Gary Speed

I turned over to the BBC news today and encountered bafflement. Gary Speed dead? Surely not? I’d seen him on Football Focus only yesterday and he looked in fine fettle.

Then it became curiouser and curiouser. It seems he took his own life – which is tragic, not least for his family.

The sense of shock in the football world at this news was admirably illustrated by the one minute’s silence called for at the Swansea City – Aston Villa game today spontaneously evolving into one minute’s applause.

Speed (helped by the emergence of some fine young footballing talent from the Principality) seemed on the verge of converting the Wales national team’s perennial also-rans status into something approaching success.

It would be a fitting memorial to him if Wales were now to qualify for the 2014 World Cup.

Gary Andrew Speed: 8/9/1969-27/11/11. So it goes.

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