Eulogy for Gary Speed

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Eulogy

Why they die so young I’ll never know. Searching for the words to describe my feelings right now will only be a mere utterance of my true sentiments. Nothing prepares you for this. Nothing prepares anyone for any part of this. We are all here today to not only remember Gary Speed, not only to give our condolences, not only to mourn over the loss of a role model and mentor, but to show our sympathies to an individual who just oozed class, class which transferred to everyone around him. It is too soon and raw to be writing about Gary Speed’s death but then it will always be too soon and raw. He was one of us, one of the lads and to see him go at such a young age, 42 years young, is just beyond comprehension.

We often see clichés thrown about too easily, but few people would argue that he was a lion on the pitch in his leadership and a role model off the pitch. Both his opponents and teammates would agree with this statement. In one game against Liverpool, we were 2-0 down with a man sent off at half-time, but Gary at half time, being the soldier he was on the pitch, showed us that there was light at the end of the tunnel, he made us pull our socks up with his speech and if you're going to talk the talk as a player, you better walk the walk and Gary most definitely did. In the second half he barked instructions at us, and when someone like Gary shouts, you listen. In no time, we scored, a normal team would drop their level of performance but Gary kept us on our feet like the true captain he was and led us to victory. No surprises that the man of the match that day was Gary, and being full of humility, what did he say in his post-match interview? He said “The lads deserve most of the credit”, no Gary, you were the catalyst to our win, you deputised for the man we had dismissed.

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Nothing was more important to Gary than his family, he had everything to live for, a husband and father of two, he was managing the best Wales side I’ve ever seen playing some of the most beautiful football I’ve ever seen. I would have loved to have seen Wales v Barcelona, now that would have been an advert for football. Wales are the most improved side in the world and that’s only because of his style. In his first meeting, he let the Welsh players know that they would be learning the national anthem in Welsh and it was definitely ...

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