Grealish and Co acting like twerps shows the end of the world as we know it is not quite so nigh

THE only wonder was that a sports-starved bookmaker had not offered odds on it. On the identity of the first Premier League footballer to prang an expensive car after attending a house party during the coronavirus lockdown. ⚠️ Read our coronavirus live blog for the latest news & updates Jack Grealish had apparently matured since […]

THE only wonder was that a sports-starved bookmaker had not offered odds on it.

On the identity of the first Premier League footballer to prang an expensive car after attending a house party during the coronavirus lockdown.

Read our coronavirus live blog for the latest news & updates

AFP or licensors

Jack Grealish had apparently matured since taking over as Aston Villa captain — yet his previous form might still have seen him listed among the favourites.

Grealish, 24, would this month have been included in Gareth Southgate’s senior England squad for the first time but for the health crisis.

Now, after smashing his £80,000 Range Rover into three parked cars — hours after releasing an online video urging fans to stay indoors — it will be some way back for the midfielder.

And Villa will be furious that a player almost certain to be sold this year has probably knocked £10million off his market value by proving that a leopard never can change its spots.

It was disgraceful hypocrisy from Grealish, yes. But there was also a reassuring sense of normality about it.

Footballers acting like twerps. Suddenly, the end of the world as we know it does not seem quite so nigh.

After all, Stoke’s IRA fan James McClean had already been on Instagram, dressed in a balaclava, apparently home-schooling his children with a history lesson — a neat piece of self-parody quite possibly, but not exactly a great example of comic timing.

Fun-loving former Newcastle winger Nobby Solano — currently assistant boss of Peru — had been arrested for attending a house party in his homeland, hopefully with his trademark trumpet.

And if footballers acting with self- entitlement wasn’t a surprise, then what about boxers behaving like morons?

Britain’s WBO world super-middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders released a disgraceful online video showing men how to punch their female partners if tempers flared during the lockdown.

It was an act so mindless it resulted in his license being suspended by the British Boxing Board of Control, with even his own promoter Eddie Hearn describing it as ‘appalling’.

Although Hearn did add that Saunders is ‘a really good kid, with a really good heart’ — proving that boxing promoters will continue to spout nonsense even under the threat of Armageddon.

Of course, sports people are not the only ones making pillocks of themselves on the internet during this crisis.

The level of pious hand-wringing on Twitter — always high — has reached previously unimagined peaks.

Journalists style themselves as government information mouthpieces and other ‘good citizens’ grass up their neighbours for going out twice a day — all apparently gleeful at the idea of living under a police state.

But Grealish probably takes the Nobel prize for two-facedness by attending a party so soon after demanding  his social media followers do as he says rather than as he does.

There have been plenty of  good deeds done in the football industry during these past couple of weeks. The altruism of Roman Abramovich, Gary Neville, Pep Guardiola, Jose Mourinho and many more has been rightly well-documented.

But the idea of footballers and other sports people as ‘role models’ has always been flawed.

Wanting a footballer to parent your kids is never a good look. And now  the Government is having to treat us all like children, self-important messages from footballers are less welcome than ever.

If, as planned, the remainder of the Premier League is played behind closed doors during the summer months, we’re likely to see many more incidents such as Grealish’s Wacky Races routine.

Especially with news that squads could be placed under tournament-style isolation in hotels and banned from going home to lower the risk of infection.

British footballers have never been good at such claustrophobic living.

Fabio Capello was into social distancing long before it became fashionable, with England’s remote base at Rustenburg during the 2010 South Africa World Cup roundly hated by his players.

Going back to the early 1960s, the great Jimmy Greaves has some amusing anecdotes of escaping via hotel windows while supposedly locked down with the AC Milan squad for several days a week.

So we should expect many instances of players truanting from team hotels this summer — even while under instructions from  government, rather than just  clubs.

Footballers behaving badly is a story as old as time.

And we can probably handle it, just as long as they don’t try to preach to us while they are doing so.