Colin Sheridan: Why I have finally forgiven Jack Grealish

In reality, we were lucky the courtship between us and Grealish lasted as long as it did

MAIN MAN: Jack Grealish has become the metronome by which Aston Villa tick. His goal saved them from relegation on the last day of last season. Now, led by him, they are serious challengers for a top four spot. Picture: Carl Recine/PA Wire

In Spike Lee’s underrated love letter to Coney Island and basketball, He Got Game, Ray Allen’s character, the high school prodigy Jesus Shuttlesworth, tells the world why he loves the game so much: “Basketball is like poetry in motion,” he says, ”cross the guy to the left, take him back to the right, he’s fallin’ back. Then you look at him and say, ‘What?’”.

Watching Jack Grealish play football these last four months, the sentiment endures. For all the lateral passing, the hoofing up the line, the tippy tappy, and the ‘how is he ref’, there are few kicking a ball in England who play with the poetry Grealish does. Oh, how we wished it were different. He broke up with us, after all. We can always say we knew him once.