Let's remember 97 people went to a football match, just like most of us do most weekends and never came home. Just take a minute to remember those 97 innocent people that lost their lives 34 years ago today.............................. RIP the97 the bradford fire victims,hysel,bolton and ibrox fallen.
Remember it well & a Tannoy request asking for a certain Dr(neuro surgeon) to get in touch with the nearest steward. Sad times
We drew 0-0 with Birmingham that day, a result which relegated them. However, no one cared amongst the home fans. As the news filtered out, football seemed an utter irrelevance.
I remember laying a wreath at Anfield...we queued for 2hrs to get in....nobody spoke...just a slight smile and the nod of the head...total silence from everyone... apart from the odd cough not a noise was heard... Once inside you could literally taste the sadness and despair that hung in the air .....it made me feel quite ill if I'm honest I couldnt help thinking, that could quite easily be me , that was killed...the amount of times I'd not only seen but experienced the crush of a crowd.., when the crowd you were at the front off got bottle necked against a locked gate, most who followed football in the 60s/70s and 80s could relate to it.....at the time I was also working the clubs besides running a pub I called my agent and told him to cancel all my bookings for the rest of the week and the following week too....it was a sobering experience ( excuse the pun) I just didn't have the heart to go on stage for a hour and try to be funny telling gags.... The incident on the day and its aftermath...well I wouldn't want anyone to have to experience that all over again....safe standing campain...not for me...best thing they did making it all seater in my opinion Nobody should go to a football match and not come home....RIP to the 97 and the countless others who have died in other football related tragedies May their souls be blessed and their families burden a little lighter, knowing we acknowledge their grief and loss.
Remember it all too well. Was the first or second match I went to without an adult. When I got home my mum admitted she'd spent a good half hour panicking as she'd just heard news of a crush at the football and didn't realise it was Hillsborough not Oakwell.
I was supposed to be working at Hillsborough as a St. John Ambulance volunteer. I was actually living in Liverpool at the time and was a first year student nurse, but we had one of our two 3 week blocks of annual leave, so I was back in Barnsley. I still volunteered in Sheffield when I was at home and in Liverpool when I had time off, mainly at Anfield. When I woke up on the day of the semi-final I was going over to Hillsborough. I’d covered the semi-finals in the 2 previous seasons. There was a big difference then though, Barnsley were away. I never volunteered when the Reds were at home. I didn’t have the money to go to away games, cos I spent all my money on records (nothing changes), so I’d go over to Sheffield and volunteer at whoever was at home, usually Wednesday. So the morning of that particular semi-final I was torn. Not for long. I rang up one of the people who coordinated it all, who happened to be my mum, and asked if we had the numbers. There had to be a certain amount of first aiders at every match or the match didn’t go ahead. We didn’t usually struggle for numbers for a game like this and we didn’t that day, so she laughed at me for putting the Reds above the biggest game of the day and said she’d see me on Sunday. The next time I saw her it was on TV and she was resuscitating someone. As was my girlfriend, and all my mates. It was beyond horrible. What was happening was awful enough, but I was supposed to be there. My mum is thankful I wasn’t, as she wouldn’t have liked me to have gone through what she and the others went through. That sounds callous when people lost their lives and families and friends lost loved ones, but I don’t mean it to be. I’ve seen what it did to my mum at the time and then what it did to her again when she was forced to relive it all at the inquest. She aged 10 years overnight when she had to go through the folders and watch the films in preparation for giving evidence. It’s not the stuff that we have seen. I tried looking through the folder, to understand what my mum was going through, but I had to stop. It was heartbreaking. I won’t go into detail, but on the day my mum attempted to resuscitate 6 or 7 people. It was impossible for all but one, who she got breathing again before they took him to hospital. She doesn’t know what happened to the lad from there though. I was on duty a week or so later at the first game in Sheffield, at Bramall Lane. I was the only one there who hadn’t been at Hillsborough the week before. I don’t know how the others got through it. I was also on duty a week or so later at Goodison, for the Merseyside derby. It was definitely Liverpool’s first game, but I think Everton may have played an away game first. It was obviously even more emotional than the game at Bramall Lane. I visited several Liverpool fans over the next few weeks who had been there and lost someone. Not as a counsellor or anything like that, as I wasn’t qualified for that, but just to visit people who had reached out to the St. John Ambulance brigade. It was so hard, as they were all around the same age as me, 19, so old enough to know what had gone on, but too young to be going through something like that. You may recall that the Football League ridiculously had Liverpool playing away at Wednesday almost a year to the day after the disaster. One of the lads I had been to see came to the first aid room to say hello. It was his first match since being there a year ago. The guts that must have took. But he coped with it amazingly and it helped him tremendously. I certainly wouldn’t have been able to do that had I been in his shoes. I’ve spent the last 34 years both wishing I’d been there and glad I wasn’t, in equal measure. But I’ve seen the toll it has taken on my mum, so I’m inclined to go with the latter. My mum was dreading giving evidence at the inquest. I’m sure you don’t need any other reasons to dislike SY Police, in relation to that day, but my mum had to watch all the horrific videos, look at all the photos to identify the people she treated, had to read all the statements and then had to stand up in court and give evidence in front of all the people who had such strong feelings, and my mum is very quiet and reserved, and what support did she get from SY Police? They gave her the number for the Samaritans. And that was it. Disgusting. To end on a nice note though, when my mum had finished giving evidence and was sat in the room afterwards with my step-dad and the barrister, a bereaved family asked if they could see her…and I’m sodding tearing up writing this! My poor mum was petrified, but the mum of one of the young lads who had died came in, gave her a hug and thanked her for everything that she and the rest of the volunteers had done that day. That one act of kindness from a woman reliving the worst day of her life, meant so much to my mum who, in different circumstances, was also reliving the worst day of her life.
