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It has been confirmed that Liverpool fans had no involvement in the events at Heysel, never sing songs about Munich and have never ever misbehaved at any away game. Ever.

 

We're you a high ranking officer in south Yorkshire police in 89?

Leave it mate.

 

are you a **** all year or do you take time off occasionally

sorry fella but you are being a total P R I C K here

 

Me or Conan?

 

Bit OTT CT.

 

conan ofc

what a pratt

 

And neither have Barnsley fans ever been anything but angels. Of course not.

I've seen plenty of trouble in my time, but hated it when I was tarred with the same brush as the yobs who spoilt it for the rest. Same goes for the vast majority of Liverpool fans. Don't suppose the 10-year old boy and the teenage girls that were killed at Hillsbrough were involved at Heysel, or misbehaved at games so they certainly don't deserve to be tarred with the brush that you are painting of Liverpool fans. They certainly didn't deserve to die because of it.

 

I reckon Conan is in a minority of one here.

My dad, a Liverpool fan (he moved to Yorkshire as a kid when my grandad got a job down brodsworth pit) was at Hillsborough (in the leppings lane end) for a league fixture in january that year, and was offered a ticket for the forest game but refused as he didn't want to go in the hen sheds again, he never said he thought they were dangerous as such but he didn't like them that's for sure. ( he might not have refused it if ICI hadn't got overtime that day and my mum and him weren't as skint)

He died a fair few years ago but he always maintained that the truth would come out one day. I was only young in 89, I was six, so didn't understand really, he made sure I did afterwards. I remember watching the film they made with him.

When he got ill with MS I made sure I took him to anfield a few times - one European game against FC sion was particularly good - he always got flowers for the memorial plaque and made me read each name.

And as for the Munich chanting - I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but in the case of my dad, i'll tell you a story - he insisted on being buried in the same cemetery as his mam and dad, redhouse in donny.

When I was a little kid I'd go with him to put flowers on gran and grandad's grave, and he'd always put flowers on another grave too. When I was older I realised it was David Pegg, one of the youngest killed in the Munich disaster, played wide left for united and also England once or twice, was only 23. Turns out the village my dad grew up after the move to donny, highfields, was where Pegg was from and his parents and sister I think were still there.

Despite being a fierce Liverpool fan(i never knew why - he moved to donny when he was 2 from consett, county durham, all his family are Geordies and big Newcastle fans, my aunt and cousins live in newcastle now) he had nothing but respect for pegg, and all the others in conversation too. If he'd heard any such chanting I'd wager he'd have have given them a good hiding or took a good walloping himself for trying.

My dealings with the folk and fans of Liverpool tell me they're generally top people. Cardiff, millwall, even Leeds they are not.

This week they have finally been proven innocent in this manor Conan and so to drag up heysel is wholly unfair. How many of the 96 do you reckon were in Belgium?

 

some obvious news.

Conan is a knobhead!

 

And as for heysel, it was a disaster waiting to happen. A stadium built of cinder blocks that were crumbling, a stadium Liverpool and juventus asked to be switched as the nou camp and Bernabeu were available. UEFA refused - but officially they accepted no blame.

In the liverpool end there was an enclosure separated only by a chain link fence which officially was only for local fans, not fans of Liverpool or juve.

UEFA proceeded to sell the majority of these tickets to the expat Italian population of Brussels. Officially they accepted no blame.

The trouble that ensued ended in the deaths of dozens of people when s decrepit wall collapsed - this occurred when Liverpool fans charged. Riotous behaviour. Fair enough. Not exactly their fault the wall was crumbling, but still.

The official observer from UEFA on the night concluded that the whole incident was caused by the English. Course it was, the Italians didn't throw any rocks or missiles to incite the Liverpool fans in the first place, they didn't throw rocks or fire guns at police afterwards, the Italians were as blameless as uefa.

The Liverpool fans certainly weren't innocent at heysel but they just as certainly weren't the sole cause - which is how UEFA conveniently concluded the affair, and banned English clubs from Europe. Who's have guessed Europe hate the English?

 

Liverpool Football Club outraged at everything, ashamed of nothing.

 

Troff - your opinion mate not everyone's, we've all met Liverpool fans in our time. Caused mayhem across Europe in the 80s stabbing, robbing...

There's a massive gap in your Heysel story - between the expat juve ticket bit and then the wall collapsing. Coincidence?

 

The gap being the part where I mentioned the Liverpool fans charging? And riotous behaviour? I never suggested it collapsed on its own.

Reading it back it might look like I was trying to excuse them - I certainly wasn't. My point was that they weren't solely to blame for the deaths, as was the finding of UEFA - a wall wouldn't have collapsed in Madrid for example.

The fact over a dozen Liverpool fans were sent down for manslaughter proves they were guilty in heysel, I'd never question that. They were also linked with neo nazi stuff, like those England 'fans' in Dublin in 95. Unacceptable. But I reckon a few UEFA officials and juve fans ought to look at themselves too over what happened in 85.

And my bigger point was that bringing it up this week is a particularly shitty thing to do as Hillsborough was wrongly blamed on them in part because of what happened in heysel, ie the dirty scousers are rioting again and caused the problem.

The point I made about my dealings with scousers was to balance the view - but I never mentioned the negative side so it did look unbalanced. They're hardly blameless but I've seen worse, the likes of whom I've mentioned. I accept that I'm too young to have seen hooliganism at its peak.

This week though I feel Liverpool football club and it's fans deserve the sympathy of the football community.

 

So Liverpool fans are 100% blameless in the whole Hillsborough tragedy? Genuine question, I was born in '87.

 

They're getting none from me, I've seen them first hand.

 

Officially yes.

Can't imagine they were all queuing politely when that exit gate was opened though.

 

Fair enough. Youve seen what youve seen.

I wasn't there so I don't know - but what has been published this week seems to prove them right to have pleaded innocence in this matter.

And as to whether they were rioting robbing scum in the seventies and eighties - that means they deserve no sympathy when something they didnt cause killed 96 fans? Lots of them bits of kids? One a 10 year old lad?

I understand your viewpoint about their past behaviour, I know you to be right too, but I can't agree they deserve no sympathy over this issue.

 

Did you go to Anfield in 82?

So warm and welcoming that evening.




Every club has its good and its bad and Hillsborough was a tragic and avoidable event and maybe soon certain people who were never brought to justice will be.

 

There were a lot of factors that contributed to the tragic events at Hillsborough and some Liverpool fans were one of the factors IMO although a report now says they were entirely blameless, none of them were drunk and they all had tickets so what do I know.

 

The problem is that this report has been pushed for by the liverpool fans, they've spent 23 years putting on the pressure and now when yet another investigation has been conducted surprise surprise everybody in the world has been found at fault apart from those who pushed for the investigation.

Lets face it, liverpool fans without tickets DID contribute to the disaster simply by being there. Their presence at leppings lane made the crowd outside larger putting pressure on the police to make the fateful decision to open the gate. These fans might have acted impecibly but simply being there without a ticket contributed to the disaster. I will never believe that not one single ticketless fan saw those gates open and went into the crowd and anyone who believes that they didn't is stupid. If only ONE ticketless fan went into the ground then that one ticketless fan has has much blood on his or her hands as anyone else in my opinion.

Liverpool fans who had been drinking again DID contribute. Maybe it wasn't thousands of them but maybe it was hundreds, dozens or even just a handful but I have no doubt that SOME of them will have been drunk and acting like idiots. They did contribute to the disaster.

Now I'm not blaming the vast majority of fans because they did nothing wrong, i'm certainly not blaming the innocent 96. But it annoys me that these reports blame everybody else in the world and yet all seem to pretend that ALL the liverpool fans were angels and that nothing they did contributed at all. This is ********. SOME of them did contribute and even the most blinkered of us must surely see that.

The blame in my opinion is at the hands of the police for making a series of bad decisions, sheffield wednesday for poor ground design and not being up to H&S standards, the FA for their ticketing arrangements, sheffield council for allowing the match to go ahead without a certificate and SOME liverpool fans for adding to the crush without tickets and/or being drunk. It saddens me that whilst 4 out of 5 of these parties have all had blame laid at their feet the 5th has completely got away with it without a bad word said about them and the only reason that they have is because of the sympathy and guilt tripping that the liverpool fans have piled on for 23 years pressurising any investigation to find them completely innocent.

I also question just how reliable the police confessions are. If they have admitted changing their story at least once already then why should we believe that they have all suddenly decided to come clean about it? Isn't their a remote chance that maybe they have NOW been coerced into making up stories to fit the sympathetic agenda of the justice campaign? Why is the word of liars and known corrupted officials suddenly being taken as gospel just because they are now agreeing with the sympathetic view?

A lot of different groups were to blame for what happened, all but one have now been blamed officially and apologised.

I have no opinion on liverpool fans in general, I do not think they are any better or worse than any other group of fans out there but with that being said I have seen arseholes from pretty much every club at every ground i've been to. Drunk idiots at Oakwell, Drunk idiotic barnsley fans at every away match, drunk home fans at every away match. Yet apparently this one liverpool match was the only match in the history of the world where every away fan acted impeccably. Not a chance. A tiny minority contributed and until that is acknowledged I feel the 96 will never truly have got justice.