My Hillsborough memory

There is a lot of talk about Hillsborough on the TV and in the press with the latest inquiry underway. I have vivid memories of the day of the tragedy myself.

 

The Wife, kids, and I were in Cardiff town centre on the day of the Hillsborough disaster, April 15 1989. It was unusual for us to be in town on a Saturday afternoon but Cardiff City were playing away so I was dragged out shopping.

 

I always had a routine when we when to town. Catch the train to the top of town and walk down through to the central station. It kills off the chances of backtracking from shop to shop. There is nothing worse than going in a shop only to have to wander back on the whim of the wife. Being a Saturday and my team were playing away from home I came up with a plan “As cunning as a fox who's just been appointed Professor of Cunning at Oxford University” to make sure I could see the results. Being the dark ages and with no instant access to information like today if I timed the shopping trip right I would just hit the station in time to catch the results in the Granada shop window not too far from the station.

 

My cunning plan worked with time to spare so I left the wife, kids and shopping on the station concourse while I darted off to catch the results. I have done it before when I was in town stand outside the shop watching the teleprinter churn out the results.

 

A dreadful day for football

There was a bigger crowd than usual outside the shop. What I was viewing just didn’t look right. My first thought being it must be crowd trouble. Then I saw fans running across the pitch with advertising boards and then an ambulance. I knew something serious had happened, this wasn’t crowd trouble. I had to get back for the train but I overheard someone in the crowd saying there were deaths.

 

Soon as I got in, I switched the TV on to be confronted by news reports of scenes of fans being dragged up out of the packed enclosure to the upper tier. It got gradually worse as I watched, scenes of fans crushed against the perimeter fence. There was a helpline number on the screen, which was a bit ominous, you just no, it’s serious when they put up a helpline number. I just sat back and watched the tragic news unfolded, feeling sick to my stomach. I remember standing on that same terrace a number of years earlier to watch my team play there. There was no crush that day although I have been in a few.

 

One in particular that springs to mind was at Portsmouth, although it cannot be compared with the Hillsborough tragedy. The day was poorly organised by the police at Portsmouth. First, they allowed two sets of fans converge on the turnstiles. Fans travelling to the game via coach, met the fans who arrived by train head on at the turnstiles leading to an almighty crush and it didn’t help that too few turnstiles were in operation. With kick-off fast approaching, they (the police) refused to delay the kick-off for this important promotion clash so leading to more panic and crushing. Once inside the crushing was still evident as the police and ground stewards tried to squeeze the fans into the middle away pen, and by time I got in it was more than over flowing. It took a lot of screaming and shouting for them to open the side pens to cope with the overflow of fans.

I often wonder if the fans in this picture survived.
I like to think they did.

 

I felt like a bit of a ghoul feeding upon this human tragedy. I was soaking up the TV coverage and the newspapers the following day, feeling more, and more uneasy. The photos of the fans crushed against the perimeter fence was distressing to view. The ones I have posted with this article I found particularly powerful, more so than all the TV coverage, they will never leave my mind.

 

Hillsborough saw 96 Liverpool fans die and the highest death toll at a British sporting event and justice for the fans has still not been forthcoming.

 

The strange thing was I saw the reports of the Bradford City stadium fire unfold in the same shop window. Luckily, the shop has long gone and so as the need to find a TV for results with today’s technology.