The weekend papers are full of memories of the Hillsborough disaster, twenty years ago, when 96 Liverpool fans were killed, crushed in a crowd-surge at the Leppings Lane end of the Sheffield Wednesday ground. They were there because Liverpool were meeting Brian Clough’s Nottingham Forest in the 1989 FA Cup semi-final. The cause of the surge was shambolic organisation, particularly by the South Yorkshire Police.
Particularly poignant is Henry Winter's article in the Sunday Telegraph. His focus is on Kenny Dalglish, and how profoundly moved the Liverpool manager was by the events of that awful day. Winter tells how Dalglish marshalled his team to ensure that the players were represented at every funeral, himself attending up to four different services a day; how unimpressed Dalglish was by the politicians who turned up at Anfield thinking that the pitch draped in red scarves might be a great photo opportunity (with the exception of Neil Kinnock whose grief was absolutely genuine); and how Hillsborough eventually took its toll on the man.
I was watching football at the time of the disaster. I remember that I was sitting in the South Stand of Wimbledon’s Plough Lane (Wimbledon 1 – Tottenham Hotspur 2 was the result) listening to a sports programme via a radio earpiece. The radio commentary of events at Hillsborough has long been swept under the media carpet, but there was no doubting the initial reaction of the radio commentators – Liverpool supporters were running riot, it was an absolute disgrace, those selfish fans are bringing shame to the name of football. Oh dear, how absolutely, totally wrong those first reactions turned out to be.
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