The problem on this one is that the humble Hopoate seems like such a nice young man, I can't really go the full unpleasant sneer. But let's go slowly out into the minefield anyway, and first throw out flat armoured shields, and if they don't blow up, we can use them as stepping stones to get to the other side. Sound like a plan?

Sneering unpleasantly at religion is only truly fun when people are pompously citing their own belief in a Magic Sky Daddy as a reason all society should or shouldn't do something, like citing The Bible when it comes to gay marriage and abortion rights, or just being insufferably pompous in general.

It is every one's right to believe in whatever religion they damn well please, and no one can question Hopoate's perfect right to pursue his faith. So far, so good? (Mind you, together with freedom of religion, I maintain there is a freedom to blow loud raspberries when religion says atheists like me will burn in hell for all eternity, but let's leave that for the moment. The point is you can all jump with me to this shield.)

The fact that Hopoate does seem like such a fine young man – as good as you'd find in six days march in any direction – is likely a credit to his mother, but, yes, also his religious values have probably had something to do with it. (We're still alive. No one can disagree so far! Keep going!)

How refreshing, to have a league player make headlines on something sort of nice for a change, not a Saturday night atrocity! (Hop, skip, and JUMP, here we all are in the middle of the minefield! Nice work.)

So . . . what is the next step? That, precisely is what I was wondering. Personally, I'm feeling a tad stranded. We could gently point out that it is a bit odd for Hopoate to make such a decision based on a belief in Mormonism which maintains – and I am not making this up – that after Jesus was crucified, and before he rose again, he turned up in Jackson County, Missouri, the site of the Garden Eden, by the way, where he buried some golden plates, that were found by a fellow called Joseph Smith in the 1820s which were PROOF that Mormonism was the one true religion ... even if Smith is the only one who ever saw them. But on the other hand, this belief in Mormonism is no more odd than the classic Christian belief "that a cosmic Jewish zombie who is his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and drink his blood, while telepathically telling him that you can accept him as your master, so that he can remove an evil force from your soul which is present in all humanity because a woman made out of one rib bone and a mound of dirt was tricked into eating fruit from a magical tree by a talking snake". And both, in turn, are as likely as there being a Supreme Being called Allah who actually wants his followers to blow up and maim those who are not his followers.

So, mocking Hopoate for the Mormon belief alone doesn't get us there, even though it is indeed ludicrous – or did I mention that – just no more ludicrous than the others.

From here, I would like to shout that this is outrageous on at least a contractual basis, because Hopoate didn't make these beliefs clear to the Bulldogs before signing! But, apparently he did and they signed him anyway – which means we haven't got a leg to stand on there. More fool Canterbury.

So all I have is a question, Will, which I can't resist asking while I have your attention. I note that you and many footballing believers of various stripes point to the skies, thanking your God when you score, the general idea being that He is the one who has made you great enough to score, just as He created everything else that is wonderful! My question was first posed by the great naturalist David Attenborough. Paraphrased and applied to this situation, it is this: if your God created all those extraordinary things, including, I guess footballers who can score tries, why did he also create the parasitic worm that bores through the eyes of children in West Africa, rendering them blind?