It's only when something disappears that you realise quite how much you miss it, says BBC Sport's chief sports writer Tom Fordyce.
Elite football in Britain has been suspended until at least 3 April as a result of the spread of coronavirus
An escape, taking us away from the serious stuff. All the times a game or a race or a neat little self-contained drama makes us feel better, or makes us feel worse but in the process helps us forget about the escalating life-size dramas we feel powerless to control. None of which feels true in the path of a pandemic that has accelerated across old borders. And so sport becomes our prism for trying to understand what that is and what it means.For most people in Britain coronavirus currently feels a theoretical onslaught rather than a personal one. The detonation of those familiar routines and closing off of the escapes is the first time many of us have begun to understand what might really be going on.
When there is no football or rugby to go to you don't stop in the pub for those pre-match drinks and you don't buy a programme put together at a local printers. You don't catch the tram or the bus there and you don't stop for chips or a dirty burger on the way home.
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