The Hillsborough disaster was a game-changer. Quite literally. It changed the game I loved. Or rather, it changed the way it was watched. As a consequence of Hillsborough, all top flight grounds became ‘all seating’. I hated it at the time and sometimes I still do. I watch in on tv whilst standing up, but crowd problems are rare in my lounge. But it was essential and inevitable and the disaster, back in 1986 was one that had been waiting to happen for years. It was just the catalyst that forced football to, basically, accept responsibility for the 30-70,000 people that would be crammed into their grounds every saturday. (Didn’t do Sundays back then).

Yet it wasn’t just that the grounds were unsafe fire-traps (Bradford City?) with no escape routes at all (Heisel?) but also that the fans were, not always, and not all of them, not very nice. The seating and rudimentary safety precautions that followed increased the costs, so prices went up, quite drastically. And this installed a more genteel edge to the game. The fights and riots that occurred at virtually every game kind’a fizzled out. No-one wanted to get thrown out of the ground having paid over a tenner for a ticket!!! Or even get arrested before the kick-off.

And whilst I will generally disagree with anyone speaking in Scouse, on principle, I stand in awe and admiration of those families who’ve fought for nearly 30 years for ‘justice’ for the 96 that died. The police lied, blamed the fans, across numerous inquests and inquiries, whilst all along it was Old Bill wot done it. Gross negligence. Manslaughter. And now their names have effectively been cleared. Which doesn’t bring them back but it makes everyone feel better about it.

And the policing along with the ’emergency services’ (over an hour for an ambulance) were horrendous. The death toll would have been far less if everyone in authority had behaved properly. Even just done their jobs.

Yet I can sort of understand, if not the cover up itself, though everyone wants to save his or her own ass, the behaviour of the police and others on the day. Because its all based on an assumption, a normally fairly accurate one AT THAT TIME, from vast experience in such matters, that ‘all football fans are thugs, hooligans, drunks and total scum’. So keeping them ‘penned up’ was what you did to keep rival fans apart. Forcing them with horses into channels. Treating fans as you would cattle, but much more dangerous cattle. Drunk cattle.

So when the shouting, screaming, panic and struggles occurred that day, the police would be slow to react. They saw it every week.

The completely unforgivable bit is doing nothing once they realised that this was in fact a serious problem, not just ‘fan aggro’. And nothing was how most of that force responded. Then they covered it all up. Blamed the fans. Continued to cover it up right up till a few months ago.

Is the ‘Naz’ in Naz Shah short for Nazi? Just askin’.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx