But is by no means a suitable medium for sports stars themselves.

Sports films can provide a great amount of comedy, drama and inspirational moments of triumph over adversity. The genre has produced some incredibly captivating movies; The Jamaican bobsleigh team’s plight in Cool Runnings, Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull with one of Robert De Niro’s best performances and Jerry Maguire, for which the enigmatic Cuba Gooding Junior won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.

These films all have one thing in common; they feature no sports stars acting in any of the main roles. The reason for this being, that, as a rule, sportsmen and sportswomen cannot act. They may be at the peak of their physical fitness and possess immense talent in their given fields, but they are not made for the big screen.

For instance; he may well be the greatest ever basketball player, but Michael Jordan’s acting is appalling. Even as a six-year-old watching Space Jam, a small part of my soul was crushed watching Jordan, NBA hall of famer, sharing tactical advice with Daffy Duck. Jordan’s co-starring with the Looney tunes aside, he is not the only successful sports star to turn their hand to cinema. Dan Marino, NFL hall of famer and Serena Williams, who at the time of writing is ranked as the number one Women’s tennis player, have both had film cameos that have thankfully not led to bigger billings.

Dwayne Johnson, otherwise known as ‘The Rock,’ has gone down in history as receiving the highest salary for an actor’s first starring role: $5.5 million for playing Mathayus in The Scorpion King. Whilst his sporting achievements in the world of wrestling may have prepared him more for acting than Michael Jordan, the film is still mediocre at best and it is hard to see how that salary is justified.

Perhaps the exception to the bad acting rule is Vinnie Jones. His roles may not be that diverse; Jones is continually cast as a ‘hard man’, but he has given several convincing performances in films including Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, X Men 2 and Mean Machine. As a footballer, he was renowned for his no-holds-barred style of play, a style which earned him 12 red cards over the course of his career and this has translated well onto the big screen. After all, how big a step up can it be from grabbing Paul Gascoigne by his testicles to slamming a car door on someone’s head?

Documentaries can prove to be a better alternative. Once constrained to end of season reviews, bad presenting and titles like Vinnie Jones’ own Great Balls of Fire which featured the tagline: ‘If you thought I was a bit of a hard nut when I was doing my stuff as a footballer, take a look at what some of these geezers get up to and you'll realise I was just an old pussycat! ,’ they have recently become a more respectable vehicle by which to view sports.

Instead of putting talented players in contrived situations which demonstrate their (lack of) acting ability, documentaries can showcase their sporting skills in their far more natural surroundings.

Productions such as Zidane: a 21st century portrait and Tyson allow a much greater insight into their subjects than if they were to try their hand at acting. The former tracks the movements of one footballer, Zinedine Zidane, during a match between Real Madrid and Villarreal. The cameras are trained solely on Zidane as he runs tirelessly for 90 minutes and the viewer is given an insight into what makes him such a brilliant player. Disregarding the fact that Zidane was sent off in the final minutes of the game for a brawl, of course.

Spike Lee was so inspired by the concept, that he made his own version based on the L.A Lakers superstar Kobe Bryant and has been commissioned to make a second featuring archive footage of Michael Jordan. Let’s just hope it’s better than Space Jam.