: Thu Apr 09, 2009 6:17 am
Hillsborough is obviously the biggest disaster in British football history. I'd say that any English football fan of a certain age who watches any footage of that day feels sick when they see it.
But the massive difference in which Heysel and Bradford are virtually ignored while Hillsborough is brought up at every possible opportunity is ridiculous. Two weeks ago 22 people were killed in the Ivory Coast at a game and I don't think there was a single post on here on it.
It took 15 years for any official recognition from Liverpool over Heysel. At the time the Liverpool chairman blamed the NF, Chelsea or Leeds fans for starting the rioting at Heysel. Even when that was exposed as bull5hit he never apologised for putting the blame elsewhere. It's difficult to find on the web, but there are claims that none of the Liverpool fans convicted of manslaughter even served any time in prison.
Liverpool fans have also got a large campaign going over the injustice of Michael Shields being in jail. His conviction is false because one of his friends said that he committed the crime. Is there a campaign to get his friend to stand trial so that justice is done and the guilty man is punished? No, they want Shields freed because of his friend's confession but nothing is said about Sankey being sent to face trial and serve prison time.
IMO it is utter nonsense that Liverpool supporters were in no way to blame for the events which led to the tragedy. They knew the effects of serious crowd congestion because of what happened at Heysel. They knew that the Leppings Lane end was an ugly mess of terracing because they'd played there in the same event, against the same team, the year before. Liverpool fans want to put all the blame on the police, stewards, the FA and SWFC but won't acknowledge that their behaviour was a massive part of the problem as well.
The demand for Duckinfield to be sent to jail is wrong, IMO. IMO he clearly screwed up and deserves a lot of the blame for the events of that day, but if he was to be blamed and sent to jail for what happened then IMO it would lead to police forces through Britain refusing to police football matches because they wouldn't accept the responsibility again.
Given the tragedies that Liverpool have been involved in, you'd think that trying to gain entry into matches without tickets would never happen at Liverpool. But no, if there's a big Liverpool game then there'll be many Liverpool fans trying to get there way in ticketless. But they did it in Athens, they did it at Stamford Bridge a few years ago and I've seen a few threads on Liverpool message boards where they argue about the problem.
I have every sympathy with the families of the people who died. I can accept that losing your children in that way will be something you never get over. But there's only so many times when a tragedy can be brought up before you can be accused of milking it. IMO that point has passed a long, long time ago.
I've said it before on here, but the blame for Hillsborough lies with many parties. Primarily the blame lies with the hooligans who created the violent atmosphere surrounding football at time. The blame also lies with politicians, the police, the FA, and the club chairmen. SWFC deserve a lot of blame for the design and state of the ground, the police and stewards deserve a part of the blame for the woeful way they dealt with the situation.
I'll also include here something I read on the Chelsea forum this week. It was said that even after the events of Hillsborough were known, it still kicked off after the game between Leicester and Chelsea. That's the atmosphere that there was around football at that time. But we're supposed to accept that the Liverpool fans were impeccably behaved at Hillsborough that day and didn't contribute at all towards the tragedy? If you believe that you probably believe in the tooth fairy.
