WHEN I referred to Bolton Wanderers goalscorer Gavin McCann as a hero in a headline in The Bolton News on Monday, I was leaving myself open to a phone call.
For years, a certain reader has made it her business to put the sports desk staff straight whenever we use that word on our pages.
To her, footballers cannot be heroes, no matter what they do on the football pitch.
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She says the word should be reserved for people who put their lives at risk for others.
Surgeons probably qualify through saving lives. But footballers? Not on your nelly, in her book.
She's wrong, as I have told her on a number of occasions, but I thought about her last week when Gary Megson spoke about the "heroic performance" of his striker Kevin Davies who played on manfully with a broken hand.
That one passed her by, probably because it was stuck away in the middle of a 600-word feature.
But I'm leaving myself wide open here.
The reason she is wrong is because millions of people, especially children, regard footballers as heroes.
They don't dream of being a surgeon, going to war, curing cancer, or rushing into a burning building to rescue a baby.
They dream of scoring the winning goal in the FA Cup Final.
Whether it's right or wrong is open to question. Personally, I don't think professional footballers are heroes. They are ordinary blokes with modest academic backgrounds who are good at kicking a ball.
But it's not up to me, or anybody else, to tell people who their heroes should be.
If they want to look up to overpaid sportsmen who have no respect for authority, it's neither my business, nor a surprise in today's society.
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