The government’s coronavirus Plan B was secretly introduced last night, without a note of fanfare or even a crafty briefing to a helpful newspaper.

The basic rules: don’t leave the house, and if you do, stay apart.  

Okay, not really. But if the day comes, the Papa John’s Trophy will be the ideal testing ground for these measures. Has been all along. Who knew?

This old thing has been stubbornly refusing to go viral since 2016. Last night we had the latest version: a largely dead rubber between Morecambe and Carlisle United in front of a three-figure crowd, even though the Blues came out of the modest occasion in a much more positive frame of mind than they have for a while.

Keith Millen will certainly have taken constructive things from United’s victory, namely the goals from Jordan Gibson and Kelvin Mellor, an eyecatching midfield combo of Danny Devine and Corey Whelan, an increasingly effective and indeed refreshing team performance and another ten grand into the kitty. United went through to the knockout stages, which was already the case, while their hosts bowed out, an outcome also guaranteed.

In Carlisle's recent predicament, all those good things feel better than they normally would.

Nobody, though, can pretend this competition itself matters all that much – not in the grand scheme, not the way it used to and still should.

This is the point. Sorry if you feel this record has been jammed for a long time now. But if an unpopular, boycotted format keeps repeating on us, well, then the objections must also remain.

It can be said that United and Hartlepool, who go through from northern group A into the knockout stages, have done their bit by ejecting the Premier League Under-21 side from their midst (Everton, on this occasion, with all the other northern academy sides also knocked out already).

Not the point, though, is it? Not when the top-flight shouldn’t be there in the first place. 

Trophy football now comes with an asterisk, plain and simple. This is not the fault of players like Carlisle’s, hopeful new managers like Millen or anyone else associated with the daily business of trying to win whichever game is next on the agenda.  

It is very much, though, the fault of those who sniffed the air, took the money and…well, that’s where the thinking ended.

The tarnishing of lower-league football is deceptively great. The ‘rejuvenated’ Trophy continues to deter many of the people it is supposed to attract (you know, fans) and is now staged for the benefit of those in the game who already have more than enough. What could be more harmful? 

There were 945 souls at Morecambe's Mazuma Stadium, but if the Papa John’s took place entirely behind closed doors, there are those in certain positions who, you imagine, wouldn’t have the slightest problem with that, as long as hoarded big-club players were getting ‘men’s football’ and we could all slap our backs about helping the future England team.

Well, maybe they should stop the pretence and do just that. At least we wouldn’t have to stomach the faux-sincerity of #EveryGameMatters and other tags the Trophy has promoted. 

That, then, remains the climate. As for this game, it was what this competition should look like without the invasion of the elite: League One v League Two, and certainly a good night for Millen and the different ideas he introduced. To start with, Taylor Charters at left-back looked an experiment the young Cumbrian would struggle to come through, but he duly did - while, in the middle, Devine and Whelan excelled.

Instinctively it feels like Devine is suited to the kind of football Millen seems eager to play: one where the accent is on composure in possession, rather than the blunter edges of Beech Ball.

United's road back to positive times is going to be long and trying, but this was an encouraging night's football, once they had established control after a slightly flaky opening spell when Morecambe came at their raw left side.

The hosts’ best efforts, though, seldom examined Mark Howard, and from the half-hour onwards, Carlisle's poise grew in line with their ability to win and then control and use the ball with some thought, rather than the haste of recent months.

A decisive chance eluded them before half-time, but Gibson, a replacement for Clough, showed instant impact, winning a free-kick four minutes after arriving, and then striking it beyond keeper Andre Da Silva Mendes and into the top corner. 

Six minutes later, after Tristan Abrahams and Brad Young had come close, they doubled their lead, Mellor peeling into space to the left of goal to turn Morgan Feeney’s header home against his former club after a Gibson corner.

Carlisle deadly from set-pieces? It’s been a while since we could say that. The magic of the Trophy, eh. In the remainder, Cole Stockton had a goal disallowed and Anthony O’Connor wasted a free header for Morecambe, while United looked as capable and even assured as they have for some time, even in the defensive closing stages.

The Blues, then, moved with uncommon brightness into the last 32. Which shouldn’t be confused with a Trophy attendance figure. Yet.