In the fullness of time, it will be remembered as the day Wayne Rooney broke Bobby Charlton’s 49-goal England scoring record.

In the immediate aftermath, however, far more column-inches have been expended on the detailed and impassioned 1,700-word-plus statement of innocence released by marathon world record-holder Paula Radcliffe following a Parliamentary hearing on blood doping in athletics that she felt effectively implicated her.

“I categorically deny that I have resorted to cheating in any form whatsoever at any time in my career,” the statement began.

Until quite recently, if you had held a straw poll into who should one day inherit Sir Bobby’s mantle as English sport’s greatest living hero, Radcliffe would, I think, have been right up there. It is possible she would be still.

I am not so sure about Rooney. When I Googled “Rooney better than Charlton” in the wake of his momentous achievement in the European Championship qualifier against Switzerland, three of the first five headlines read: “Charlton superior to Rooney”; “Rooney does not match up to Charlton or Lineker”; and “Sir Bobby Charlton was Roger Federer to Wayne Rooney’s Stan Wawrinka”.

I think part of what this shows is that Sir Bobby is unlikely actually to have a successor; that we have slipped into an age when it is no longer really possible for an athlete, and conceivably for any human being, to acquire unimpeachable, life-long hero status.

I would put this transformation in society down to two chief factors.

Sports stars are human beings like everyone else, but unlike nearly everyone else they inhabit an environment in which little of what they do is guaranteed to remain truly private.

Indeed, in a world in which an ever higher proportion of people pack a camera/cottage publishing industry in their back pocket, almost nothing is.

At the same time, elite sport has become ever more specialised and professionalised.

Standards are so high now that almost no-one can get to the top without hour upon hour of training/practice – and without a ruthless, highly-developed winning mentality.

Winners tend to be driven, competitive, not unfailingly appealing individuals.

And when you have a media presence that is this intrusive and that has no off button, it doesn’t matter how much media training the objects of its scrutiny have been given, it is increasingly difficult for anyone to sustain a sanitised, 100 per cent positive image if it is even slightly at variance with the underlying character.

Have we already lurched to the point where we have become unjustifiably cynical, where a sanctimonious, smartphone-touting army, plugged permanently into social media, delights in broadcasting the perceived faults of anyone with a public profile, irrespective of whether the picture created has any basis in reality?

Perhaps, but in the specific case of doping, I would argue that we have been turned cynical over the years by the sheer volume of denials that have turned out subsequently to be worthless – which is not to suggest, of course, that Radcliffe’s will be.

I have to say too that, while I believe Radcliffe’s present ordeal is terribly unfair on her, I think the general process of debunking the myth of the unfailingly virtuous, perfect-in-every-way hero, sporting or otherwise, is on balance a positive one.

A society dependent on heroes, as opposed to role models, is essentially a childish thing.

And if the scrutiny brought to bear by modern life is now so intense that the marketing industry can no longer get away with creating overhyped supermen and women, well that to me is a sign we are growing up.

Of course, part of the fun of sport is being a fan: to want the team in the red shirts, or the athlete in your national vest, to win.

For the duration of the event, yes, they can do no wrong; we want them to perform heroic feats.

The trap from which social media and citizen-reporting, albeit with its very rough edges, may be helping to release us is the tendency to conclude that because these individuals are models of how to wield a foil or whip in a left-footed cross of devilish pace and accuracy, they should necessarily be models of anything else.

“No more heroes any more,” intoned Hugh Cornwell in 1977 in The Stranglers’ nihilistic anthem.

I wouldn’t go quite that far.

I think Bowie was closer to the mark in a song released, funnily enough, the same month, which became an integral part of London 212.

“We can be heroes - just for one day.”