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Gary Speed (1969–2011)


Dokko

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Anyone know if he played for us when we lost 1-0 at home against tottenham in 2004? Was my first game at st james park but can't remember if he was playing since i was so young at the time.

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Anyone know if he played for us when we lost 1-0 at home against tottenham in 2004? Was my first game at st james park but can't remember if he was playing since i was so young at the time.

 

No, he left for Bolton that summer.

 

Newcastle: Given, Carr, O'Brien, Hughes, Bernard, Milner (Kluivert 77), Jenas (Dyer 77), Butt, Robert (Ameobi 77), Shearer, Bellamy.

Subs Not Used: Harper, Elliott. Booked: Robert.

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I don't know about iconic moment but I remember sitting sitting in a bar in Kavos in 1998 watching us beat Coventry 5-1 away. I am pretty sure Speed hit one from what appeared to be about 40 yards straight into the top corner.

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What would people say the iconic Speed moment was at NUFC?

 

For me it was the critical goal v PSV at home in the UEFA Cup Quarter Final. I didnt realise until today that it was actually his last goal for us. Great two legged tie, the second half of the second leg attacking the Gallowgate with bubbling atmosphere.

 

Really thought we were going to win it, after that game.

 

For me, it's not so much a single on pitch moment. Funnily enough given all these tributes, especially from people who aren't the usual suspects, it was his general presence at the club that was iconic, iconic of an era - Bobby naming him as a member of his blue chip brigade in the early days, Bellamy giving interviews in the chronicle saying Speed was his personal minder, helping keep his head together. That's what he really gave us, he was a pillar of our renaissance period in the champion's league.

 

The stuff from Marcelino and things, it really does feel more and more surreal, this.

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Guest TheSummerOf69

The loss of Gary Speed to the world is tragic, all the more so because he is universally said to have been such a warm, caring and hard working man which entirely fits with the qualities he gave to the midfield engine of one of our greatest teams in my lifetime. He's joined his manager Bobby far, far too soon and, as a young mother about the same age as him, I can only wish my deepest sympathies to his family.

 

 

 

 

We (briefly) had a player once in Justin Fashanu who later felt the terrible need to take his own life. The pressures of a macho world who wouldn't accept him for what he was must have contributed to this, and I'm proud that we as a fanbase didn't add to that even though his game for us was the first professional one played in England by a footballer who'd admitted their homosexuality. There are assuredly other gay players in the game who fear being revealed because of the hatred and persecution that would ensue from some quarters.

 

I've also worked with men for whom the crippling effects of depression or mental illness is hard to admit due to the stigmas attached and for which help isn't always sought before such tragic attempts. Indeed it is said that those who make up their minds to finish things can appear the happiest they've seemed for a long time, and it's only too late that people discern that this clarity actually came come from that decision.

 

I hope that we continue to be humane, whatever the unbearable pressures may have been for poor Gary Speed (if it is the case, as it appears, that he took matters into his own hands).

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