RIP the 96

[Chris Smith]

Echo the sentiments above and would add my admiration to the families and other Liverpool fans who have refused to let this drop.

RIP.

[Rico]

Thẹ FA always seem to manage to escape Scott free. Who made thẹ decision to put Liverpool, average attendance over 40,000, in thẹ Leppings Lane end, and Forrest, average attendance approx 25000, in thẹ Kop End. Surely it should have been thẹ other way around?

[Villan For Life]

Thẹ FA always seem to manage to escape Scott free. Who made thẹ decision to put Liverpool, average attendance over 40,000, in thẹ Leppings Lane end, and Forrest, average attendance approx 25000, in thẹ Kop End. Surely it should have been thẹ other way around?

I don't think that it was an FA decision. More likely to have been a decision taken by the police on traffic control grounds.

RIP to the 96 and a heartfelt wish that the families finally receive the justice that is now long overdue.

[Lambert and Payne]

96 people went to watch their beloved football team and was killed in tragic circumstances, one of the most haunting days in the footballing calender
RIP

[JJ-AV]

Rest In Peace

[Nev]

Thẹ FA always seem to manage to escape Scott free. Who made thẹ decision to put Liverpool, average attendance over 40,000, in thẹ Leppings Lane end, and Forrest, average attendance approx 25000, in thẹ Kop End. Surely it should have been thẹ other way around?

I don't think that it was an FA decision. More likely to have been a decision taken by the police on traffic control grounds.

RIP to the 96 and a heartfelt wish that the families finally receive the justice that is now long overdue.

The ticket distribution was based on the control of fans and the area they travel from, Forest from the south, Liverpool from the north. To safely segregate the ground the Forest section was larger than Liverpools. If they had swapped they would've had the potential for trouble as the fans passed each other, and back then this was the prime motivation for the arrangements on the day. The same situation applied for most semi's at neutral grounds including Villa Park.

Ticket allocation in games such as this should always be based on the fact that the venue is neutral, so tickets should, where possible, be distributed equally, regardless of average attendance.

Twelve months earlier, the same teams competed a semi-final at the same venue without incident and with identical allocations but crucially a ticket check some way from the Liverpool end was not utilised on the second occasion allowing thousands of ticketless fans to get close to the Leppings Lane entrance and spark the subsequent chain of events.

[lovejoy]

I have nothing but sympathy for those who dies - it was a terible tragedy.

I do want to play devil's advocate on this blame and finger pointing though - some poeple have argued that the thousands of ticketless Liverpool fans who rushed the gate might be at least partially resonsible. It's difficult to argue that this arguement doesn't have a degree of merit. I notice Liverpool fans also turned up in Istanbul and stole tickets from the hands of their fellow supporers as they were being frisked outside the ground and many fans with valid tickets weren't able to watch the game. Have they learned nothing?
The official report into Hillsboro blamed mainly the police and the authoirities - Liverpool fans back this report and have used it in their defence stating. A similar independent report into Hysel blames mainly Liverpool fans and this report has been disputed by the Liverpool fans, pick and chooe the reports you like eh guys?

[peter w]

How many times have you been to a Villa game and turned up at kick off or just after? the bigger the game the more the party mood the more drink consumed and arrival at the ground will be later rather than sooner. On top of that countless fans without tickets will also turn up trying to get into the ground. That has happened since time immemorial - look at the first final at Wembley. The question is, knowing this why were the police seemingly so ill prepared?

Justice would be ideal in an ideal world but this was a chain of events with many people at fault. The legacy of the disaster rather than the continued fight for justice should be the denouement of Hillsborough and the improvement in safety for all of us.  Lessons were learned and it took 96 people to die to get there.

[Risso]

One of those days like 9/11 where you remember exactly when you realised the enormity of the dreadful events unfolding.  I'll never forget the words of that fat ****** UEFA boss immediately afterwards, something like "once again it is English football, and once again it is Liverpool fans."  Disgraceful.

[Nev]

I have nothing but sympathy for those who dies - it was a terible tragedy.

I do want to play devil's advocate on this blame and finger pointing though - some poeple have argued that the thousands of ticketless Liverpool fans who rushed the gate might be at least partially resonsible. It's difficult to argue that this arguement doesn't have a degree of merit. I notice Liverpool fans also turned up in Istanbul and stole tickets from the hands of their fellow supporers as they were being frisked outside the ground and many fans with valid tickets weren't able to watch the game. Have they learned nothing?
The official report into Hillsboro blamed mainly the police and the authoirities - Liverpool fans back this report and have used it in their defence stating. A similar independent report into Hysel blames mainly Liverpool fans and this report has been disputed by the Liverpool fans, pick and chooe the reports you like eh guys?

It is the responsibility of the Police and the authorities to implement crowd control and as such take into account that such behaviour may not be orderly and responsible, this is the case for all major events. That is not to exonerate the actions of certain fans, but at West Ham, Ipswich in '87 and at Swindon in '88, the majority of Villa fans that I encountered were just trying to get into the ground to watch the game yet encountered similar scenes, albiet on a smaller scale than those at Hillsborough.

For the authorities to blame the supporters is just an abdication of their responsibility

[Villa'Zawg]

I have nothing but sympathy for those who dies - it was a terible tragedy.

I do want to play devil's advocate on this blame and finger pointing though - some poeple have argued that the thousands of ticketless Liverpool fans who rushed the gate might be at least partially resonsible. It's difficult to argue that this arguement doesn't have a degree of merit. I notice Liverpool fans also turned up in Istanbul and stole tickets from the hands of their fellow supporers as they were being frisked outside the ground and many fans with valid tickets weren't able to watch the game. Have they learned nothing?
The official report into Hillsboro blamed mainly the police and the authoirities - Liverpool fans back this report and have used it in their defence stating. A similar independent report into Hysel blames mainly Liverpool fans and this report has been disputed by the Liverpool fans, pick and chooe the reports you like eh guys?

That lie about thousands of ticketless fans is seemingly still going strong after more than 20 years now, even though the Taylor Report completely discounted ticketless fans as a contributory factor to the Hillsborough Disaster.

If you're going to amuse yourself by playing Devil's advocate about 96 football fans being crushed to death, whose only contributory factor was that they bought a ticket to see their team play, at least have the decency to find some basic fucking facts.

The story that thousands of ticketless fans had stormed the gates was the first and biggest unforgivable lie that the South Yorkshire police peddled. It formed the basis for the completely discredited initial newspaper reports, which have haunted the families for all this time.

People should never forget the incompetence, corruption and brutality that surrounded many games back then. If you want to understand the attitude of the police and authorities that day you should just consider for a moment the experience of Margeret Aspinall. She was ushered into a room where the body of her 18 year old son James was laid out. She wanted to hold her boy and as illogical as it sounds, she wanted to put a coat on him because she wanted him to be warm. She was carried out of the room in screaming hysterics having being told "sorry love, he doesn't belong to you now, he belongs to the coroner".

We already know some of the contributory factors, we also know some things that were not contributory factors e.g. ticketless fans. Hopefully the Hillsborough Independent Panel will provide the full picture. But please, lets stamp out the cruel lie that the people who died or their fellow supporters were responsible for what happened, they weren't.

[PaulWinch again]

RIP

[lovejoy]

I am not trying to 'amuse myself by playing devil's advocate' but stimulate discussion. I have not read the full Taylor report but is it a fact that ticketless fans did turn up late and rush in to an open gate thus causing over crowding or not? I agree that the police/ authorities should shoulder most of the blame but in some people's view not all. This may b e inconsistent with the official report but we aren't all bound to agree with official reports are we? The main thrust of my post was to point out inconsistencies in the views and actions of the Liverpool fans. How many of them would say never again after Hillsboro but turned up in Istanbul and did the same thing? No blame on the fans? I disagree.

[Chris Smith]

Lovejoy, rather than post offensive speculation I suggest you do some basic research. It's all on the Internet so you don't have to put yourself out.

The Taylor report nailed the lies and the reason I believe is that I am old enough to remember those times, the way football fans were treated by the police and the dangerous state of so many grounds. People died because of a lack of crowd control which allowed too many people into the central pens while other parts of the stand still had spaces.

[Villa'Zawg]

I am not trying to 'amuse myself by playing devil's advocate' but stimulate discussion. I have not read the full Taylor report but is it a fact that ticketless fans did turn up late and rush in to an open gate thus causing over crowding or not? I agree that the police/ authorities should shoulder most of the blame but in some people's view not all. This may b e inconsistent with the official report but we aren't all bound to agree with official reports are we? The main thrust of my post was to point out inconsistencies in the views and actions of the Liverpool fans. How many of them would say never again after Hillsboro but turned up in Istanbul and did the same thing? No blame on the fans? I disagree.

Ticketless fans turned up to every game back then. I myself used to run around Villa Park as kid trying to sneak in wherever I could when I couldn't afford or didn't want to pay in. Lord Taylor said that there were some fans without tickets but there wasn't a large body of them, probably not 100s. He specifically said that ticketless fans were not a contributory factor. So no, it is not a fact that ticketless fans did turn up late and rush in to an open gate thus causing the overcrowding. Those people would have died if there had not been a single fan without a ticket.

All of the Liverpool supporters who had tickets for the Main Stand as well as those with tickets for the Leppings Lane stand were being channelled through the Leppings Lane turnstiles. There had been roadworks on the motorway that had delayed all of the supporters travelling from Merseyside and because a decision was taken to start the game with thousands still outside, the police at the Leppings Lane turnstiles decided to open a gate that led directly into that central enclosure. The signs inside the ground were out of date and contradictory, the natural reaction of the Liverpool supporters would have been to head straight ahead into pens 3 and 4. If Villa or any other big club had been at Hillsborough that day, there is no reason to imagine the outcome would have been any different.