“I wasn’t really into other sports growing up but I loved Gaelic.”
The latest comments from Jack Grealish may help sooth any animosity towards the Manchester City winger from Irish football fans.
After representing Ireland up until U21 level, the 29-year-old opted to play for England, with the decision fully justified after winning 39 caps so far.
However, Grealish grew up playing Gaelic football in the summer. The Birmingham boy played for Midlands side John Mitchels, and scored a point while playing with Warwickshire GAA at Croke Park during half-time of the All-Ireland SFC quarter-final between Dublin and Kerry.
Ireland and Man Uniteds footballer, Aoife Mannion, also lined out for Warwickshire that day, and posted a picture of the occasion to X.
In an interview from 2021, Grealish spoke of his love for the sport, and how he continued to play it despite being asked by Aston Villa to stop.
He said: “I wasn’t really into other sports growing up but I loved Gaelic.
“You can play football in it; you don’t just have to have the ball in your hands, you can just run with the ball.
“But when I was 13, Villa told me I need to stop because it’s rough. I still played now and then until I was 15.”
His father Kevin added: “He’d run the show playing Gaelic. It really helped him because he was knocked from pillar to post. It’s brutal compared to soccer,”
Memory lane… collar up pic.twitter.com/l8Ou6FyihD
— Aoife Mannion (@aoifemannion_) April 27, 2023
On the Sports Direct TikTok page, Grealish delved further into his GAA background, and spoke about being caught out by Villa for continuing to play the Irish sport.
Grealish said: “I never wanted to stop playing, I wanted to carry on. I did privately, but Villa wouldn’t find out, and there was big tournaments going on and I wanted to play in them, so I carried on playing.
“I got caught a few times, yeah. But it wasn’t like, if you don’t stop playing, we’re going to release you. But they were just wanting me to stop, you know, for my own good, which I understood, but I just loved it.”
