egafd.com

Milk Tray Man wrote:

> David, I absolutely agree with you that police incompetence and
> mistakes played a major role, and have said so above more than
> once.
>
> Of course football supporters weren't teetotal dinner-jacket
> wearers back then, and nor are they now (but maybe that's
> partly the point eh? After all - how many crush disasters can
> you think of that have occurred at operas and theatres?!)
>
> The fact is that in the '70s and '80s most clubs - Liverpool
> included - had its hooligan element, and climbing gates etc. to
> get in for free, pitch invasions and other antics were also
> commonplace. That's why the decision was taken in the first
> place to build fences and pens.
>
> So what we have is an inexperienced police commander on the
> day, mistakes by the stewards, a ground that was at the time
> probably unfit for purpose, pens and fences. Add to that fans
> pushing and shoving and you have the final piece of the jigsaw
> for the perfect storm. And as many commentators have said, the
> it was a disaster waiting to happen at an English football
> match somewhere and the biggest surprise is probably that it
> actually took so long to happen.
>
> A football match, note! Not at a cricket match, not at a rubgy
> match, not at a major stadium rock concert. And of course not
> at the opera. Because all of those lacked that one key magical
> ingredient: No football crowd.
>
>

"Not at a major stadium rock concert"?? What about the 2 victims of Donington 1988? I was at that gig, and no one really was to blame, it was a combination of thousands of people wanting to get to the front, combined with slippery conditions, and a gust of wind taking down one of the video screens causing a back push.

Milk Tray Man wrote:

> That's because no matter what the enquiries to date have said
> (all of which were conducted in an atmosphere of "we must
> appease the scousers in view of the fact that the old bill
> lied"), it probably was a contributory factor - even if only a
> minor one.
>
> I agree with you about the ground layout (as I said above,
> ground probably not fit for purpose).
>
> A couple of posts higher up though, you accuse me of
> supposition. Yet you are quite happy to 'suppose' yourself that
> if they had all been queuing up in dinner jackets and saying
> "after you", the disaster would still probably have happened.
>
> Personally I think it would have been far less likely (to the
> point of improbable) that it would have played out that way,
> had there been orderly queues rather than the massive
> free-for-all ruck that we saw behind the Leppings Lane end.
> Common sense surely?
>
>
"orderly queues"... That's part of it... Previous year in the same fixture, there was a police funnel to slow down access to the ground. In 1989 there was none, so leppings lane became swamped with people

very much so,and not just our fans, Forest fans have also suffered and died over this.

Too many people falling down one side or the other on here. I think everybody involved contributed to the disaster. Due to the initial conclusion to wrongly put all the blame on the Liverpool supporters and the furore it caused, nobody would have been satisfied with any investigation and report that didn't fully exonerate the fans completely.

I believe a trickle of fans going through the turnstyles would have made the fans' decision making easier about which pens to funnel into and would have given more time for the police to realise their error. We shall never know but I think it is logical to assume that entering the ground in a slow, ordered way is safer than a rush of thousands within a few minutes.

If the police had owned up to their errors that contributed to this we wouldn't be in this mess a quarter of a century later.

Sam Slater wrote:

> Too many people falling down one side or the other on here. I
> think everybody involved contributed to the disaster. Due to
> the initial conclusion to wrongly put all the blame on the
> Liverpool supporters and the furore it caused, nobody would
> have been satisfied with any investigation and report that
> didn't fully exonerate the fans completely.


agree 100%.

"Due to the initial conclusion to wrongly put all the blame on the Liverpool supporters and the furore it caused, nobody would have been satisfied with any investigation and report that didn't fully exonerate the fans completely."

Nobody? Really? So how did this approach to the content of the official reports manifest itself? Given that the investigation that produced the Taylor Report was published during the Thatcher "reign", the very person who had described the miners as "the enemy within" how do you think it went?

Thatcher "We want those Liverpool fans fully exonerated even though they are Northern working class types"

Taylor "Okay, I will keep that in mind when I produce the report, otherwise nobody is going to be satisfied"

Alternatively could it be that the Taylor Report and Hillsborough Independent Report showed that the fans were not partially to blame for their own deaths based on the facts?

" I believe a trickle of fans going through the turnstyles would have made the fans' decision making easier about which pens to funnel into"

A trickle of fans? Maybe the Hillsborough stadium owners could have had signs up "Please trickle through the turnstiles". In fact, the turnstiles were old fashioned and "trickling" through was the only option. Alongside this few fans seemed to have a clue which turnstile they were supposed to go through because the ticket checking and queuing system used effectively the previous year was completely dispensed with. This caused the chaos outside the stadium perimeter.

"We shall never know but I think it is logical to assume that entering the ground in a slow, ordered way is safer than a rush of thousands within a few minutes."

In short then it is in partly down to the fans that there were thousands trying to get in within a few minutes given:

1. No queuing system and ticket checking which had successfully been used in previous years was not utilised.

2. The turnstiles were old, slow and prone to breakdowns.

3. The delays on roads in the area had slowed down arrival at the stadium.

4. The layout of the Leppings Lane perimeter was far from ideal.

5. Apparently the request for a substantial delay in kick-off was turned down.

Sam the scousers want to see Policemen aka their arch enemies going to jail and big compensation cheques in their pockets. Until those two things happen the JFT96 will take more and more control of Liverpool's PR and no doubt claim their imminent PL Title is small beer compared to Hillsborough. They have even brainwashed Gerrard and Rodgers. One who was 9 when it happened and the other had nothing to do with LFC. The NHS do fantastic bereavement counselling for free..........

"They have even brainwashed Gerrard and Rodgers."

Gerrard lost his cousin at Hillsborough

Just admit you are wrong and DJ and JFT96 are right and we can all sleep easy.
There are absolutely NO grey areas in debates on here ever.

"There are absolutely NO grey areas in debates on here ever."

You obviously missed the debate on whether there is any top totty on breakfast TV........

Did I miss the grey areas in your view of the pros and cons of Scottish independence?

!wink!