!

Meanwhile, in the US, individuals are profiteering from selling PPE masks on to States that desperately need it.

Let's not lose track of who are the bad guys here!

He kicks a ball about FFS, nothing more, nothing less. Don’t build him up as if he’s the second coming.

nothing more?...well it is

Apologies, yeah your right occasionally he may head it

As I always say to football fans who say rugby is just bulldog for fatties, I expect to see you at the next game I go to earning good money for it.

Just kicks a ball about? It might seem a charmed life but do you know how hard it is to become a top level footballer? It's probably the most competitive job in the world. No it isnt heroic etc but put it this way a normal person dropped into a Premier league game would look ridiculous, drop a normal person onto a film set and they could well do a decent job (many examples of untrained actors making a success in that nonsense industry). Top actors get paid more than top footballers, they never get the stick footballers get.

It's not even about being just a footballer. The way look at it is that at his peak Rooney was easily in the top 50 in the world at what he does. If I was in the top 50 in the world at my job then I'd be on a hell of a lot of money as well.

And if you were in the top 50 nurses you'd still earn a fraction of what Rooney does. The problem is that society places ridiculous values on some people's 'worth' while completely undervaluing people of true worth. That's why the various Kardashians are collectively worth billions for doing...well, you tell me!

Not Rooney's fault, or other footballers, actors, TV or social media stars for that matter, but a problem society as a whole should address. That doesn't mean that the aforementioned shouldn't, in the meantime, recognise what a privileged position they are in and act accordingly.