The Coronavirus Diary of a Sports Journalist....

You're only off the blower to your club's Under 12 'B' team captain - the only person in the club yet to express his opinion - but he's not that worried, it's a couple of extra days off school after all and the manager wasn't playing him in the right position, so he could use the break.

But wait, an email. AN ACTUAL EMAIL...... maybe things have turned the cor.... No, wait, it's the 2457th company advice email of the week, this one advising how best to fit your new issue suit of medieval armour complete with mace for any co-worker who ventures too close to your personal space.

Back to the clock. 10.15am. Time to make contact with other sport journalists via video conference. You know the drill, barely recognisable colleagues on distant, grainy images shuffling about in jumps and starts depending on their wifi contract.

Long Hitchcock-esque pauses build the pressure while everyone waits to see whose turn it is to talk before each and every person on the call tries to make their point at precisely the same time. The chaos ensures another dramatic silence and the game begins again.

The tension is palpable this time. There can be no mistakes. Speak too soon and you could overstep your mark, cut your boss off and be banished to his or her's bad books for the foreseeable future. Don't speak quickly enough and your obvious disinterest at last month's figures is flagged high and handsome. You're hoping the bead of sweat making it's way down the side of your temple isn't visible on the Google hang-out but damn Virgin Media for their crystal clear picture. Where's your son with his wifi hogging FIFA 20 when you need him?

You take a shot, waxing lyrical about the merits of your 150th attempt at an original 'Top 10' or quiz feature. Everyone seems pleased. Could be polite disinterest but, no, your 'Top 10 Best Lined Pitches in Ireland' idea is a winner and has got you through into the relative safety of silence. The rest of the conference can be watched in muted smugness at others grappling for a meaningful contribution and every one of them cursing your ingenuity.

The working day has peaked but consummate professional that sport journalists are, they plough on.

At last an email from the GAA or FAI. It matters not that it is merely reiterating their stance of the past week and the only thing to have changed from yesterday's solitary email is the date. Surely you can make a lead out of it. In fact you've no choice, you have to, but a few well paced 'BREAKING' or 'The FACTS' screamers later and you have the situation well in hand.

Lunch time. Thank the lord.

Where once a simple sandwich would suffice, not this time. Not in times of quarantine. This is your chance to shine and show the outside world you can still make a contribution to society. Ingredients recovered from behind your cupboards of toilet roll and off you go. The end result is breathtaking but the joy all too brief as the culinary delight disappears after some well angled social media shots.

Now for the afternoon shift. Inexperienced sports journalists won't make it through. You know you will lose people, driven insane by the lack of a sporting fix. The umpteenth running of the '93 All Ireland Final or Jim McLaughlin's treble winning FAI Cup final has lost its potency for these poor individuals but this is no time to mourn.

You've seen foot and mouth, you know the drill and two hours later your in-depth, stats-laden analysis of online remote chess tournaments is complete and quite the read even if you do say so yourself.

A self congratulatory email to inform your colleagues that you're still in the game and then hit the publish and share button. Job done.

Who said sport journalists were one dimensional?