Does anyone have any memories/personal stories from this? My grandparents are from Liverpool and I was a big Liverpool fan at the time (not anymore, i figure walking around with an English Premier League team shirt is tantamount to walking around with a McDonalds shirt or something these days, very few of the players are locals, pty ltd's rather than football clubs, blah blah blah...you may not quite get this if you haven't grown up in England and experienced the distinct change in football culture).
Anyway, at the time I was 12 years old and the one thing I remember was tv coverage saying how many funerals Kenny Dalglish and his wife were going to.
Going to the Memorial at Anfield really made it hit home. The twentieth anniversary is coming up next month. Respect.
Oh, and does anyone remember the furore after the Sun published its front page story that Liverpool fans were beating up ambulance officers trying to give first aid and pissing on them (both of which were found to be completely untrue in subsequent inquests...the biggest crime actually being that 80 ambulances were refused entry to the ground by the police).
Anyway, its astounding that circulation for the Sun in Merseyside went from being a 200,000 per issue to 12,000 per issue, a rate that persists these days (i.e. the boycott by local newsagents and locals in general is still very much in place).
Cunt of the highest order
I vaguely remember my sister watching the news and crying and seeing bits of footage, before being forcibly removed from the room by my parents as I was only 8.
strange. great failures in crowd control.
i mean, normally i don't think much of crowd control/barricades/fencing whatever, but some thought must have gone into it to stop things like this from happening all the time.
I thought that the Sun also ran stories that Liverpool fans were stealing the wallets of those that had died.
was pretty young but i remember photos of people squished against high fences. i'm reminded of it everytime i see the barricades at indian cricket grounds.
The police fucked up. Sheffield Wednesday had had crushing problems at that end of the ground earlier against Spurs and had ''fixed the problem'' in terms of gates that led to certain ''pens'' in that terrace. But the police didn't direct fans to the empty pens accordingly on the day, and no one has ever known why!
Yes beertickle the Sun said that liverpool fans were stealing from the dead, they also claimed that one young girl's dead body had been ''abused''. All unsubstantiated.
Kelvin Calder MacKenzie is a dirty cunt who doesn't have the courage to apologise to the families of the 96, when he knows what he did was wrong.
Further, i'm sick of uninformed aussie journalists using the word Hillsborough when talking about perceived issues in relation to a-league fans. Hillsborough had little to do with football culture and everything to do with poor decisions from the people in power...an issue that continues today.
Thank fucking christ they pulled down the fences.
heysel stadium disaster as well...one of my idiot friends suggested that part of the charm etc was lost after gentrification/overhaul of football culture and the all seater stadims et al
He's partly right EB. They did need to make changes, but they went all draconian and have destroyed a lot of the passion and spectacle.
I think the Germans, with their Safe Standing areas, have shown the best way to keep the active supporters happy whilst keeping everyone very safe.
yeah i know he's partly right but he supports wolves...
....not wanting to stir the hornets nest but a genuine question- why did they have barricades/ fences in the first place then?
i'm not sure exactly why juicenewton, but part of the problem was that neo-nazi groups attached themselves to english football clubs in the late 70's/early 80's (particularly in south london) and turned the notion of the travelling football fan into that of skinheaded sociopath. the opportunity for continental travel and being able to clash with the dutch and germans added more appeal in this regard.
many people say the fences went up after heysel in '85, however the fences were going up well before that. needless to say the fences did go up because the conservative govt of the time viewed football fans as neanderthals that needed to be contained at any cost.
well, erm, they got my vote.
really?
nar. i don't understand the football fan, but i don't hate them. diff'ent strokes for blah blah.
i understand them! i even understand the police boss who lied about opening the gate which led to the crush.
but i don't understand the cunt who was editor of the sun at the time (see above), who authorised the following front page days after the tragedy, based purely on unsubstantiated rumours and the speculative imagination of a lying tory mp, a front page that even his own press staff were appalled to publish:
Front Page of the Sun
Gerrard's plea to UEFA
UEFA have already said they're going to try to reschedule the match.
I wonder if they'd afford Bradford City the same luxury, should they suddenly make a meteoric rise to the top of English, and then European, football.
I also wonder what effect the timing will have for their performance in the return leg at stamford bridge
If this doesn't move you, you might want to get that pulse checked: four days after Hillsborough, and six minutes into a European Cup semi-final between AC Milan and Real Madrid, the referee stops play for a minute's silence, during which the Milan fans break into a spontaneous chorus of You'll Never Walk Alone. - Guardian
YNWA
I remember the TV images and not really understanding. a friend of my grandfather's, a very rough old Glaswegian cried, which gave me some measure of how bad things were.
the tragedy, and the response to it, tells you everything that was wrong and just downright evil about the Thatcher government and her despicable cheerleaders in the press.
Hillsborough Remembered - this Wednesday on the History Channel (UK)
yes i've seen that.
going to be an emotional week on merseyside...
as a Evertonian from Liverpool it affected me and a lot of my family, (some of them are reds unfortunately!)
it did unite the city over football and for a time you could mingle at derbies no matter what colour shirt you wore, but the nastiness has crept back in (from both sides I may add) and this is sad. cos it touched nearly everyone whether blue or red, friends of family members were involved
and on that note, there is a remembrance flag that will be flown at Wembley by Evertonians next Saturday in honour of the 96 who went to watch a FA cup match and didn't come home
and fuck the Sun and any murdoch press cos they still say they were right - twats the lot of them
You sure you've seen it jasmine? I was led to believe that this is the premiere. Kenny Dalglish speaks publicly about the disaster for the first time.
i see your point, i definitely haven't seen that one! my mistake.
tomorrow night on Aussie pay tv (ironic as that is)
http://www.contrast.org/hillsborough/home.shtm