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The Templepatrick Primary School pupil’s mum Ceara Hogan made him an Asda van out of a cardboard box and borrowed a spare t-shirt and gilet from her friend Denise Lennon, who works in the Asda Ballyclare store and also provided Rory with his own name badge.

Ceara said: “During the first lockdown we never went out for four months. My youngest son Cain, who’s three, has Down syndrome and I was petrified that he would catch it, so the furthest we went was the back garden. We relied on the Asda home shopping drivers. Without them I don’t know what we would have done.

“Rory came home from his school, Templepatrick Primary, to say they were having to dress up as a real-life Covid superhero. He said his friends were going as doctors and nurses and he asked what he could go as. I said to him ‘who really helped us during then lockdown?’ and he came straight back with ‘the Asda delivery drivers!”

Rory wanted to thank the Asda staff who supported his family during the pandemic.

Ceara, who shops at Asda Ballyclare at least once a week, added: “I asked Denise if I could borrow one of her tops and I then helped Rory make an Asda van out of cardboard. He really looked the part and I’m just so super-proud of him.”

Denise said she was only too happy to have helped Rory.

She said: “It was his own idea to dress as an Asda colleague and he was proud as punch when he walked into school that morning.”

Emma Cross, the store’s community champion, said the whole store loved seeing the photos of Rory in his uniform

Rory's mum helped him make a delivery van out of cardboard.

She explained: “Rory recognised that to work in retail over the past 12 months and more had been challenging and he wanted to say thank you in his own way. What better than to dress up as a real-life hero. Well done and thank you Rory. We salute you.”

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Co Antrim boy pays tribute to Asda Ballyclare’s Covid ‘superheroes’