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Hillsborough, Twenty Years On

Hillsborough, Twenty Years On

Old Apr 11th 2009, 5:58 am
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Default Hillsborough, Twenty Years On

This is an interesting piece, by a Sky Sports producer who was there as a 17-year-old fan.

The bit about getting in without having to show tickets confirms a number of other reports, and once again puts the policing that day in a bad light. (Nobody 'broke down' the gates - the police opened them).

Phil Scraton's book "Hillsborough: The Truth" is also worth reading, but it deteriorates into a call for revenge (as opposed to justice) about half-way through.

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-...0904215259106?

http://www.redandwhitekop.com/forum/...topic=170834.0
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Old Apr 11th 2009, 6:35 am
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Default Re: Hillsborough, Twenty Years On

Originally Posted by The Dean
This is an interesting piece, by a Sky Sports producer who was there as a 17-year-old fan.

The bit about getting in without having to show tickets confirms a number of other reports, and once again puts the policing that day in a bad light. (Nobody 'broke down' the gates - the police opened them).

Phil Scraton's book "Hillsborough: The Truth" is also worth reading, but it deteriorates into a call for revenge (as opposed to justice) about half-way through.

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-...0904215259106?

http://www.redandwhitekop.com/forum/...topic=170834.0
The police opened them to avoid crushing on the outside of the ground as a lot of Scouse fans turned up 10 mins before kick off after bowling out of the local pubs.....and a lot of them were ticketless.

If the ticketless element hadnt have been there (why were they anyway ?), then maybe there would have been no need for the polcie to open the gates, and the tragedy that ensued....
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Old Apr 11th 2009, 6:57 am
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Default Re: Hillsborough, Twenty Years On

Originally Posted by BangleMan
The police opened them to avoid crushing on the outside of the ground as a lot of Scouse fans turned up 10 mins before kick off after bowling out of the local pubs.....and a lot of them were ticketless.

If the ticketless element hadnt have been there (why were they anyway ?), then maybe there would have been no need for the polcie to open the gates, and the tragedy that ensued....
I'm not defending (a minority of) Liverpool fans that day. But many people said they were able to walk in without showing a ticket - gates were open wide, no milling around, no crushing outside. We can all believe what we will.

For me, the Taylor enquiry missed a crucial point - what was happening at the back of the tunnel at the back of the terrace. Instead of saying to each other "We obviously can't get in here - it's too full. Let's go out and find another way in", people there just kept shoving forward. The Taylor Report didn't address that.

But............. so many things the police did that day had terrible repercussions. And the failure to realise that a disaster was unfolding before their eyes was simply unforgiveable.
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Old Apr 11th 2009, 5:56 pm
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Default Re: Hillsborough, Twenty Years On

Originally Posted by BangleMan
The police opened them to avoid crushing on the outside of the ground as a lot of Scouse fans turned up 10 mins before kick off after bowling out of the local pubs.....and a lot of them were ticketless.

If the ticketless element hadnt have been there (why were they anyway ?), then maybe there would have been no need for the polcie to open the gates, and the tragedy that ensued....
Now im not defending anyone and maybe people will look at me in a bad light here but I have done this on many occasions.

I have travelled all over europe and the UK to watch rangers and several times i have been there without a ticket. Sometimes you make irrational decisions in your desire to watch a match (stupid I know but that was, and still is to an extent, my fixation).

i have seen what can happen when crowds are packed. A few years ago in stuttgart, we had officially around 6000 tickets. There were around 12000 rangers fans and most of these guys had tickets but for the Home sections. the policed decided to shepherd these guys and just put them in with the official away end. I have never seen an end so packed and actually wished for terracing as it would have been safer. Luckily (and us being shite) we didnt score but if we did, im convinced someone could have been killed that night.
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Old Apr 12th 2009, 4:04 am
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Default Re: Hillsborough, Twenty Years On

the sad thing is that I've never heard a scouser acknowledge the role they played in causing the disaster. they were too busy pointing blame at others.
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Old Apr 12th 2009, 5:22 am
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Default Re: Hillsborough, Twenty Years On

Hillsborough was a tragedy but in my opinion an accident. The police made mistakes and so did the scousers. It seems that Hillsborugh was a critical point in recent history. It seemed to be the end of the accident and the raise of it there is blame put in a claim attitude. The police thought that by opening the gates they were averting a crush outside. it was not like they deliberately set out to massacre 96 scousers, and the scousers who did not have tickets should not of been there but it was a semi final of the FA cup and fans want to watch their teams.

I remember once watching a discussion programme on ITV a couple of years after the disaster and a man from the St Johns ambulance was on and he was saying how Hillsborough had ruined his life, how whe he closed his eyes all he saw were the dead people that he tried to save. You could see he was a basketcase. In the audience was a scouser who just kept saying how it was his job to be there and giving him no sympathy at all whilst going on about how that because he was there he should get compo. disgusting. I know and believe that not all scousers are like this but unfortunately their quest for justice has been overtaken by some need for compo.

Also in England we only care about the 96 who died at Hillsborough, nobody mentions the people who died at Heysel and we never hear about them suing the city of Liverpool or Liverpool Fc for compo but it was not the Liverpool fans faults it was the Italians fans who ran away from them is the argument i hear from lovely Liverpool fans.

The fallout from Hillsborough was in my opinion the ruination of football. Now football grounds have little or no atmosphere. I cringe whenever i hear music played after a goal. I hate the fact that i have to be a member to buy a ticket 2 months in advance to watch a game. When i was 14 and older i used to visit my brother who lived in London look at the paper and see which London team was at home and go and watch that game. I used to go early make sure i got in and like the other real fans you would see the atmosphere build. If you were in a ground an hour before kick off the buzz would get bigger and bigger. Now people go in ten minutes before the game starts. Football is run for the corporates and sky tv subscribers. Fans get treated like shit. I just looked at the price of England v Andorra tickets online £33.50 to watch a team that would not look out of place in the Blue square premier. For this alone i blame the scousers but i will not be looking for compo.
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Old Apr 12th 2009, 5:48 am
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Default Re: Hillsborough, Twenty Years On

Originally Posted by boroboy
Hillsborough was a tragedy but in my opinion an accident. The police made mistakes and so did the scousers. It seems that Hillsborugh was a critical point in recent history. It seemed to be the end of the accident and the raise of it there is blame put in a claim attitude. The police thought that by opening the gates they were averting a crush outside. it was not like they deliberately set out to massacre 96 scousers, and the scousers who did not have tickets should not of been there but it was a semi final of the FA cup and fans want to watch their teams.

I remember once watching a discussion programme on ITV a couple of years after the disaster and a man from the St Johns ambulance was on and he was saying how Hillsborough had ruined his life, how whe he closed his eyes all he saw were the dead people that he tried to save. You could see he was a basketcase. In the audience was a scouser who just kept saying how it was his job to be there and giving him no sympathy at all whilst going on about how that because he was there he should get compo. disgusting. I know and believe that not all scousers are like this but unfortunately their quest for justice has been overtaken by some need for compo.

Also in England we only care about the 96 who died at Hillsborough, nobody mentions the people who died at Heysel and we never hear about them suing the city of Liverpool or Liverpool Fc for compo but it was not the Liverpool fans faults it was the Italians fans who ran away from them is the argument i hear from lovely Liverpool fans.

The fallout from Hillsborough was in my opinion the ruination of football. Now football grounds have little or no atmosphere. I cringe whenever i hear music played after a goal. I hate the fact that i have to be a member to buy a ticket 2 months in advance to watch a game. When i was 14 and older i used to visit my brother who lived in London look at the paper and see which London team was at home and go and watch that game. I used to go early make sure i got in and like the other real fans you would see the atmosphere build. If you were in a ground an hour before kick off the buzz would get bigger and bigger. Now people go in ten minutes before the game starts. Football is run for the corporates and sky tv subscribers. Fans get treated like shit. I just looked at the price of England v Andorra tickets online £33.50 to watch a team that would not look out of place in the Blue square premier. For this alone i blame the scousers but i will not be looking for compo.
Well said............ mostly.

I've been saying for some time that the "Justice For The 96" campaign has become a revenge mission, perhaps even a vendetta, against the police.

Heysel was somewhat different - a crumbling old stadium (the crush barriers weren't even embedded in the concrete of the terracing), and a police force that was totally underprepared for even minor crowd control situations, never mind what actually happened. (In Brian Glanville's book 'Champions Of Europe' the Brussels Chief of Police is quoted as being surprised that anything happened before the match started).

I lost all sense of sympathy for Liverpool FC when that match was allowed to proceed. (We all remember one of the Juventus players having to wait to take a corner while a stretcher was carried past). Had I been a Liverpool player I would simply have refused to play, out of respect. Jeff Powell's utterly brilliant and moving report in the following days' Daily Mail was a masterpiece of objectivity combined with compassion.

The people of Liverpool have milked all this very well, and Phil Scraton's stuff just stokes up the fire.

BUT............. as I've said, the police screwed up badly that day, and then lied to cover it up. And Duckenfield telling his officers 'don't write anything in your notebooks' was perhaps the biggest shame of all.
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Old Apr 12th 2009, 5:55 am
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Default Re: Hillsborough, Twenty Years On

Originally Posted by boroboy
Hillsborough was a tragedy but in my opinion an accident. The police made mistakes and so did the scousers. It seems that Hillsborugh was a critical point in recent history. It seemed to be the end of the accident and the raise of it there is blame put in a claim attitude. The police thought that by opening the gates they were averting a crush outside. it was not like they deliberately set out to massacre 96 scousers, and the scousers who did not have tickets should not of been there but it was a semi final of the FA cup and fans want to watch their teams.

I remember once watching a discussion programme on ITV a couple of years after the disaster and a man from the St Johns ambulance was on and he was saying how Hillsborough had ruined his life, how whe he closed his eyes all he saw were the dead people that he tried to save. You could see he was a basketcase. In the audience was a scouser who just kept saying how it was his job to be there and giving him no sympathy at all whilst going on about how that because he was there he should get compo. disgusting. I know and believe that not all scousers are like this but unfortunately their quest for justice has been overtaken by some need for compo.

Also in England we only care about the 96 who died at Hillsborough, nobody mentions the people who died at Heysel and we never hear about them suing the city of Liverpool or Liverpool Fc for compo but it was not the Liverpool fans faults it was the Italians fans who ran away from them is the argument i hear from lovely Liverpool fans.

The fallout from Hillsborough was in my opinion the ruination of football. Now football grounds have little or no atmosphere. I cringe whenever i hear music played after a goal. I hate the fact that i have to be a member to buy a ticket 2 months in advance to watch a game. When i was 14 and older i used to visit my brother who lived in London look at the paper and see which London team was at home and go and watch that game. I used to go early make sure i got in and like the other real fans you would see the atmosphere build. If you were in a ground an hour before kick off the buzz would get bigger and bigger. Now people go in ten minutes before the game starts. Football is run for the corporates and sky tv subscribers. Fans get treated like shit. I just looked at the price of England v Andorra tickets online £33.50 to watch a team that would not look out of place in the Blue square premier. For this alone i blame the scousers but i will not be looking for compo.
We all know why the taylor report etc came about and we have to remember what happened that day.

However, I still have my season ticket for ibrox (although my father uses it as i am here). But i would gladly pay double to be able to stand with my mates at a game and have an atmosphere back again. Nowadays George is in this stand, row P, Grant is the other stand row w etc etc etc. they have killed the atmosphere at stadiums all over Britain. you just have to look at how they do it in germany - they still have sections for standing (when its a european game, many of the stadiums can turn that section into seating to appease UEFA). Thats the way forward, safe standing at the game.

But we must never forget those who died in Hillsborough or the Ibrox disaster in 1971 in which 66 people died also:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibrox_d...Ibrox_disaster
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