by GYBS » Tue Mar 31, 2009 3:33 pm
THEY were powerless to help as 96 of the fans who idolised them were crushed to death on a sunny spring Saturday.
Now the Liverpool side forced from the pitch just minutes into their fateful FA Cup semi-final at Sheffield Wednesday’s Hillsborough ground are recalling their experiences of the tragedy to mark its 20th anniversary.
Kenny Dalglish, Liverpool’s manager at the time, has never before felt able to speak publicly about the terrible events at the match.
But for TV documentary Hillsborough Remembered — to be shown on the History Channel on April 15, exactly two decades on from the tragedy — he and players including John Aldridge, Ronnie Whelan and Gary Ablett open up for the first time.
They recall how the atmosphere was electric as fans piled into the stadium to see Liverpool play Nottingham Forest.
Football was very different then. Fans stood on terraces watching from behind fences, with more fencing dividing them from rival supporters.
Before referee Ray Lewis blew his whistle for kick-off, a last-minute arrival of coaches from Liverpool led to a surge of people trying to get in to see the game.
Around 2,000 fans were trying to cram into the central section of the small Leppings Lane end of the stadium.
Police panicked and threw open the main gate at the Leppings Lane end, which led to people being crushed.
As the match began, Liverpool goalie Bruce Grobbelaar, just yards from what was happening, was one of the first to raise the alarm.
He says: “There were people with their faces pinned against the fence saying to me, ‘Bruce, can you help me. We can’t breathe’. So I asked a policewoman, ‘Please, open the gate’.
“She said, ‘We can’t. We have to wait for our boss to give the word’. I ran to the ref and pointed to the back of the goal.”
Within moments a police inspector told the ref to get the players off the pitch.
Striker John Aldridge says: “You could hear supporters screaming and shouting. I always remember someone shouted, ‘There's people dying out there’.”
The two managers, Dalglish and Forest legend Brian Clough, were asked by police to make an announcement over the stadium’s public address system to fans.
They made their way to the police room but the mic was not working.
Kenny then suggested using the announcer’s room below.
He says: “We went there and they asked us to tell the people there’s been a bit of a problem but please stay calm and help the police.
“The punters were superb. They helped the police as much as anything to get their friends. They were supporters — it was their football club that was in trouble.”
Aldridge adds: “When we saw there were fatalities we were like, ‘What? To what extent? One or two? Three or four?’. No one knew what to say or what to do.
“The teams then met in the players’ bar. We had Grandstand on the TV and the death roll rose to 30 and we were like, ‘What? What’s that all about?’.”
After the ground had been cleared, the footballers made their way home.
Steve McMahon says: “The journey was soul-destroying, sombre. Nobody spoke.”
Gary Ablett says: “You knew members of your family had gone to the game — my brother had gone — so you’re trying to get in touch with your mother and father to make sure he’s rung home.
“Your mind starts playing all kinds of tricks. My brother was one of the lucky ones.” Aldridge says: “That night was unbelievable. Thankfully my wife was there. I broke down. I couldn’t help it.”
Dalglish also found his mind turning to the victims’ families as he watched the news reports.
He says: “You realise they’ve seen what’s gone on. Imagine you’re sitting watching on television, your family’s there and you don’t know what’s happening.”
Over the next few days, players went to Sheffield to see supporters in hospital.
Ablett says: “You went into rooms where people were lucky enough to survive and you got their account of what happened.
“You went into other rooms and people just looked asleep, obviously in comas.
“The families would say, ‘Maybe if you spoke to them and said something... ’.”
Many never woke. Aldridge recalls: “I was asked to talk to this young lad. So I went over to him and spoke in his ear and said, ‘When you’re up and about you come to Anfield. We’ll give you a shirt, make a fuss of you, have a great day’.
“I asked the doctor, ‘When do you expect the young lad to come out of his coma?’ and he said, ‘They’re switching his life support off this afternoon’. That absolutely creased me. Ripped my insides out.”
Ronnie Whelan was luckier. He says: “The only bright spark was one of the kids came out of a coma, which was unbelievable. When the lads were round the bed the kid woke up. Things like that were great but there weren’t many.”
Anfield was opened so families and fans could pay their respects. More than half the pitch was covered in flowers.
Dalglish says: “When they started putting the flowers on the pitch it was unbelievable. The amount of people who wanted to leave their little memento because it was their mate who died.
The atmosphere in the ground was fantastic. It became somewhere for them to gather.”
Lessons were learned from the tragedy.
A report by the then Lord Chief Justice, Lord Justice Taylor, slammed the police for not acting earlier, and it was ruled that all big football grounds should be made seating only, with the fences taken down.
But 20 years on, many Liverpool fans are still angry at the inquest verdict of “accidental death”, after the Taylor Report blamed a “failure of police control”.
Aldridge says: “You’ve got to get answers, you’ve got to keep on banging whatever drums you’ve got in front of you. Because it should never have happened, it’s as easy as that.
"You go on a lovely April day to watch the FA Cup and your loved ones don’t come home. Football died that time in a certain way, football as we knew it. It’s a different type of football now.”
Dalglish adds: “An easy thing to do would have been just to put the kick-off back a bit. If the police are talking to the FA and the FA have got to make that call, there wouldn’t have been any disagreement from the dressing room.
“It’s something everyone wishes never happened — but it’s also something that nobody should forget.”
