Bicyclistic

20 years ago today I was at the semi-final of the FA Cup. Taking place at the same time was the other semi-final, the one that cost 96 people their lives.

Semi-final Saturdays were so special.

In 1989 I lived in Birmingham. Even though our semi-final was at Villa Park in Birmingham, I travelled up to Liverpool after work the evening before - so I could be part of the build up to the game with fellow Everton fans.

A season-ticket holder at Goodison, I didn’t want to get the local West Midlands bus across Birmingham; I wanted to travel to the game with my family and friends, as I always did, from Liverpool itself. Because semi-final Saturdays were so special.

On the Friday night we went out with the Liverpool fans. Even though they were friends, brothers, and fathers, we didn’t usually go out with them in a football context. We went out all the time socially of course, where we tried to avoid talking football, but this night was different. We both wanted each other to win. That was rare.

It was 3 years since the first all-Merseyside final, the first in the then 105 final history of the cup. All of us had been at Wembley for that Cup final. And now here we were again on the verge of another possible all-Merseyside final. We wanted them to win their semi so we could cheer on Everton beating them in the final. Unlike the last time. They presumably wanted us to win our semi so Everton would again be a scalp on their way to another double.

We made plans to meet up back in Liverpool after our games, win or lose. Everton’s game was 100 miles south in Villa Park, and Liverpool’s 85 miles away in Sheffield. The plan of course was that Everton and Liverpool would both win, and we’d then celebrate together as we anticipated the final. This was ambitious because the course of a game can easily leave you with no desire to meet up with anybody, least of all your closest rivals.

The Saturday morning was sunny. With both teams in semi-finals, the whole city was buzzing. Every programme on the radio was in party mode. Special.

It would be years before I could listen again to the songs played on the radio that morning.

The Liverpool fans booked a bus for their game. We went in a group of cars to ours. All I remember is the usual approach to a huge game. Stories, jokes, laughs, and smiles. It reminded me of 2 years earlier when we had travelled to Norwich hoping to win the league on the same day that Liverpool fans were at home also hoping to win the league. A neutral ground this time, but again the opposition for Everton was Norwich City.

From cold dull November evenings I can recall parts of awful games, meaningless league games, even Simod Cup games. I’ve been to hundreds, maybe thousands, of football matches, in England and Ireland, but I can’t recall a second of the FA Cup semi-final I watched 20 years ago today.

We were in the north end of Villa Park, opposite the huge Holt End where the Norwich fans were. There was someone about 10 feet away from me with a radio. I know Everton scored and won the game, but my memory is of the faces around me. Standing on a terrace, crammed into a tight confined space with complete strangers gave you a closer view of people’s faces than you get in most situations.

There were murmurs of problems at the other semi-final. A delayed kick-off wasn’t unusual, especially if fans had been delayed on the road, but then a death was mentioned. When reports were passed on - by shouting out what those cluctching radios were hearing - that there were multiple deaths there were shouts back, motivated by the disbelief that we all felt, to shut up.

Over the course of our game the faces all around me went from confusion to concern and ultimately to shock and horror. Then the mad scramble began, and it went on for hours.

Instead of celebrations on the pitch my memory of the end of the game is of thousands of Everton fans turning immediately to our right and making our way out of the terrace. The figure 50 was mentioned by somebody. It was unthinkable. The sun was still shining.

What happened next was like what adults experience when a child goes missing, the panic as efforts progress to establish the safety of the child. Only this was the era before mobile phones, and it wasn’t a child we were worried about; it was 25,000 people.

Seeking information, people ran all directions to public phones, to houses nearby to ask to use phones, and to their cars to drive to wherever they might find a phone. On the M6 people raced to the service stations just to get to phones. I recall going past a service station where there were already queues of Everton fans at phones.

Even from phones information was very limited, because calls were going home to Liverpool and in most cases the Liverpool fans in Sheffield hadn’t yet managed to phone home. Some never would.

When we got back to Liverpool we were still waiting for news of our friends. Eventually we got word that all on their bus were safely accounted for. Except one who was missing. It was his first time to go to the game with our friends. I think it was 1:30am when their bus finally arrived back in Liverpool. Minus one, one who would never come home.

After their bus came back I listened to stories of people who had survived, stories of bodies underneath their feet, bodies of people they were powerless to help. Of people who died, from going to a football match.

In the morning I went for a walk by the canal and bumped into 2 Everton friends doing the same thing. The tears and the questions continued throughout the day. More news of more friends, and of friends of friends. More news of death.

I hated leaving Liverpool and returning to Birmingham on the Monday. The papers had gone with sickening lies about the behaviour of the fans, and an office away from Liverpool and away from football was not a place of sympathy, or even where people know how intertwined the lives of so many Evertonians and Liverpudlians were.

Quickly the tabloids, bar one infamous case of course, retracted and apologised for their lies though the Sunday Times a week later repeated them due to printing deadlines being before the retractions. The other tabloid took 15 years to apologise, and even then made a mess of it.

There were a lot of people I knew at the other semi-final, and until I read the list I didn’t know if they were still alive. Sometimes you aren’t close enough to people to phone them directly; you just have to wait. When the list of the dead was published I was back in Birmingham. Waiting until I was alone I took a deep breath and then slowly read the names on teletext, pages and pages of teletext.

I was lucky. Nobody I knew directly was on the list. But there were 9 friends of friends who were.

Just to be with friends I returned to Liverpool the following weekend. I bought the memorial issue of the Liverpool Echo. In the 20 years since I’ve never opened it.

Football was put on hold and fixtures were postponed, but eventually the footballing world decided to carry on.

The first competitive game Liverpool played after Hillsborough was a midweek league game against Everton of all teams. I travelled up to Liverpool again, as I always did, to sit in my seat at Goodison in a game of football that wasn’t about football. Cathartic for so many it was wonderful, and it was horrible. I’ve never been at a game like it, and I never want to be at a game like it ever again.

Liverpool won their re-arranged semi-final and so we got our all-Merseyside final when it didn’t matter anymore, and yet if a final had to be played that year it was best that it was played by these 2 teams. Like 3 years earlier Everton again lost to Liverpool, except it wasn’t like 3 years earlier. There was extra time, there were no fences, and it was the only game of football I ever cried at.

Today is about memory. Some people say it shouldn’t involve blame. Whatever it involves it should be about truth. The families of the 96 deserve that.

In the 20 years since, I’ve heard people in Ireland and in America, and in England away from Liverpool, talk about Hillsborough as if it was a case of hooliganism, or that the fans were in some way to blame. They haven’t read the Taylor Report.

• They don’t know that the inquest wouldn’t look at any events that took place after 3:15pm on the day with the judge stating that all injuries leading to deaths had happened prior to that time.
• They don’t know that there are statements by witnesses of people still being alive after 3:15pm who could have been saved.
• They don’t know that there were 40 ambulances unused outside because the tragedy was being treated as crowd disturbance rather than as overcrowding.
• They don’t know that the agreed major incident plan was not put into operation.
• They don’t know that the police officer in charge, David Duckenfield, was inexperienced in handling games like that.
• They don’t know that Duckenfield gave the order to open the exit Gate C to let crowds in.
• They don’t know that Duckenfield lied in the aftermath and claimed ticketless Liverpool fans had forced open the exit gate.
• They don’t know that, at the Inquiry by Lord Justice Taylor, Duckenfield admitted he lied about the fans.
• They don’t know what the safety status of Hillsborough was.
• They don’t know that the tunnel into the Leppings Lane end wasn’t closed when the pens it led into were already full.
• They don’t know that the capacity for those pens was overstated to begin with.
• They don’t know that the tunnel leading into those overcrowded pens had a 1 in 6 gradient.
• They don’t know about the identification process that took place in the gymnasium that acted as a mortuary.
• They don’t know how many years it took for the families of the victims to gain access to the body files.
• They don’t know that, against their training, police officers were instructed not to record the events of the day as facts in their pocket books but to submit handwritten recollections not subject to disclosure.
• They don’t know that police officers statements were changed, with criticisms of the police deleted and blame deflected towards the fans.
• They don’t know that the Taylor Report exonerated the fans.

In watching Everton I’ve been to football games all over England and experienced good policing (most notably in the northwest metropolitan counties) and bad policing - usually where police forces weren’t used to the dynamics of large crowds and how to marshall and filter them.

At Everton’s previous semi-final I had complained repeatedly to friends at how badly we were treated as customers considering how much money we spent, that we deserved to be treated with the same respect as those who went to operas. I know that standing and pens and fences were the culture of the day, but it was more than the culture of the time that caused 96 people to die.

According to the Taylor Report (interim) overcrowding was the main reason for the disaster, and the main reason for the overcrowding was lack of police control. Ask any fan who had ever been in the Leppings Lane terrace and they’ll tell you the overcrowding was forseeable. And with police control and proper actions by the FA and by Sheffield Wednesday FC, that overcrowding was preventable.

My closest friend in Liverpool at that time was a Liverpool fan who always went the game with one of his closest friends. I had enjoyed their stories of attending the previous year’s final where they lost to Wimbledon but were tickled to get to chat at Wembley with Frank Bruno at the peak of his fame. My friend didn’t get a ticket for the semi-final in 1989. So his friend went to Hillsborough without him. And never came back.

Everton are in their first semi-final for 14 years this coming weekend, and I’ll watch it and want them to win, but the desire to attend isn’t that strong any more. Although I still go to the odd game, football hasn’t been the same for me since Hillsborough. Semi-finals aren’t that special any more

Today my thoughts are with the families and friends of the 96. Today my thoughts are of the truth.