Hillsborough Disaster.....who saw it coming?

At the school where I work in Chatswood some of the Year eight classes are studying ballards / storytelling poetry. In particular they have been looking at the Ballad of Hillsborough
poem by Simon Rae.
Most adults in the UK and many worldwide, know that in 1989, 96 Liverpool supporters lost their lives in a terrible human crush at the Hillsborough stadium in Sheffield during an F.A. Cup semi-final match versus Nottingham Forest. You can read more about the 1989 disaster here.
What many people don’t know however is that disaster nearly struck eight years earlier, at the same ground, in the same round, of the same cup competition.
A video of the crush at the Hillsborough 81' Tottenham v Wolves semi-final is included below
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtzHVe2mEN0
That year it was Tottenham Hotspur and Wolverhampton Wanderers who travelled to the Hillsborough stadium, and it was the Spurs fans who were allocated the smaller, problematic Leppings lane end of the ground. There were broken limbs and other injuries sustained that day in 1981, 38 being injured but thankfully no fatalities largely due to the fact that the police opened up pitch-side gates as the crushing became apparent. If only they had done that in 1989.

Fans try to escape the crush in 1989 liverpool v Notts Forest semi-final

The poem the boys are reading is by by Simon Rae

THE BALLAD OF HILLSBOROUGH

The Liverpool supporters
Were given the smaller end;
Crammed behnd the goalmouth,
The fans were tightly penned –

Penned, penned in their thousands,
Penned in under the sky
No one there had reckoned
That ninety-five would die.

The barriers all buckled,
They couldn’t take the strain
The cheers of jubilation
Turned into cries of pain.

And when at last they noticed,
The police unlocked a gate,
But the exit was too narrow,
And they’d opened it too late
The nation watched in horror,
Stunned with disbelief
As the shadows from the goalmouth
Stained a football pitch with grief.

An inquiry has been opened
To find out who’s to blame,
But for those who lost their dear ones
Nothing will be the same.

For nothing brings the dead back,
Post mortems, flowers or prayers,
It’s like reaching the top of the stairwell
And finding there are no stairs.

That drop into the darkness
Goes down and down and down;
And grief’s black water well there,
Inviting you to drown.

Never to see your loved ones,
Or hear them on the phone –
It’s hard to believe when it happens
That you’ll never walk alone.
But down at the Kop at Anfield,
The goalmouth shows it’s true:
The scarves around the crossbar
Are knotted red and blue.

Despite divided loyalties
Liverpool loved its own,
And every tribute there proclaims:
You’ll never walk alone –
Not by the banks of the Mersey
Nor down the terraced streets;
Beneath the great cathedrals
A city’s warm heart beats.

And now in the cold spring sunset,
The Liver Bird’s aflame
The Phoenix rose from the ashes;
A city can do the same.
Simon Rae
I was at that 1981 Tottenham  / Wolverhampton semi-final, so I was pleased to go in and give our schoolboys some background to the culture behind football in the UK. More particularly I was able to give them some idea of what it was like to be in a football crowd up at Hillsborough. Most of them had no idea that 'standing' at games used to be the norm. I tried to give them an insight into what standing in a crowd was like.  Additionally interpreting many of the 'football' references for the boys.
I tried to give them an idea of how terrifying the 'funnel' effect of a crowd converging on turnstiles could be.

The 'Leppings Lane' end also had a tunnel before the fans emerged up behind the goal. Usually it would be a matter of seconds before you emerge into the light behind the goal. The effect of penned fences at the end and being at a standstill in the tunnel would have added to the terror felt by those unable to go forward or back.

We looked at terminlogy in the poem such as 'Liver bird' which is  part of the Liverpool badge and is mentioned in the lines
The Liver Bird’s aflame
The Phoenix rose from the ashes

The multiple references to You’ll never walk alone – clearly developed new more poignant meaning after the Hillsborough. In class we turned off the lights and played the following rendition pretty loud!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjVJETz7lfk
Liverpool fans  singing: You’ll never walk alone


The boys also wondered about the lines
The scarves around the crossbar
Are knotted red and blue.
Of course the whole world of football had come together in grief for Hillsborough, not least the Everton blue and white side of Liverpool

One of the stronger messages I put across was that the lessons of 81' were not really learnt and this ommission contributed to what happened in 89'. The boys were keen to know who was to blame for the disaster. Police. Fans. Ground Controllers. FA. Authorities.......all I could say was that there is still no resolution for most connected with the 1989 Hillsborough disaster.

Web site Looking at the 1981 semi between Spurs and Wolves
http://thehillsboroughdisasterdocumentary.wordpress.com/2011/11/16/hillsborough-1981-disaster-narrowly-avoided/
Web site looking at the making of a documentary on Hillsborogh disaster 1989
http://thehillsboroughdisasterdocumentary.wordpress.com/

Second NLD of the season....not a lot more to say:)

I wrote this about the first NLD of the season earlier in the year....a game we won 2-1. Quite a lot has happened to both clubs since then. Form is rarely relevant in these games so I'll go for a 1-1 draw in this one......COYS!
Monday morning 2am here in oz, the alarm goes off and the house is awake. Short prayer thanking the gods of Foxtel and we are ready to tune in to 'the derby' Tottenham v Arsenal. This is the game that brings both sets of supporters to life.....twice a season, everything is on the line.
My dad Sid took me to a reserve game against Arsenal in 1963 where legend Bobby Smith was trying to get some fitness. All I remember was that he sat on the ball and burst it!
Yes, this is a fixture with which I have a long association. The first League derby I went to was at Highbury on 8th Mar1966.....45 years ago:) My late cousin Peter Speed had taken me. It was a night match and the crowd was 51,000. We were standing in the clock-end with the Spurs fans. Me, being a small eleven year old, my cousin stood the whole game with me on his shoulders! On a cold evening with mist swirling around the floodlights I fell in love that night with the excitment. This for me would always be 'the derby' game.

The following year I returned to Highbury again and on a bright September Saturday afternoon watched from the North Bank as my side were hammered 4-0! Regardless of the competition this game always meant a lot to everyone. I lived on an estate made up of 300 flats and it was true to say that the kids there were roughly split 50 / 50 in their support...there were very few glory hunters back then supporting sides located in the cold harsh north.
In 1968 we were drawn in a two legged League Cup semi-final the first being at Highbury. The two legs were a fortnight apart and it was necessary to get tickets for the games. What did we do? Set out @ 5.00am to queue up with thousand of supporters stretching right around the ground ....first at Highbury and the week later the same at White Hart Lane. Tickets secured we were treated to a great two matches losing 1-0 in the first and only managing a 1-1 draw at home. As is often the way in football Arsenal managed to miss out when clear favourites losing to tiny Swindon at Wembley 3-1, Don Rogers the hero.
Even though I 'd not seen the great Spurs double side other than in the FA Cup final on TV, I knew that we were the only club to achieve the League/ Cup double in modern times. It was pretty distressing then to realise that in season 1970-71 Arsenal had the chance to emulate our achievement and half of this at White Hart Lane! On the Monday I was desperately hoping my boys would stop them from becoming champions at at our place. It was a school day with a 7.30 evening kick off. Even my school had realised what an important day it was and allowed a group of us to leave at 2.00pm to go to the game. For some reason the game wasn't made all ticket and even though we set out mid-afternoon, Tottenham was packed when we got there, so much so that the queues were out along Tottenham High Road. There we stood for half an hour the queue hardly moving. Eventually we saw that people were walking past the queue and cutting in further up. We jumped out and joined the surge into the Park Lane. For some reason I had worn my heavy crombie coat to the game and as we closed in on the gate the crush became unbelievable. Yards from the turnstile, scarf strangling me and coat being like a straight-jacket I told my mate I had to give up and escape the crowd. We were devastated. Somehow, as we wandered further down the lane, we came across a turnstile with just a tiny queue paid our money and we were in! Oh what a night. There we were in our end, the Park Lane but Arsenal had been allocated half of it. The game was a frenzy but in spite of pressing their goal continually we couldn't score. Then it happened, they scored through a Ray Kennedy header and there we were in the middle of a massive Arsenal celebration winning the league at our ground:(
On the following Saturday I went out to watch the Arsenal / Liverpool final as a neutral. Charlie George did his part to win it for the gunners and they had won the double.

Not all the games betwen these two sides are rememered for the result. When we played at Highbury the season before the kids from round our way, Arsenal and Spurs had walked almost the whole way back to London Fields after the game. The little low decker 236 bus had been so packed on the way home we decided to walk. It's hard to imagine rival rival supporters going to games together nowdays but that's what we did back in 1970...only splitting up at the ground. This particular night walk was memorable for a very sad reason. One of the Arsenal supporters, Steven Long, 16 was to die tragically two days later. He crashed his motor scooter into a lamp post in Bethnal Geen and was killed instantly. For all of us the lasting memory was walking home with him from Highbury that night.
Tottenham / Arsenal matches are like some perpetual conflict going on in Valhalla. Regardless of league position they are unpredictable. In March 1987 we played them in the League Cup semi-final. Back then there were replays and this tie went to a third match at White Hart Lane. To Tottenham's lasting embarrassment they went off too early! Leading 1-0 with a few minutes left the announcer started giving details of where /when the Spurs fans could purchase their cup final tickets! Of course this was a fatal mistake and in last minute Arsenal equalised and then wen on to win in extra time.....fail!
This game can have all the highs and lows of life. One year (Dec 78) at an all ticket Tottenham / Arsenal match me and a mate got tickets for the Park Lane end which had been allocated to the gunners fans. What made things worse was that it was the game that they hammered us 5-0, Liam Brady running riot. There we stood as the Arsenal celebrated each goal....eventually we went to the police and asked if could be let out and into the Spurs area. They said no! You knew you had tickets for the wrong end but still came in. Worse still, the Arsenal fans around us heard what was said and we spent the rest of the game very uncomfortably trying to avoid eye contact with anyone.

What comes around goes around they say and in April 83 we absolutely smashed them at our place also by 5-0! A tiny Spurs player named Terry Gibson terrorised them throughout and it was probably one of my top derby experiences.

The FA Cup semi -finals of 91 and 93 also provided the extreme emotion reserved for derbies in this case with the stakes being an FA Cup final place. The elation and devastation here remain in the memory for all true supporters of these clubs.
As I share this Spurs / Arseanal blog, it really came home to me that two of my longest and best friends are no longer here to share banter. Johnny Burnham and Tony Fuller were two fantastic people I grew up with.....went to many derbies with ....and miss every day:)
All this said, it is the last match you played that gives the bragging rights. After a long long period of failing to beat Arsenal we have started to even up the record. We won at their place in 2010 with a great comeback 3-2 win and drew the return at WHL 3-3, so for last season we came out well.
The game on Sunday sees many pundits making Spurs favourites after Arsenal's patchy start to the season. I wouldn't take a lot of notice of the betting. It really is in the balance and I see it as a 50/50 proposition. Regardless of the outcome I'm sure I will be hearing from both sets of supporters during and after the game. Come On You Spurs!

http://www.topspurs.com/thfc-arsenal.htm

The Football stars have aligned but what does it all mean?

Ah well, what a week this been for football in England. Several stories that seemed to be running in parallel suddenly veered into each other. The FA, that organisation that makes the Freemasons seem like evangelists, finally moved to disqualify John Terry being England captain. No surprise there you may say but they haven't actually ruled him out from playing altogether. This may occur once the court case regarding his alleged racial vilification of Anton  Ferdinand is resolved. Unfortunately this case was laid down for trial after the Euros.

To me this would have given England coach Capello a big selection problem. The coach of a side knows instinctively who should be captain of that side. Don't believe it? Believe me it can cause awful morale problems if the 'wrong man' has the armband and the natural leader is also still around. This was the reality that Capello was facing. In so many words he basically told the FA....I'm the coach...I should pick the captain. This reality existed for England regardless of whether Terry proves to be a racist or not. While he was in the squad Capello was correct in identifying him as his captain.

The timing of Capellos' revolt had a certain synchronicity with the winding up of another trial also taking place in London. Harry Redknapp was this week cleared of tax evasion charges going back over 5 years. This was particulary relevant to Capello because it is Redknapp who has continually been touted as the 'English solution to the underwhelming Italian experiment'. Lo and behold the main impediment to Redknapp ever being appointed as England manager was suddenly gone. The FA now needs to move smartly but not hastily to appoint a successor to Capello who promptly resigned from his post. Echo's of past mistakes may come back to haunt the FA if Harry doesn't get the job. The populist groundswell of opinon has spoken. However, the FA has history of ignoring the popular choice hence Brain Clough never managed England. It seems that because Spurs are having their best season for decades Harry has a reluctance to jump ship immediately. Spurs are outsiders to win the league for the first time since 1961....a lifetime opportunity. To me the sensible solution will be to let Harry stay at Tottenham, do the England job part-time til seasons end then take them to the Euros. Will that happen? Unlikely...we are dealing with the FA here!

Football the vehicle for societies woes or just a regular escape from reality?

Hearing that 74 people had been killed this week at a football match this week in Egypt, in many ways, did not really surprise me. Psychologist Daniel Kahneman in his book Thinking Fast and Slow suggests that when we have been exposed to surprising or unlikely events we are then much less surprised when other similar ones take place. Thus, when I tell you I was reading and corresponding only this week about the football tragedy at Hillsborough you can see that my mind was almost primed for this sort of event. I had been to the Spurs game in question in 1981 up at Hillsborough.....a game predating the Liverpool disater by eight years. The discussion was on this web site: http://thehillsboroughdisasterdocumentary.wordpress.com/2011/11/16/hillsborough-1981-disaster-narrowly-avoided/

The Hillsborough Disaster Documentary

The making of the true story of the Hillsborough disaster

Hillsborough; 1981 Spurs disaster narrowly avoided.

November 16th, 2011 § 16 Comments

Most people know that in 1989, 96 Liverpool supporters lost their lives in a terrible human crush at the Hillsborough stadium in Sheffield during an F.A. Cup semi-final match versus Nottingham Forest. You can read more about the 1989 disaster here.
What many people don’t know however is that disaster nearly struck eight years earlier, at the same ground, in the same round, of the same cup competition. That year it was Tottenham Hotspur and Wolverhampton Wanderers who travelled to the Hillsborough stadium, and it was the Spurs fans who were allocated the smaller, problematic Leppings lane end of the ground. There were broken limbs and other injuries sustained that day in 1981, but thankfully no fatalities largely due to the fact that the police opened up pitch-side gates as the crushing became apparent. If only they had done that in 1989.

Football disasters have happened all too often, even in my lifetime. Ibrox in 1971 saw the loss of 66 lives when a crush occurred on a stair case in the ground.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/rangers/8230503/The-Ibrox-Disaster-of-January-2-1971-which-claimed-66-lives-was-a-tragedy-waiting-to-happen.html

The Heysel disaster in 1985 led to the death of 39 Juventus supporters in a European final involving Liverpool.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/768380.stm

The Bradford City fire cost the lives of 56 people also in 1985 this was the day when an old wooden Grandstand caught fire with horrific effect.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2005/may/11/bradford

The Hillsborough tragedy cost the lives of 96 in 1989 the repercussions of this event still resonate today, 23 years on. This list of football related tragedies is in no way comprehensive many more have taken place worldwide at football matches.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/april/15/newsid_2491000/2491195.stm

The riot this week at Port Said involved supporters of local side Al-Masri and Cairo's Al-Ahly.
http://www.news.com.au/world/egypt-football-violence-kills-73-medics/story-e6frfkyi-1226260171443
 Much has been written about what happened at this particular football match. The Cairo side Al-Ahly and their local capital city counterparts Zamalek have a long and colourful history of derby rivalry. Al-Ahly are known to be the 'working class' supporters favourite team as opposed to their more 'middle class' rivals Zamalek. It has been suggested that when Al-Ahly traveled to Port Said to play Al-Masri  there were sinister undertones involved between their group of 'ultra supporters' and the various police and security forces at the match. The fall of the Hosni Mubarak regime in 2011 had left many unanswered questions in Egypt as the Moslem Brotherhood have won parliamentary legitmacy. The post-Mubarek status quo has left simmering resentment for various governement, political and religious groups. So, in this case, it seems that the ultras of Al-Ahly unwittingly walked into a 'pay back' not just in a football sense but more in a real life revenge scenario. It seems from reports that most of the 74 fans who died were caught in a stair well crush which could have been accidental and unplanned. However, some people also died from stab wounds....clearly intentional...no accident. Most criticism of the police and security at the Port Said comes from their apparent indifference and inaction as the riot developed. This charge will be addressed by the Egyption authorities.
For football it is yet another example of where the game is the venue for violence of some sort. True, in this case it may only have been the front for more sinister motives. The football violence of the 70's and 80's in the UK always had deeper social roots than politicians were willing to admit. Young men would in previous times served and fought in armies for the crown....'conscript them to the army' was the common call back then! As a fifteen year old, I followed my beloved Spurs all over the country.....if you haven't done it you won't be aware of the adrenalin and seeming empowerment that sort of thing brings. Are such young men thugs who just use football as the venue for their social sickness or is it football parochialism itself that breeds people to be this way wanting to confront each other? In Poland, young men routinely meet in large groups to have organised fist fights, these people also happen to football supporters. A case of chicken or the egg here, no doubt.
In a week of tragic happenings at football I'll leave you with a piece of advice. West Ham play Millwall today.......stay away from Upton Park between 12.30 and 15.00 today, the newshounds are sharpening their pencils as I write..........................