Wales national football team manager and former captain Gary Speed was found dead over the weekend, only hours after appearing on BBC One’s Football Focus. He was only 42 years old.

Sources have said Speed, the national manager for nearly a year, was found hanged.

Cheshire Police confirmed he was found dead at 07:08 GMT at his home in Huntington, Chester. They said there were no suspicious circumstances.

Former Wales team mate Ryan Giggs said: “Words cannot begin to describe how sad I feel at hearing this awful news.”

As someone who has just recently tried to get into soccer, I can’t provide the context or gravity necessary for a situation like this. As someone who has tried his entire life to understand death and suicide, I’m even worse. The “was found hanged” part of the sentence makes sharing his stats and accomplishments seem empty, and someone being found hanged not constituting suspicious circumstances says something horrible for the world we live in, but here we go.

Speed remains the most capped outfield player for Wales, having appeared 85 times at senior level between 1990 and 2004. He held the record for the most appearances in the FA Premier League at 535, until David James surpassed him. More importantly than all that, he’s being remembered right now by the international community as an ambassador for the game, a consummate professional and more or less the kind of guy who makes the world sh*ttier by not being around.

Welsh Secretary Cheryl Gillan tweeted: “This is a sad day for football and for everyone in Wales. Gary Speed served club and country as a player and manager with great distinction.”

Andrew RT Davies, Welsh Conservatives leader, said: “Gary Speed was tremendously gifted and I – along with millions of others – will always remember him as a legend in the game of football.”

Hopefully one day we’ll understand it a little more, if understanding is a thing that ever happens.

And now for something completely different.

When you’re a mixed-martial arts fighter, “having a heart attack after a dead cow fell on you in a slaughterhouse” can’t be high on your list of expected ways to die, but here we are. By way of an hilariously-insensitive report from Mirror UK comes the story of the tragic death of Scottish amateur MMA fighter Ally McCrae, a wrestler, Thai boxer and blue belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu who happened to work in an abattoir.

Ally McCrae, 23, was trapped when the carcass fell off a hook and he suffered head injuries which triggered a heart attack.

The super-fit amateur cage fighter was rushed to hospital but surgeons were unable to save his life.

His trainer John Nicolson said yesterday: “Ally was such a joker and when I heard the bizarre circumstances, I thought he might be playing a joke.”

And can you blame him? That doesn’t really sound like news the human brain is ready to accept. Also, I love how Mirror UK notes that he was “super-fit”, as if his chiseled abdominals were going to protect him from the freefall a 600-pound cow.

You can find out more about the story at Mirror, or you can check out this hilariously-insensitive report from Fightlinker that forgets this guy was a human being and breaks down the cow-to-body collision like a fight. I know this is a terrible situation, but the better part of my heart tells me that if I died being flattened by a projectile slaughterhouse cow I’d want the people who found out to have a laugh. Because seriously, holy sh*t.

[h/t Vince at FilmDrunk]

Former Baltimore Ravens offensive tackle and 11-season NFL veteran Orlando “Zeus” Brown was found dead in his Baltimore home today at the age of 40, and nobody is quite sure why. Via CBS News:

Fire spokesman Battalion Chief Kevin Cartwright said firefighters were called about 11 a.m. Friday because Brown was unresponsive at his home near the Inner Harbor. Cartwright said Brown was dead when firefighters arrived. Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said firefighters called police, routine procedure in such cases. He said there were no signs of trauma or suspicious activity.

The Ravens learned of Brown’s death during practice.

“We send our condolences to the family of Orlando Brown,” Ravens coach John Harbaugh said. “Everybody knew what he meant to this organization. We’re forever grateful for what he did for the present team. We can’t express enough sorrow for his loss.”

Brown has a lot of interesting notes about his NFL career — he’s one of only two players to have played for both the pre- and post-Baltimore Ravens versions of the Cleveland Browns and is most famous for accidentally hit in the eye by a penalty marker weighted with BBs thrown by referee Jeff Triplette during a game in 1999 and having to sit for three seasons because of it. He settled with the NFL for a reported amount of $25 million and started up the first Fatburger franchise in Maryland. The fact that I can keep going with this should tell you how interesting of a guy he was, and how shocked his friends and family are that he’s suddenly gone.

Bill Belichick, the man who signed Brown, coached him for three seasons in Cleveland and probably thought dressing as a rollerskating pirate as the only thing he was going to do on the Internet today, released a statement through the Patriots moments ago.

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Frank Talent died last night. He was a representative for the Pennsylvania State Athletic Commission, and at first, his passing might not seem to be the time of thing you need to report to a mainstream sports blog audience.

Talent was Assistant Athletic Commissioner for 38 years, presiding over boxing, roller derby and wrestling. In 75 years he went from a kid raised in an orphanage to a man who was featured on the radio, made appearances on television, wrote columns for the newspaper and generally lived the kind of life that lets you die surrounded by your family seven-and-a-half decades in with a smile on your face.

But why does a guy like me remember Frank Talent, and mourn his passing? I just happen to be one of those people who will always associate Philadelphia pro wrestling with his name. To put it another way, here’s a short paragraph written about Talent by Peter Holby a few years ago at Progressive Boink:

Frank Talent is the Pennsylvania State Athletic Commissioner. He was appointed to his post and it’s his responsibility to make sure that every wrestling show is conducted in a safe manner. He has to make sure the ring is well-built and the crowd is out of harm’s way. And what better way to do such a thing than by being a paid performer on those wrestling shows? For a nominal fee, Frank Talent will come to your show and stop a match on the grounds that it’s unsafe, or maybe you just want him to stand backstage, give a pep talk, and yell at Spanky for having his headphones on. He gets two paychecks.

That’s what he was — a guy who did his job, but also liked to do a little more.

You won’t find his eulogy on Yahoo Sports or probably even the major wrestling sites, but I wanted to devote a few paragraphs to him here. Tom Holzerman at The Wrestling Blog put up his own tribute late last night after the news of Frank’s passing started to spread across Twitter, and if you’ve never seen or heard of the man, I think the best example of his importance is in this video, where CHIKARA pro wrestling’s Icarus tries to get Frank Talent to make sure the good guys don’t cheat and gets called out for being the biggest cheater of all.

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A passenger plane carrying 37 members of the Russian Lokomotiv ice hockey team and 8 crew members crashed briefly after takeoff earlier today, killing 43 of the people on board. Former NHL forward Pavol Demitra was among the team’s entire main roster reported as casualties of the crash. Four members of the Lokomotiv youth team were also on board.

The Los Angeles Times offers more details:

The plane, which was carrying members of the Kontinental Hockey League team Lokomotiv, crashed on the banks of the Volga River shortly after departing from an airport in Yaroslav, located 150 miles northeast of Moscow. The team was flying to Belarus to play in its season opener against Dinamo Minsk.

Russian officials say a crew member and Russian player Alexander Galimov are the only survivors. Both are in critical condition.

A Czech Embassy official told the Associated Press that former NHL players Josef Vasicek and Karel Rachunek were among those killed. Latvian officials onfirmed the death of former NHL defenseman Karlis Skrastins.

Locomotiv Coach Brad McCrimmon, a former NHL defenseman who worked as assistant coach with the Detroit Red Wings, also died in the crash.

Officials did not immediately release the names of all of the players and coaches who were on board, but former Ducks defenseman Ruslan Salei was among the players listed on the Lokomotiv roster.

Detroit Red Wings prospect Stefan Liv was also listed on the roster.

I don’t really have much beyond, “Holy crap.”

The summer has not been kind to hockey.

In May, New York Rangers left winger Derek Boogaard mixed alcohol and oxycodone and died. Earlier this month, Winnipeg Jets forward Rick Rypien killed himself, and now, just yesterday afternoon, 15-year NHL veteran Wade Belak has been found dead in Toronto. Foul play isn’t suspected and we don’t officially know the cause of death, but CBC is saying it was suicide. Three tragedies since May.

A 12th-overall draft pick in 1994, the 35-year old Belak spent his time in pro hockey with the Colorado Avalanche, Calgary Flames, Toronto Maple Leafs, Florida Panthers and Nashville Predators. He retired in March, but had been named as one of the contestants for the upcoming third season of the CBC’s “Battle of the Blades” and was scheduled to be part of the Predators’ television broadcast team. Former Nashville Predators assistant General Manager Mike Santos (now with the Panthers) talked to the Miami Herald about Belak’s passing, and put it way better than anyone writing a blog about it could.

“He was as friendly and nice a person as I have ever met,” Santos said. “He would give you the shirt off his back. He did so much for kids and our community. He was wonderful. I’m shocked. I’m sad. I don’t know what to say. It’s a real shame. He’s the best.”

That’s it in a nutshell, really. You remember the kindness, and you don’t know why it was taken away. The Predators, the team with whom Belak spent his final three seasons, issued their own statement:

“The entire Nashville Predators organization and family is shocked and saddened by the sudden and untimely passing of Wade Belak. Wade was a beloved member of the organization, a terrific teammate and wonderful father and husband. He will be greatly missed. Our thoughts and prayers go out to his wife Jennifer and children Andie and Alex. We offer our full support to them at this very difficult time.”

If you visit our friends at Puck Daddy you can read comments from Gary Bettman, Donald Fehr and more as they come in throughout the day. Hopefully this is the last time hockey fans and families will have to go through this, at least for a little while.