BURNLEY, England — Jack Cork wears his status lightly. The Burnley midfielder has been aware of it since his brother pointed it out a few weeks ago, and he is proud of it, too. He is much too bashful to draw attention to it, though, and much too circumspect to read too much into it.

Burnley has played 30 games in the Premier League this season: 2,700 minutes (plus injury time) of soccer in what is marketed as the most intense league in the world. And Cork has been there for every second of it.

This status does not make Cork unique. There are 11 other players who have yet to miss a minute of the current Premier League season. The majority — as should be expected — are goalkeepers, the one position where conventional wisdom still decrees that permanence is paramount. The other four are central defenders.

But since early March, Cork has been the only midfielder in the group. Dale Stephens, of Brighton, had been keeping pace with him, but then he picked up a minor training injury that ruled him out of a game at Everton. That left Cork standing alone.