YOU DON’T KNOW JACK
The man was wearing a flat cap, as he raced from the stand and swung a punch into the back of Jack Grealish’s head.
The Second City Derby was just nine minutes old, and St Andrew’s was in chaos. As Aston Villa’s Tammy Abraham and a steward teamed up to wrestle the pitch invader to the ground, Grealish sat stunned on the turf, trying to process what had just happened.
He’d been facing the other way, with no reason to suspect any imminent danger, when the fan rushed out from Birmingham City’s Tilton Road end. The first thing Grealish knew about it was as the blow connected with his head. The pitch invader was messing with the wrong man, at exactly the wrong time. Grealish had endured two and a half years of misery by then, having been unable to help his boyhood club out of the Championship. Only a week earlier, though, with Villa 13th in the table in early March 2019, Grealish had returned from a three-month injury lay-off and been made captain for the first time.
In that comeback game, he’d scored the best goal of his career to put Villa 4-0 up at half-time against Frank Lampard’s Derby, meeting a corner with a thunderous volley from the edge of the box reminiscent of Paul Scholes at his very best.
So, at St Andrew’s, the new Villa skipper knew how to react to such an unprovoked attack. Not by leaping up and chasing the wannabe Peaky Blinder, but by calmly taking stock, then letting his feet do the talking. Midway through the second half, Grealish fashioned an opening inside the Birmingham penalty area and struck the winner.
“It’s the best day of my life,” he beamed afterwards. “I just tried to get on with my job. I think I did.”
Grealish’s first two games as captain would begin a club-record run of 10 consecutive wins, propelling Villa to the play-offs and promotion out of nowhere. It was the pivotal week of his career, a moment from which he’s never looked back.
Just two years later, he’s an Aston Villa great, an England hero – and now Britain’s first £100 million player. Pep Guardiola and Manchester City don’t spend that sort of cash without very good reason. It takes more than a pitch invader to stop Jack Grealish...
“IT WAS LIKE LOOKING AT MARADONA”
Across 213 Villa outings, Grealish delivered countless memorable moments. It was during one of the most memorable weekends of the club’s pre-Grealish era, though, that tragedy struck his family.
A lifelong Villa supporter himself, Grealish’s father Kevin had been in London ahead of the club’s FA Cup semi-final victory over Bolton in 2000, when he received a terrible phone call and immediately rushed back to the West Midlands.
Nine-month-old Keelan Grealish, four years Jack’s junior, had died in his cot.
“You never ever get over losing a child,” Kevin later said. “Jack was only a kid, but he still remembers Keelan. He thinks about him with everything he achieves.”
Grealish’s younger sister Holly has cerebral palsy, and the family have always been incredibly close-knit. Jack’s Irish heritage prompted him to take up Gaelic football as a youngster, even involving a trip to Dublin to play for Warwickshire during half-time of the 2009 All-Ireland quarter-final between Dublin and Kerry at the cavernous Croke Park.
Football was always going to win the duel for his affections, however. He’d joined Villa as a six-year-old, after being spotted by scout Jim Thomas during a game on a local playing field. “You couldn’t miss him,” said Thomas. “He was very small, but he dribbled right the way through the team. It was
