THE WALES football manager, Gary Speed, sent a text message to his wife five days before he was found dead in which he talked of ending his life, his widow told an inquest yesterday.

But Louise Speed told the hearing she dismissed the message because her husband had also spoken of his hopes for the future. And despite an “exchange of words” in the hours leading up to his death at his home last year, she felt nothing was obviously amiss with her husband, a 42-year-old father of two and former Premier League footballer with Leeds, Everton, Newcastle and Bolton.

In the two days prior to his death he had played golf with one of his oldest friends, taken part in the BBC programme Football Focus and attended a dinner party the night before with Mrs Speed. At the party he was pushed into a swimming pool and played water polo with his friends and discussed spending Christmas in Dubai.

Giving a narrative verdict at the inquest at Warrington town hall, Cheshire coroner, Nicholas Rheinberg, concluded it was not clear whether he intended to take his own life. The coroner said: “The evidence does not sufficiently determine whether this was intentional or accidental. It seems likely that Mr Speed was sitting for some time with a ligature around his neck.

“It may have been that this was some sort of dramatic gesture, not normally in Mr Speed’s character, but nonetheless, a possibility.” It was a possibility that he’d nodded off to sleep, he added.

Mrs Speed said that five days before her husband died, “he talked in terms about taking his own life and then he moved on and talked about moving forward and how important the boys were to him.

“It was in the context of the ups and downs of our marriage. The texts went on about our future together and how excited he was about our journey together.”

The coroner heard how Speed’s body was discovered by his wife in the garage of their home in Huntington, Cheshire, on November 27th, 2011.

The previous evening, the couple had been out at a dinner party and upon returning home, had “had an exchange of words about something and nothing”, Mrs Speed said, without elaborating.

She admitted there had been pressure on their relationship: “Like all couples we would be going through ups and downs in our marriage and we were working through it,” she said. The Wales job meant he “was spending more hours there than he thought he would do initially”.

His wife told the inquest that following the exchange, she suggested she go for her drive, but her husband blocked the door and told her she wasn’t going anywhere. “I went upstairs and lay on the bed for probably about five or 10 minutes,” she told Rheinberg. “Then I decided to go for a drive, to clear my mind [and for] space to think.”

She drove a short distance up the road before phoning her husband’s mobile, getting no reply, and trying to call him again.

“I decided to keep the car running and stay there until I could get into the house,” she said, explaining that she didn’t want to disturb the children, who were asleep. She fell asleep and woke up at about 6am and went to an outside bathroom. She said she noticed some shed keys missing which were usually stored there and went to the shed to see if her husband was there, before going to the garage.

Wiping away tears, she said: “I went to the window and there I saw him.” It was apparent that her husband was hanging.

She then woke the children to open up the house and contacted the emergency services. Speed’s wife confirmed there was no note or message left by her husband before his death.

Police said the death was not being treated as suspicious. The senior investigating officer, Detective Inspector Peter Lawless, said there was no evidence of a break-in at the garage, or the involvement of anyone else in his death. A pathologist said there was no evidence of drugs and the alcohol levels were slightly above the legal driving limit.

His mother, Carol Speed, in a statement read to the inquest, described how her son was always a “glass half-empty person”. In hindsight, Speed’s mother said she had watched some television footage of her son before his death and realised his smile didn’t seem genuine as “it didn’t extend to his eyes”.

Alan Shearer, a former Newcastle team-mate, said in a statement they had been friends since 1998.

He said: “It just didn’t and still doesn’t make any sense to me . . . Gary was probably one of the last people out of my million friends out there who would do that,” he added.

“I’d only seen him the day before and he’d seemed fine.”