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.

Carling Cup, Semi-final, second leg.

Actually I only watched the second half, but that was profligate enough. Aston Villa 4-2 Blackburn Rovers.

This game illustrates exactly why goals ought to be difficult to score. When a game is like this it’s almost as if every time a team goes up the park there will be a goal.

I’ve seen some dire 0-0 draws but some exciting ones. Yet the worst game I ever saw was a 5-5 draw. That’s one goal every nine minutes – like the Villa-Blackburn game. The fact that Blackburn had only ten men contributed to this. Had it been a league game it might have finished 2-2 or 3-2. Being the deciding leg of a Cup tie introduced a certain abandon, and in Blackburn’s case, necessity.

High scoring – and ease of scoring – is one reason why I can’t take basketball seriously. It’s also why Rugby Union should reduce the value of the penalty goal; tries are so much harder to score. Cricket is an unusual case: while runs are relatively easy to score this is balanced by the difficulty of taking wickets. To win you have to achieve both. I believe something similar applies to baseball.