PROFESSIONAL footballer Jack Robinson is no stranger to huge historical moments.

The Warrington-born defender fitted right in then when he made his first start for Sheffield United against Aston Villa on Wednesday night in the match that signalled the resumption of the Premier League following a 100-day absence due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Robinson could have been excused for feeling like a football-hungry teenager again, though it might have felt a little surreal playing behind closed doors at Villa Park in Birmingham.

For this was only the former Fife Rangers junior's second ever Premier League start, his first coming 3,343 days earlier when he received a surprise call-up for Liverpool, where he had progressed through the academy from under 10s, in their 5-0 defeat of Birmingham City on April 23, 2011.

That long wait between the first two Premier League starts is a historical moment in itself, the longest ever for an outfield player.

His Liverpool debut, off the bench, had record keepers scrambling too as the under 18s player at the time had only even trained with the first team a couple of times before the then assistant manager Sammy Lee told him the news of his call-up.

Robinson's 88th minute replacement of Ryan Babel in the Reds' final Premier League game of the 2009-10 season at Hull City broke the club’s youngest player record by 244 days.

The former pupil of Bruche Primary and Woolston High schools was aged 16 years and 250 days when ‘his dream came true’ in the 0-0 draw.

Liverpool’s previous youngest was Max Thompson, aged 17 years and 129 days, in 1974.

Although Jerome Sinclair (2012) has since taken the Reds' youngest player honour off Robinson with his appearance against West Bromwich Albion in the League Cup third-round tie of September 26, 2012, Robinson still holds the Liverpool age record for a Premier League game.

He made three league appearances for Liverpool in total and had loan spells at Wolves and Blackpool before completing a permanent move to QPR in 2014.

Robinson switched to Forest in the summer of 2018 and made a total of 59 appearances for them in all competitions.

That brings us back to the current chapter of Robinson's career with the Blades, whom he joined on a two-and-a-half year contract from Championship side Forrest in January for an undisclosed fee understood to be in the region of £1m.

All eyes were on the 0-0 clash with Villa, broadcast live by Sky Sports, as the Premier League finally got going again.

Ironically, Robinson was featuring in the first English top-flight game played in June since Sheffield United defeated Stoke City 2-1 in 1947.

His team's hard-earned point keeps them in the hunt with the likes of Wolverhampton Wanderers, Tottenham Hotspur and Arsenal for the fifth-place finish that could be enough for a Champions League spot next season, pending Manchester City's appeal of their two-year ban.

Blades have a firm argument that it should have been three points though.

The talking point of the game came shortly before half-time when Villa keeper Orjan Nyland appeared, backed up by photographic evidence, to carry Oliver Norwood's free-kick over the line but the goal-line technology did not intervene.