Thornhill works as a roofer and, after suggesting fans should not hesitate to contact the club for his details if they need their roof doing, he talked about his life in lockdown: “I've been alright. I lost work or the first couple of weeks of isolation, but I spent time with my kids which was nice and now I’m straight back to working fulltime and almost in normality.”

Last season was set to be Basford United’s highest ever league placing with the current structuring of non-league, but Thornhill thinks there is still room for improvement: “I thought it was going really well. There was a point where we were very close on South Shields’ tail but then hit that bad patch towards the end of the season and they ended up running away.

“But I think with the team that we had we could beat any team in the league. It was an improvement on the season before though. I think we could’ve brought it back a bit though and gone on another run before the end of the season to secure the playoffs. It was a bit of a shame the way it ended but that’s life ‘eh?”

Thornhill made 35 appearances last season and suffered an injury early on in our penultimate game of the season against Buxton FC.

Now fully healed, he can’t wait to get going again after too much time away from the pitch: “I think towards the end of any season, you’re looking for a bit of a break but now we’ve had ten weeks and another four before we get back to training so yeah, I’m raring to go now. It’ll be nice to get back to it, get the banter flowing again, get to know the new boys and go again.