I was due to share a Christmas dinner with Gary Speed next week.

The annual Yorkshire football writers and managers shindig is always a good chance for the two sides of the divide to enjoy a convivial common cause.

And despite his promotion from club to international hot-seat, Speed had indicated that he was keen to come along again.

He was there for the do at Bramall Lane last year. As Sheffield United boss at the time, it was convenient for him.

But while some in the past would just bob their head in for an hour or two before making their excuses, Speed was involved for the duration.

The memories may be hazy but I even remember joining in a Chas and Dave duet in the pub with a pool cue for a microphone as the festivities went long into the night. It was rare to find a Welshman who couldn’t sing!

I didn’t know Speed at all before that day, unlike many others in the room. But he was very pleasant and easy-going company and generous at the bar.

He asked me about Bradford City’s season and seemed genuinely interested in what this slurring, swaying southerner was trying to say.

Hearing all the tributes flood in this week, I could recognise that smiling figure from the snug.

Speed was not only a fine player – as every Leeds fan will acknowledge – and a budding manager but also a very decent bloke. There were no airs and graces.

In football-speak, he was the consummate professional both on and off the field.

So the news last Sunday morning was numbing. A week on and football remains in shock.

What could suddenly turn a bubbly, positive character with so much going for him into someone so desperate to take his own life.

So many questions remain and so few answers. I doubt we will ever get to the bottom of what was going through Speed’s mind.

His death has raised the issue of depression among footballers and how they struggle to cope when life in the public eye is over.

It might sound a relief to get away from the constant attention that follows the top pros. But for many, having grown up in the goldfish bowl, they find it harder to be ‘normal’ again.

With bitter irony, Speed’s suicide coincided with a biography of German international goalkeeper Robert Enke winning the sports book of the year award. Enke stepped in front of a train and took his own life at the age of 32.

Depression is not limited to just one sport. Rugby fans are still very raw over the death of Terry Newton.

I remember a conversation with one former footballer who had hung up his boots five years earlier. He still didn’t know what to do with himself.

Football was all he had known and there were no other qualifications to fall back on.

But worse, he hated the feeling of being thrown on the scrapheap. His marriage had gone and football friends were no longer in touch.

Thinking back now, you can see how things could spiral to such a depth that the individual feels he has nothing worth hanging on for.

No wonder the players’ union are circulating a booklet on handling depression to around 50,000 ex-professionals.

And yet, on the surface, Speed’s case could not have been more different.

He had made the smooth transition from playing to coaching to managing to such an extent that he was in charge of his national side – and doing a cracking job in making Wales a young, hungry team to be reckoned with.

After too many years in the international backwaters, the Welsh had become a proud football nation. Speed should take all the credit for that.

The on-going tributes across England and Wales show how much he was treasured within the game. But the real victims are his wife Louise and teenage sons Edward and Thomas.

For them, the agony will continue long after the public commemorations have died down.

In what turned out to be his last interview, Speed told a football magazine that family would always mean far, far more than anything he has achieved in football.

Words of comfort for those he left behind. And words that will increase their utter despair at such a seemingly pointless act.