I remember what I was doing vividly on that day. I'd got the house to myself and thought I'd go and buy Guns 'n' Roses' Appetite for Destruction album - I could then come home and play it very loudly on my new stereo.
Got home, didn't really bother finding out what the Forest score was because in those days Forest playing a big game like that was a regular occurrence. Had just got into Welcome to the Jungle and there was a knock at the door. It was a friend of the family, who happened to be a big Liverpool FC fan. He had tears in his eyes, which I thought was strange because in those days, pre-Diana, nobody cried in public.
I asked him what was wrong and he just garbled about their being trouble at Hillsborough and a crowd crush in the Liverpool end. He couldn't understand why the Forest supporters had been allocated the Kop end of the ground, which was bigger, so Liverpool, admittedly a bigger club couldn't take more spectators. That's all he kept saying, over and over again.
He went when I told him my parents weren't there and I flicked on the telly. It was one of those strange situations, pre rolling news channels, where a sports presenter just had to keep talking (Like Heysel and the 1997 Grand National). On this occasion it was Bob Wilson as the BBC had cameras there and it kept going over to the ground live.
Being on your own was very disconcerting.
As Forest were the other team playing that day I knew quite a lot of people there that day. Most of them will tell you that they thought it was crowd trouble and started shouting abuse at the Liverpool supporters, hopefully with the advent of mobile phones it wouldn't happen today. That abuse turned to a sense of 'o-oh' when bodies started to be laid in front of the Forest end with covers over them.
No one should go to a football match and not return. If there's one legacy those 96 tragic people have left it's that crowd safety, first aid cover, stewarding and policing at all league football grounds is now of the highest order.
From a Forest supporter's angle, this is worth a read.
2 comments:
Great post.
A friend of mine went down to Glasgow for the 1985 Scottish Cup Final, Celtic v Dundee United. Old Hampden: 80,000 capacity, three quarters terracing. He said that it was so packed that when Celtic scored he was swept off his feet and ended up 20 or 30 feet away from where he was. What he described sounded like something from the Roman Colosseum.
It's remarkable how much football has changed over the last 20 years or so. I know people complain about the cost of tickets and new stadia resembling libraries etc, but I don't really want to go back. It's just such a shame that it needed something like Hillsborough before there was enough political will for the changes to occur.
A friend of mine went to see the big local derby game against, er, Derby at their old Baseball Ground around the same time. Forest scored and in the surge forward he lost one of his shoes and had to hop back to Derby train station, which was less than ideal as in those days you were liable to be jumped by disgruntled home supporters.
The thing about Hillsborough was that it happened to be Liverpool, it could have been anyone. Unfortunately a series of errors, bad judgements, unforseen circumstances and sheer bad luck conspired against those who perished on that day. Surely the warning signs were there at Ibrox, Heysel and Bradford.
Of course you're right about not wanting to go back. There has been talk in the papers recently about allowing sections of grounds to return to terracing, like in Germany. Not my cup of tea, I'm afraid.
By the way, on the day of the Bradford City fire I bought Bryan Adams's Reckless album for my sister's birthday present. What is it about me and multi-platinum rock albums on the days of sporting disaters?
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