I feel slightly like England’s national football team are on a never-ending carousel ride of bonkersness – a word I invented but one which I feel is fitting.

Having watched us limp through the World Cup and then shock everyone by making a half-decent start to the Euro 2016 qualifying campaign, it’s been far too many months since anyone did or said something nonsensical with regards to England’s future.

Thank goodness, then, for Sunday and John Terry’s annoyingly effective performance in Chelsea’s Capital One Cup final win against Tottenham.

A performance so convincing that it led to widespread calls for a recall to the international set-up, flames which were no doubt fanned as the watching Roy Hodgson extended a hand, literally, to congratulate the former skipper.

But really, when will people ever stop looking backwards?

Yes, he’s been good this season, he’s quietly gone about his business, marshalled a fine defence and will no doubt go on to lift the Premier League trophy again.

However, the fact remains that he’s a man who turns 35 before the end of this year, with – how do I put this – a fair amount of baggage. If John Terry is the answer for England, then I dread to think what the question is.

At some point, you have to just sit down and say no, no more looking back. The Gerrard, Lampard, Terry, Ferdinand, A Cole, J Cole era should have yielded a lot more than it did. But it didn’t. Stop trying.

Let’s build a team. A new era. One where the likes of John Stones and Erik Dier and Calum Chambers get a chance to play and learn on the job. Not where they see their development hampered by a guy who has had his chance, 78 of them in fact and for whatever reason, it’s not worked out.

It’s been a long seven years for Padraig Harrington, since winning his third Major title at the USPGA Championship.

Since that success at Oakland Hills, the 43-year-old has suffered a worrying downturn in form, has been besieged by the yips and found himself ranked a lowly 287th in the world ahead of his play-off victory in the Honda Classic on Monday.

Not only did the victory – in which he came from four shots down on the final day – catapult the Irishman up to 82nd in the world, it also earned him a spot in next month’s US Masters, having missed out last year.

So, why the sudden turnaround? The simple answer is that nothing is sudden in elite sport. Harrington’s return to the podium came on the back of a dizzying variety of attempts to get his game back on track and required the determination one might expect of a man who made public his battle with skin cancer last year in a bid to raise awareness of the symptoms.

From ‘walk-up’ driving in the style of Hollywood’s Happy Gilmore, to wearing elastic bands around his knees, playing with a dotted ball and having a fatter, lop-sided putter grip created to take into account his unusual left-under-right grip, Harrington has tried everything to get back to the top, to the point where he was curling putts into the hole on the practice green in the pitch black the night before the final round.

Let his dedication be a lesson to the David Bentleys of the world who walk away from their chosen field at the earliest sign of strife.