Hillsborough

Read the thread and hundreds of thousands of other words / opinions . Been to hundreds of games following town since 1969. Of course there would have been fans who had drunk too much ( including Forest fans)  I can't remember the last game I went to without having a couple of pints . Of course there would of been last minute queues , there always is . I've queued at several non league !! "Stadiums" this season . And of course some will have gone without tkts . If town was in the FA cup semi and I never had a tkt I would be there attempting to gain entry However . ( no climbing these days tho.
My opinion is that a lot of factors combined together resulted in this disaster but far and away the reason for the 96 deaths was the decisions made by the Chief Cop .
The one thing I am certain of , the 96 where completely innocent .
I hope they can rest in peace ,which I doubt cos I don't think we've heard the last of it , but I'm done with it all .

Back to the present for me, C'mon Town .


UTM

Quoted from Caesar

Bit late to the discussion, normally the withch hunt in the aftermath of tragedy is something that upsets me.  For example there were so many errors that caused that tragedy, I think it is foolish to blame one person or one group, diasasters are a series of unfortunate events and most of the time if you take out one of the contributing factors, the disaster doesn't occur.  So for example I think it is right to say that if the hooligan elements hadn't been so prominenet in football we wouldn't have had peremiter fencing, no peremiter fencing no tragedy that day.  To disregard all fan behaviour in the years building up to Hilsborough would be wrong.  

BUT having had these problems we had the procedures and systems in place to properly deal with crowds like this and not let what happened happen.  Catastrophic mistakes were made by the people managing the game on the day.  If they had been open and honest about it that would of been the most powerful weapon, we learn from our mistakes.  I admit if I make a mistake at work it doesn't result in 96 people losing their lives, but surely if the man who carried that scar with him everyday was to use his experience to prevent it happening to anyonelse that would of been so beneficial to all people involved in crowd control.

Instead they hid the truth disgracefully trying to run away from the consequences, and that is the biggest offence in my opinion.  While I do not think Tatcher, Ingham and co. were actually involved in covering it up, I do think their predisposed opinion that football fans were all yobs meant they were happy with the varnished truth and never took any further interest in the matter.

More or less my thoughts ,said much better than me 😂

UTM

For anyone interested, and anyone who still thinks that the Police weren't at fault for this horrific tragedy, please read this article. I found it to be really in depth and well written and I learnt more than I had known previously:

[url]http://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/apr/26/hillsborough-disaster-deadly-mistakes-and-lies-that-lasted-decades?[/url]

Had to hold back the tears on many occasions reading it. It's irrelevant whether there were drunk fans attending. It was the job of South Yorkshire Police to look after the fans and police the match sufficiently. They completely failed to do that and I firmly believe that if Duckenfield had not been put in charge of the match, then the tragedy would've been avoided. They added insult to injury by blaming it on those fans and attempting to shirk all responsibility. How they thought they could get away with blaming it on fans being drunk and turning up without tickets defies belief, the depressing thing is they DID for 27 years.

And here are a few choice quotes:

"Wright’s high-handed rule was at the root of the disaster, the inquests heard. Just 19 days before the semi-final, he abruptly moved his seasoned, expert, popular commander at Sheffield Wednesday’s Hillsborough stadium, Ch Supt Brian Mole. In Mole’s place, Wright promoted Duckenfield, who had never commanded a match at Hillsborough before, nor even been on duty there for 10 years."

"the operational plan in place from the previous year when, under Mole’s command, an identical match between the same two clubs was played at Hillsborough"

" he failed to do basic preparation for the semi-final. He did not study relevant paperwork, including the force’s major incident procedure, and signed off the operational plan two days after taking over, before he had even visited the ground.
He turned up to command the semi-final, he admitted, knowing very little about Hillsborough’s safety history: about the crushes at the 1981 and 1988 semi-finals, or that the approach to the Leppings Lane end was a “natural geographical bottleneck” to which Mole had carefully managed supporters’ entry."

"Duckenfield admitted he had not familiarised himself in any detail with the ground’s layout or capacities of its different sections. He did not know the seven turnstiles, through which 10,100 Liverpool supporters with standing tickets had to be funnelled to gain access to the Leppings Lane terrace, opened opposite a large tunnel leading straight to the central pens, three and four. He did not even know that the police were responsible for monitoring overcrowding, nor that the police had a tactic, named after a superintendent, John Freeman, of closing the tunnel when the central pens were full, and directing supporters to the sides. He admitted his focus before the match had been on dealing with misbehaviour, and he had not considered the need to protect people from overcrowding or crushing."

Whatever happened, everyone should come home alive and well from watching a game of football.

The match commander that day should have been Brian Mole, he had several years experience policing at Hillsborough, he was praised previous years for his excellent policing, the disaster wouldn't have happened if Brian Mole was in charge, but yet he was on duty elsewhere on that day.

David Duckenfield wasn't even a football fan, I've watched a documentary before and David Duckenfield started the pre match briefing with "Good morning everybody and welcome to the Liverpool V Nottinghamshire football game" every football fan knows it is not Nottinghamshire, he hadn't even been to the ground before so he had no idea about the layout of the ground and surrounding areas.

Hillsborough didn't even hold a valid safety certificate so the game shouldn't have been held there in the first place, the Leppings Lane was too small for Liverpool fans, they should have been given the other end of the ground, I've been to the Leppings Lane end before and how over 20'000 people can get in  6 turnstiles is absolutely crazy, it would have been 18 turnstiles but the Penistone Road turnstiles were closed by the police so everyone had to get in the Leppings Lane end no matter where you was sat, meanwhile Notts Forest had loads more turnstiles to go in despite having less fans.

There was absolutely no plan whatsoever for the Liverpool fans, no queues to go into, it was all just one rabble, then when the situation outside the ground got too much they opened the gate and thousands more went into the ground, down the central tunnel into an already crowded 2 middle pens, when the police opened the tunnel they didn't think about where the fans would go, it's obvious the tunnel should have been closed and fans re directed into the virtually empty side pens, but no the police just stood and watched as people walked to their deaths, why wasn't kick off put back, why wasn't the pens filled one at a time ?

When it was obvious people were dying the ambulance and police were too slow to react. Bodies were just piled in the Gym, when families had to identify their loved ones they were treated like criminals, the police did everything they could to detract blame, they said the fans stormed the gate when in fact the police had opened it, they blamed the fans, senior officers did nothing to help the dying, they didn't care that people had died, criminal record checks and blood alcohol levels taken on all the dead, including children who had died all in an attempt to blame fans, look at 2 CCTV tapes stolen after the game, no doubt those tapes showed evidence of police failings

The police, ambulance service, Sheffield city council, Sheffield Wednesday Football Club, the structural engineers and the FA all made mistakes that day which killed people Then for 27 years lied about it and now finally about time the real truth has come out and now people should go to jail for a whole string of offences Including Manslaughter perverting the course of justice and perjury.

About time the truth of mistakes and lies have come out, shame it took 27 years

Fact is Hillsborough should never have happened, and it wouldn't have done if people did their jobs properly

I have spent the last few days taking this in and despite like any football fan this being firmly on the map in the last 2 and a bit decades looking at the pictures in the media, the interviews with the relatives of the 96 and the outcome of the hearings etc.. etc... and maybe it's because I am getting a bit older and you naturally start thinking more about mortality but more than ever this feels like the stuff of fiction and I have found myself thinking how could this have ever been allowed to happen.

When I talk about "this" I don't just mean that awful day of the tragedy but the 27 years in between, the lies, the deceit and the procrastination of the authorities to resolve this whilst seeing the bereaved suffering. How did they ever think that this would not come out in the end I will never know?    

There appears to still be a number of massive issues to be resolved and clearly some individuals/authorities need to be brought to book. Also a mass media apology by that Tory rag and it's editor would not go a miss, where are the hacks from Fleet St now? Hiding behind the likes of Murdoch no doubt.

It's easy to let emotion take over and lose sight of many things but what needs to be recognised and never forgotten are the poor people who lost their lives and the fight that whilst going through personal hell the bereaved left behind showed in their search for justice!

My first words on this when I saw it unfold on the day was "my god all they where doing was going to the match" and I guess that is what I have also though in regard to the 96 poor souls lost that day.

Having seen a big number of documentaries on this all I've gotta say is them Liverpool thugs that steamed in gate C when that guy got thrown out must be really happy with the recent verdict.. How they can not take any blame at all for the tragedy is beyond me, of course a HUGE blame lies on the police and the organisers but i'd be willing to bet my house on it that the number of casualties would of been a lot less had that large number of fans not ran (yes ran, in not talking about casually strolling in, they actually steamed through them) through them gates..

It was the poor innocents that went in first and went in legally (with tickets through a turnstyle) that suffered that day..

RIP to everyone of them..

Put your house on it then, and write a complaint, citing this as new evidence. They ran in because the match was NOT being put on hold, still thousands outside, suddenly a gate opens...kick off is minutes away and you think you'd stroll in and buy a program on your way to the terrace? Add to that the hundreds of people behind you unwittingly crushing you into the turnstiles because they also want to get inside for the kick off.

Not sure how many times this can be said...

Quoted from Neilo83

Having seen a big number of documentaries on this all I've gotta say is them Liverpool thugs that steamed in gate C when that guy got thrown out must be really happy with the recent verdict.. How they can not take any blame at all for the tragedy is beyond me, of course a HUGE blame lies on the police and the organisers but i'd be willing to bet my house on it that the number of casualties would of been a lot less had that large number of fans not ran (yes ran, in not talking about casually strolling in, they actually steamed through them) through them gates..

It was the poor innocents that went in first and went in legally (with tickets through a turnstyle) that suffered that day..

RIP to everyone of them..

I wish the jury had seen the documentaries you saw and had you there to point it out for them. Would have saved them countless hours of witness accounts, expert opinions and video footage etc all to come to the wrong conclusion.

Quoted from RoboCod

Put your house on it then, and write a complaint, citing this as new evidence. They ran in because the match was NOT being put on hold, still thousands outside, suddenly a gate opens...kick off is minutes away and you think you'd stroll in and buy a program on your way to the terrace? Add to that the hundreds of people behind you unwittingly crushing you into the turnstiles because they also want to get inside for the kick off.

Not sure how many times this can be said...

Totally understand this mate, and yeah you're right delaying kick off got rejected because it was too late  

All i'm saying is that the ones that rushed in must of played a huge factor in what happened that day.. But as someone has put above, pen 3 and 4 should of been closed of a lot earlier, so many factors caused it..