Gary Speed Death – For Neil Taylor and his Swansea City partners, Sunday, 27 November 2011 felt like a regular Premier League matchday. On a fresh, clear evening, there was a murmur of expectation as allies filled the Liberty Stadium for the visit of Aston Villa in the day’s initial broadcast game at 13:30.
With start off barely an hour away, Taylor was engaged. His pre-match arrangements and ceremonies are done, the Wales global was prepared. Swansea chief Ashley Williams assembled his players for a group in the changing room before venturing out onto the pitch to heat, the hints of a limit swarm sifting through the passage.
Then, at that point, as he did before each game, chief Brendan Rodgers moved toward his group. Just this time, it was not to talk about strategies.
“Brendan recently came and hauled us out of the changing space to a back room,” Taylor reviews.
“He said: ‘Tune in, we think Gary Speed has died.’
“And afterward we heard it was perhaps self-destruction. Then, at that point, somebody said it had been affirmed by Shay Given, who was in the inverse changing space for Aston Villa. He was an old buddy of his from his time in Newcastle. He’d affirmed it.”
Taylor couldn’t deal with what he had recently heard. He felt numb.
Speed, the much-cherished Wales supervisor, a midfield extraordinary of the Premier League period, had ended his own life. His body was found by his significant other Louise at their home.
