Kippax

From the MUFC website:
Whilst I a agree in principle with FITC's comments I must defend the majority of City fans who do not make aeroplane impressions and do not refer to the rags as Munichs.

NAF

Those who did should be ashamed of themselves ... [img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img]
Sad really

CrisPDuk

For every City fan that still mentions Munich, I bet I've met five United Wan*ers that still bring up Hillsborough or Heysel to me,
so get your own house in order first you dog-sha66ing *****[img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img]

SwinYE5

B0ll0X! I've yet to meet or hear a United fan that has taken the p1ss out of Hillsborough or Heysel... You're bound to get a few w@nkers but this would be nowhere near on the same scale as the City and Leeds Munich jibes...

CrisPDuk

No offence swin, but the United fans in your area probably didn't even know what a football was at the time of either of those tragedies.

Funkii Munkii

Bollox 2

These 5 w'ankers that came up to you, were u wearing a Liverpool shirt or do u know them ?? were they in a group?? or were they alone??, it all seems a bit far fetched to me, usually on match days you'll get the youre **** comments from passing opposing fans just aimed at the throng, Ive never had anyone come up to me directly and have a pop, you must be the unlucky one.

Is it because youve been knobbed out of the Champs League youre not feeling too happy so u popped into the Sports Forum to stir it up a bit
Yeah thought so

Dave

[Edited by Funkii Munkii - 11/16/2002 12:02:11 PM]

SwinYE5

CrisPDuk, I go up there quite a bit, sometimes with lots of ST holders, and I've never heard any of them say a word about Hillsborough or Heysel. In fact, quite the opposite, anyone taking the p1ss out of Hillsborough is usually frowned upon...

Redkop

SWINYE5 - sorry pal you need to come to Anfield when the Mancs are playing and you will hear it. It's rife!

CrisPDuk

It ain't just at Anfield, it's usually when I'm working in Salford or Trafford Park. To be fair the rest of Manchester is OK

Redkop

What a lot of you probably don't know is that there is still a campaign in progress to see justice done.

April 15th 1989, saw the worst disaster in the history of English football; 96 Liverpool fans attending their team's FA Cup semi-final against Nottingham Forest at Sheffield Wednesday's ground, Hillsborough, were crushed to death on the Leppings Lane terrace, and English football would never be the same again.

The disaster was basically caused by the failure of South Yorkshire Police to control a large crowd of Liverpool fans outside the Leppings Lane End, and the poor state of the ground,
but it was also clear that football's total failure to learn from the numerous disasters that had afflicted it during the twentieth century, and a police force conditioned to view supporters as potential hooligans and so always expecting violence, contributed significantly to the 96 deaths and many hundreds of injuries.

WHAT HAPPENED ON THE DAY?
Liverpool had been allocated the Leppings Lane End of the ground, and it was outside this end from, about 2.30pm that a large crowd of fans had built up. Fans were also delayed on their way to the game by roadworks on the M62 motorway. Warnings issued as far back as 1927 about the need to prevent a large build-up of supporters were ignored, and a sizeable crowd of thousands of Liverpool fans was allowed to build up outside the Leppings Lane End, leading to increasing congestion and then crushing at the front. Stewarding was also described as poor at this end of the ground.

The police later claimed that fans had been drinking excessively.

The Leppings Lane gates led into a concourse: from this, fans could enter a main tunnel that fed into pens three and four of the terrace. Additionally, there were access points to the left and right of the tunnel that led to the other pens on the Leppings Lane terrace. As the sections immediately behind the goal, pens three and four were the most popular and were already full over twenty minutes before kick-off, a fact noticed by BBC commentators in their build-up to the game, and by match commander Chief Superintendent David Duckinfield watching events from the police control box. Meanwhile, the crowd outside continued to build, with little effort made to prevent the numbers outside the gates swelling any further: the crushing outside was becoming progressively worse, police horses were becoming agitated, and 2.47pm, thirteen minutes before kick-off, police officers outside the Leppings Lane End radioed to Duckinfield (in charge of his first major match), informing him that the crushing was becoming severe, and that people were going to die if the gates were not opened to relieve the pressure. After a brief delay, Duckinfield ordered that Gate C be opened, and close on 2,000 Liverpool fans were directed through the gates into the concourse.

By now however, pens three and four were already over-congested; fans streamed into the tunnel, and then into pens three and four, creating a massive crush and trapping supporters at the front of the pens against the steel perimeter fence. Some estimates claim that there were twice the number of supporters in pens three and four than they were designed to cope with. The resultant crush became unbearable, with the fans at the back unable to see that the pens were already full, and the fans at the front already starting to show signs of distress and asphixiation.

Fans started to try and climb the fences to escape the pens, and some were lifted out of the pens by supporters in the tier above the terrace, but the crushing was becoming fatal as the game kicked off. Fans tried to attract the attention of police officers, but were unable to do so, and later complained that some supporters trying to escape the pens had been pushed back into the crowd by officers who seemed to think they were dealing with an attempted pitch invasion. Other fans reported shouting to police officers to open the gates, but simply being ignored. By 3.05pm, fans managed to alert Liverpool goalkeeper Bruce Grobbelaar, who in turn pointed out the problem to the referee, as fans were already making their way over the fences before collapsing on the side of the pitch.

The players were taken off at 3.06, and the emergency operation began, with Liverpool fans ripping up advertising hoardings to use as stretchers. It was becoming clear that this was going to be a major disaster, and there was later criticism of police officers who stood in a line across the half-way line, apparently to prevent any "charge" by Liverpool fans against the Forest supporters at the other end of the ground. Other junior officers climbed from pen two into pen three in an effort to help the victims by now piled up everywhere inside the pen, while others desperately tried to pull down the perimeter fence.

The game was abandoned at half-time, with fans, junior police officers and the emergency services still trying to get the injured to hospital, with some people still being admitted as late as 4pm. But in total, 95 fans died in the next couple of days, young, old, male, female. One more supporter, Tony Bland, died after spending four years on a ventilator machine.

At 3.15pm, Graham Kelly, chief executive of the Football Association, had gone to the police control box, where he was told by Duckinfield that Liverpool fans had rushed the gate into the ground, creating the fatal crush in pens three and four, despite the fact that he had ordered the gate opened.

ctn'd

Redkop

At 4.15pm, Kelly was interviewed by the BBC, and he told them the police had implied to him that the gates had been opened unauthorised. The story flashed around the world that drunken Liverpool fans had forced the gates open, and it was splashed all over the newspapers the following morning.

The suggestion that Liverpool fans were responsible for the disaster was picked up most strongly later that week by the 'Sun' newspaper, who ran maybe their most infamous headline on the personal instruction of editor Kelvin McKenzie. Acting on information from unnamed police officers, and entitled "The Truth", the 'Sun' claimed that drunken fans had forced the gates open because they did not have match-tickets, that they stolen from the corpses lying on the pitch, assaulted police officers and the emergency services, stolen cameras and other equipment from press photographers, and urinated on police officers helping the victims. Months later, the "Sun" admitted that the allegations were totally false, but it had already generated headlines all over the world, and the damage had been done.

THE TAYLOR REPORTS
The failure to close or block the tunnel leading into the already full pens three and four once the police had ordered Gate C to be opened was the immediate cause of the disaster, but the public inquiries set up by the Thatcher Government under Lord Justice Peter Taylor found, more generally, that football had simply not learned anything from the numerous disasters in its past, that it and the police were so obsessed with the threat of violence that they were unable to spot people in genuine danger of their lives, that police fundamentally lost control of the situation, and did not demonstrate the leadership expected of senior officers, that safety procedures were inadequate, that the ground was badly maintained and dangerous, that fans were routinely treated with contempt by football, and that fans had been the victims rather the guilty party. His reports, published in August 1989 and January 1990, dismissed the allegations against Liverpool supporters for the disaster, and called instead for a total rethink in the industry's attitudes towards fans, and on the issue of safety. It also highlighted the failures by local authorities to check safety certificates for stadia (Sheffield Wednesday had redeveloped parts of the ground without obtaining a new safety certificate, or telling the emergency services: the result was that the safety certificate was outdated and useless, and that plans Sheffield Wednesday had developed with the local emergency services could not be put into practice, as the layout of the ground had changed).

Specifically, Taylor recommended the closure of terraces at all grounds, new safety measures on exits and entrances, and a new advisory committee on stadium design to ensure that best practice was followed.

Crucially, Taylor also recommended that the Government's Identity Card scheme (whereby all fans would have to have a membership card to get into a ground) be dropped, on grounds of safety, a suggestion that the Government reluctantly carried out. Taylor's report did not have the force of law, and not all his recommendations were carried out, but his work in identifying the wider reasons for the disaster has been acknowledged as one of the most significant turning points in the history of English football. The result was the total transformation of British stadia, paid for in large part by tax-payers' money, with terraces at grounds in the top two divisions closed by May 1994, and new safety regulations and regimes put in place at every stadium.

WHAT HAS HAPPENED SINCE 1989?
The controversy over the disaster has not subsided: Thatcher's Press Secretary, Bernard Ingham, has frequently repeated the allegations made by the 'Sun', as did Brian Clough (Nottingham Forest manager on the day of the disaster) some five years later; a boycott of the 'Sun' on Merseyside (that still goes on to this day) has cost its parent company News International tens of millions of pounds in lost revenue; new Government enquiries were ordered to see if there was a case for criminal prosecutions (undertaken by Lord Justice Stuart-Smith); television documentaries and academics have alleged a systematic police cover-up (written evidence from junior officers to the Taylor enquiry was altered by superiors, for instance); and until 1999, Sheffield Wednesday refused to erect a memorial at the ground to the victims (leading to Liverpool fans boycotting Hillsborough in season 1998-99).

Finally, in 2000, families of the victims brought a private, civil prosecution against Duckinfield and his deputy Bernard Murray, for manslaughter. Murray was acquitted, but the jury were unable to reach a verdict in the case of Duckinfield, and the judge prevented a re-trial. Nonetheless, the two Hillsborough groups (the Hillsborough Family Support Group, and the Justice for Hillsborough campaign) remain determined to pursue the truth of what happened that day. Over a decade later, Hillsborough remains a highly controversial issue, with its effects most obvious at every stadium in the country.

http://www.contrast.org/hillsborough/home.shtm




[Edited by Redkop - 11/17/2002 9:10:14 AM]

Redkop

edited for double posting

[Edited by Redkop - 11/17/2002 9:06:06 AM]

SwinYE5

If this is the case then it's probably nothing to do with you lot taking the p1ss out of Munich at the time has it?

I for one, like many other Reds, supported you wholeheartedly in trying to bring justice down on that incompetent b@stard Duckinfield and his cronies. How the *** they got away with what they done I don't know...

Heysel is a bit different though I have to say...

Funkii Munkii

Redkop

Good stuff, read this over two days, time restrictions, There were a few facts you have covered that I wasnt aware of which just makes the whole thing worse, total sympathy for all the families and friends lets hope justice is finally done, its strange how quickly these things are forgotten.

It saddens me that any supporter can go around mocking the death of fellow supporters regardless of team, we all follow the same religion, Football!!

CrisPDuk

There is a very moving passage in Fever Pitch, by Nick Hornby about the Arsenal fans reaction when they became aware of the incident. Basically everybody there knew that it was the Leppings Lane tunnel where the disaster had occurred, even before any public announcement had been made, as at the time it was renowned amongst fans of all persuasions as a disaster waiting to happen[img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img]

Redkop

It took a tragedy like that to change the whole of football ie the seating in the grounds. I am not overkeen on sitting, but can see the sense in it. I have been to a fair few grounds in all league divisions round the country, where the access to some of the stands is a disgrace.

SwinYE5

You are not alone, I hate sitting. There was nothing like the old days in the terraces where you were pushed here and there when someone went close and the whole terrace surged forward when you scored.....the good old days... Very tame these days in comparison.

Redkop

Blimey SwinYE5 we agree on something The old Kop was fantastic for that - really miss it

Kippax

standing would be fine as long as the safety rails are in place on every row stopping surges forward. lets face it, sitting is bobbins in comparison.

Redkop

They were on the Kop - but you still got that 'surge' somehow.