Is it normal for individual rocker arms to have little play between the sticker bolts

So, Danny I am replacing the block and cylinder head, I have no information about the condition of the engine while in the car. It is on my engine stand and need to know if I need to clean or replace the lifters or rocker arms before the head gasket is installed. When I held the rocker arms and pushed downward, only the intake number 4 cylinder's rocker arm had a little play. All others just did not budge (solid rock- fixed.) This was the question: should they have play. I mean I felt I had to grab a hammer to get them to push downward?). As far as side to side play, they all moved a little except the 2nd cylinder's intake rocker arm and the 3rd cylinder's exhaust rocker arm were solid. Video clip attached.

I am not rebuilding per se. But yes, I am replacing the entire engine (block and cylinder head). I have planned to only clean the parts and mating surfaces, and I have stripped the old coating and re primed, painted and high temperature sealed and cured the whole thing. I am now replacing the seals on all components, mating surfaces, pumps, cam and crank shafts oil seals (using an engine rebuild kit) but wasn't planning to disassemble the cam and crankshafts themselves. Little more info for you: The old engine was brought to me over heated and in a very bad shape. So Roy (yes at CarPros) suggested replacement. I found a Ford aspire at a yard that was in good shape, and I took it out to re use it and here we are. Surprisingly, I just read this in the Ford service manual: " if a rocker arm moves down when pushed, the HLA must be replaced. The HLA is designed to maintain 0 inch clearance between the rocker arm and the valve stem." However, I still have a question about the rocker arms "side way" or horizontal movement. As you can hear in the video clip, the play is very slight but exists horizontally other than the one (on cylinder number 4 on the intake side) that moves down when pushed. Think it over, and suggest a best and most efficient course of action here. This engine, by the way, appears to have been kept lubricated and cooled well. It is quite clean, and now I am a bit uneased about this finding which could turn out to be simple-let's hope.

Ken, I came to the conclusion that the horizontal play is normal and the one that has slight downward movement is also normal due to where the engine stopped before taking it out. If the 4th intake lifter proved to have lost pressure, I could've replaced it, but as it didn't, and I've had a couple of engine workers look at the head cylinder. They said the same thing: normal. As far as the video, all I had to do is reduce the zoom on my browser and I could watch the whole thing clearly. By the way, tell Roy, James said thank you about the attempt to take out the rack and pinion without removing the column and the steering wheel. I had to cut out a "door" in the boot and reseal it (which is now as good as new) and it worked out perfect (I think the Ford Service Manual just didn't want to present the option of slitting the boot because one cannot see the pinch bolt without removing the boot and the boot cannot be removed from outside- but it just wasn't worth all the trouble of removing the wheel and column just to slide the rubber boot out!). (The second video clip below shows what I had to do to bypass the wheel and column removal)

Danny, you're right on. But the lifter is okay for right now.