I can still remember the vivid sense of shock at his passing. I was working that Sunday and went in to the messroom to see the news on the TV, and i can still vividly remember the words. "FAW ANNOUNCE WALES MANAGER GARY SPEED HAS DIED AT 42". I was absolutely astounded, and my first instinct was that he had been involved in a RTA somewhere and not survived. Then a little while later i found out that he hung himself and felt absolutely shocked that someone who seemingly had everything going for him had chosen to take his own life. I went down to the Lane the next day and wrote a message on an old Blades shirt, and can still remember the Torquay game with the superb tribute from Gary Sinclair, i remember welling up in the South Stand as Pink Floyd, Wish You Was Here was played in an almost eerie silence.
Reflecting on his tenure as United manager, i remember driving home from a home game we had lost, and had looked quite poor, and listened to Gary Speed on the radio, and he seemed very downbeat and very downcast, and being quite shocked as i had got the impression he was generally a positive character, and the negativity and the tone of his voice shocked me. It wouldn't surprise me if at the time he was managing us, he was going through a depressive stage, but had kept it all to him, and the job offer from Wales had offered him an escape route from Bramall Lane (and a period of depression). The sad thing is that we will never know.
