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Gary Speed (1969–2011)

Dokko

by Dokko
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Crumpy Gunt

Crumpy Gunt

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FORMER Newcastle United football manager Gary Speed was found hanged at his home by his wife, an inquest was told today.

 

http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/north-east-news/breaking-news/2011/11/29/inquest-told-wife-found-gary-speed-hanged-72703-29862134/#ixzz1f6zYmrkT

 

At least none of his kids had to suffer the indignity of finding him. Bad enough his wife finding him.

 

Makes you wonder if it might have been accidental in a Michael Hutchence type of scenario. The fact he showed no signs of depression or marital troubles makes it all the more mysterious.

 

It doesn't bare thinking about what his and others who have suffered similar are suffering. A nightmare.

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Guest Spark

Guest Spark

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Think a minutes silence is much more fitting when its some one so young like especially in such tragic circumstances, think if it wasnt for the silence breaking into applause at Swansea they would all be silences like just feel its more appropriate.

 

Aye, silence then plenty of applause/chanting afterwards for me.

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Jordan

Jordan

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I think a silence is more touching and rare in a football match a silence is weird looking around the ground at 50,000 people being totally quiet is a strange experience whereas an applause is common and happens weekly as the teams come out of the tunnel

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Si

Si

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I think a silence is more touching and rare in a football match a silence is weird looking around the ground at 50,000 people being totally quiet is a strange experience whereas an applause is common and happens weekly as the teams come out of the tunnel

 

Yeah that many people in one place and absolute silence is incredibly powerful imho.

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ED209

ED209

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I realy hoped he was found by someone else and not one of his family like, that must have been absolutely horrible

 

Poor lass :undecided:

 

Aye i have found 4 or 5 people hanging in my time and its bloody awful, now thinking about fidning one of my loved ones in that state blows my mind. Absolutely horrific thing for anyone to go through.

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cp40

cp40

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I realy hoped he was found by someone else and not one of his family like, that must have been absolutely horrible

 

Poor lass :undecided:

 

Aye i have found 4 or 5 people hanging in my time and its bloody awful, now thinking about fidning one of my loved ones in that state blows my mind. Absolutely horrific thing for anyone to go through.

 

 

is it true you have to cut and preserve the knot?

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ED209

ED209

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I realy hoped he was found by someone else and not one of his family like, that must have been absolutely horrible

 

Poor lass :undecided:

 

Aye i have found 4 or 5 people hanging in my time and its bloody awful, now thinking about fidning one of my loved ones in that state blows my mind. Absolutely horrific thing for anyone to go through.

 

 

is it true you have to cut and preserve the knot?

 

Yes it is, however theres not always a knot if that makes sense some people have some creative ways of doing it.  Anyway I suppose this isnt the place for discussing the finer points of hanging but for reflecting on the awful awful events that went on this sunday.

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MW

MW

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I realy hoped he was found by someone else and not one of his family like, that must have been absolutely horrible

 

Poor lass :undecided:

 

Aye i have found 4 or 5 people hanging in my time and its bloody awful, now thinking about fidning one of my loved ones in that state blows my mind. Absolutely horrific thing for anyone to go through.

 

what do you do?

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wacko

wacko

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Terrible tragedy. Not only was Speedo the consummate professional and a universally-respected footballer, but he was also the epitome of a decent human being.

 

A tragic loss for all the people whose lives he touched, of which there are literally millions.

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Dave

Dave

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/wales/8921461/Gary-Speeds-death-has-left-me-helpless-and-I-dont-know-what-to-do-says-devastated-Alan-Shearer.html

Gary Speed's death has left me helpless and I don't know what to do, says devastated Alan Shearer

Twenty-four hours after a death that he may never be able to comprehend, Alan Shearer was still helpless with grief. “I don’t know what to do. I feel numb. I can’t go out,” he said, thinking of his dear friend, Gary Speed.

 

By Paul Hayward

 

6:30AM GMT 29 Nov 2011

 

“I’ve cancelled everything I had on today, even various charity engagements,” he said. “Nothing like this has happened to me before. I don’t know whether I’m doing the right thing speaking. I don’t know what the right or the wrong thing is.”

 

This was Alan Shearer, all right, but not as we know him. Speed’s great ally from their shared Newcastle United days was not calling to talk about himself. His hope was to pay tribute to a comrade whose death has become a cause for national mourning.

 

Beneath the outpouring of affection and remembrance, something deeper was at work across the land. Most deaths are absorbed, or at least faced, when the immediate storm of news has passed. But Speed’s end, at 42, defied comprehension. It made no sense. For Shearer there can be no peace or understanding.

 

“No, that’s the question I keep asking myself. Why? Why?” he said, speaking to Telegraph Sport. “He was the sort of friend who would confide in you. But I was laughing and joking with him on Saturday [in a BBC TV studio], as we always do. There was no sign. The last thing I said was, ‘See you next weekend’. We were supposed to be going out, to a charity dinner we were attending together.”

 

The pair had even planned their next holiday to Portugal together. Speed joined Shearer at Newcastle in 1998 and the two recognised each other as kindred spirits. “I’d played against him several times but I didn’t get to know him until he came to Newcastle. As you go through your career you’re bound to make a few enemies, that’s the nature of football. But he didn’t have any. Nobody said anything bad about him.”

 

In the shadow of sudden and baffling loss people advance their own memories, however fleeting, of the departed public figure. On a day of bewildered recollection, people tweeted about handshakes, autographs, childhood memories of all the teams Speed played in and even spotting him out on runs, in Sheffield, where he finished his playing career.

 

Michael Owen, whose first football trophy, at nine years old, was handed over by Speed, talked of waving to him last week at the gates of the school their children attend. The abiding theme was an insurmountable inability to reconcile the healthy, humorous and high-flying Gary Speed they knew with the tragic figure in the news who was found hanged at his family home.

 

“You read about this type of thing in the paper but you never imagine it’s going to happen to a friend,” Shearer said.

 

In his halting voice you could pick up the confusion and sense the pain that will stalk him as he tries to understand why a mate would walk into oblivion without a word, without asking for help.

 

The first sign came early on Sunday morning when Shearer looked at his phone. He said: “I had a few missed calls, which I thought was strange. It was a mutual friend, and when he told me I said to him, ‘Stop messing around. Don’t joke about things like this’.”

 

Shearer said he spent the rest of the day in a trance, then sought comfort in others in Speed’s circle who were equally stunned. “I was numb. I went and got drunk last night with a few of his friends. It’s all I could manage.

 

“Obviously then you wake up with a hangover and you’re back to reality again. I keep thinking of Louise [speed’s wife] and the two boys [Edward, 14 and Thomas, 13]: they’re the important ones. You can’t do anything, you can’t say anything. You’re just at a loss.”

 

Football’s camaraderie is built on shared athletic ability, high spirits, the good life. Men are drawn into groups and say goodbye at the end as mere colleagues, close friends or sometimes even enemies. The common image of footballers is of a limited kind of intimacy, built around mutual good fortune, and fun.

 

It was not this way for Shearer and Speed, or Speed and his other close friends. There was a bond. You could see it in the face of Shay Given as he towelled away his tears in the Aston Villa goal, at Swansea. You could feel it in the compassionate leave extended to Craig Bellamy when Liverpool faced Manchester City.

 

“There are handful of guys who I would trust my life with and he was one of them,” Shearer said. He managed to put grief aside to talk about his bereavement but you could tell he found it unbearable to be churning it all up again. Words were no use. They brought no refuge.

 

On the field, the lines were clear: “He was everything the game is about. Hard work and dedication. He would have been a manager’s dream.” But what did the football matter now? “I just keep coming up with the same question: why? Why didn’t he call me, why didn’t he say anything on Saturday, if something was bothering him?”

 

There is no guarantee that anyone in Speed’s orbit will be able to function properly anytime soon. Shearer is not wasting time with ritual bravery or clichés about soldiering on. He says: “I’ve got a few things planned for later in the week but I’ll just have to see how I feel.”

 

In this maelstrom his friends have no choice but to observe the tide of official statements expressing sympathy and admiration, from the Prime Minister down. They see the shrines and the scarves tied on gates but none of it really helps. None of it answers the question. Shearer looked at all the tributes and thought: “This is how important he is. The stupid and sad thing is that he can’t see what he meant to people.”

 

:(

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Guest fraser

Guest fraser

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But the point is, why is it fair to label a man with an illness based on nothing other than guesswork? Is it any less fair to say he did it because he was an alcoholic, or a drug addict, or a schizophrenic, or because he had cancer? They're all illnesses or circumstances that can drive people to suicide and would all be based on as much evidence as the diagnosis of depression by those who didn't know the man i.e. none whatsoever.

 

I wouldn't want to offend anyone, particularly people who have suffered due to mental illness, but the people I would want to be offended by any coverage least are the Speed family. If his wife is saying he wasn't depressed and yet every paper has an article in it saying that he must have been and you don't understand the illness to think otherwise, that is not fair at all.

 

 

I understand your point totally but the question of deliberately taking one's own life necessarily leads to a judgement of the person's mental state. The fact is that leaving aside some cultures (seppuku as previously mentioned in this thread I think) the act of killing oneself is extraordinary and usually a result of mental illness. However, there is no more opprobrium to be attached to death as result of mental illness than there is to be attached to death from another illness, cancer say. Both illnesses are chemical whether to do with brain chemistry or another chemistry. As we know physical suffering can lead to suicide; the issue concerning euthanasia in Switzerland is a good example of this. If a person's physical suffering is so acute that all hope is lost and that person commits suicide the only difference is that the depressive suicide didn't catch the flight to Switzerland but did it themself.

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Anderson

Anderson

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On the subject of the club making some sort of gesture I'm thinking the Chelsea match will come too soon, possibly the Swansea match (I'd have suggested Everton but that isn't until the final game of the season), where both clubs will have links to Speed, would be more appropriate? I wouldn't want us to over do it either, having everyone wear 11 or similar suggestions seems a little over the top, I think the suggestion someone made of wearing specially embroidered shirts a la vs Ipswich for Sir Bobby is the best suggestion so far. Both teams could wear them and later auction them for a charity of Speed's family's choice.

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BlueStar

BlueStar

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Would be cool on the last game of the season (Everton) to wear some "retro" kits from when Speed played for each club then auction them off for charity.

 

Along with doing something this Saturday as well.

 

Kind of parted on bad terms with Everton and got dogs abuse every time he played against them though.

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