Hillsborough - Justice

The spark that lit the touch-paper IMO in '89 as opposed to previous years (there were similar crushes during the '88 and '81 semi-finals in particular) was the change in (or lack of) policing protocol for crowd safety on approach to the ground. The man in charge in '89, Chief Superintendent David Duckenfield had only been promoted 6 weeks prior to the game and had no previous experience over-seeing something like that. He replaced Chief Superintendent Brian Mole who'd gotten the sack after some of his men had done a pretty extreme practical joke on a probation officer. Mole was the one experienced in commanding matches at Hillsborough down through the years and was replaced by Duckenfield 18 days before the dsiaster. Anyway, that lack of experience and a few other unfortunate coincidences such as heavy roadworks along the M62 had caused a greater rush to get to the ground which exacerbated the crush at the Leppings Lane entrance and turnstiles. Of course there were fans about the ground without tickets, there has been at hundreds of football matches I've been to in my life, but it was the complete mismanagement by an inadequately experienced police commander that was at the root of it, along with a stadium that hadn't even had a valid safety certificate for 8 years. That also makes the FA and SWFC partly culpable also. The gate, only usually used for exit, was fatally opened to alleviate the crush outside the ground.

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/apr/26/hillsborough-disaster-deadly-mistakes-and-lies-that-lasted-decades

 

Mother of Jaysus.........., it was found the amount of Pool fans at the Leppings Lane end hadn't exceeded its fooking capacity and as you said eire, the question asked, answered and proven to be not so.  f**k's sake. 

When I saw a Westminster session, I assumed you meant the Tories celebrating the deaths at the time. 

I am not Andy Burnham's biggest fan, he is very much of the shapeshifting 'new Labour mould to me, but he has been superb on this issue and it appears to have been 100% genuine and not politically motivated. 

I personally very much enjoyed Joe Anderson's speech, in fact anything I have seen of him I have liked. 

 

Hill 16 is the terrace on the end to the left, over in the far corner, where all the Dublin fans are. It was literally a hill, in that there were no internal exits and you had to climb up the steps at the back of the hill to get on or off it. Up to and including 1983, no tickets were issued for the standing terraces for All-Ireland finals, or any match - admission was on a first come, first served basis. At some stage before the match, the stewards decided it was full and so closed the gates, with people still waiting to get in. It's all anecdotal evidence but it's pretty much universally thought that a gate was broken down and the remaining crowds streamed into the terrace, nobody knows exactly how many. My father was on his way down to the stadium and people were leaving - "I thought I'd never get out" was one quote I've heard several times from him about what people said to him. It was just luck that there wasn't a crush or a stampede. There were fences at the front of the terrace but the much more open access at the back of the terrace and the lack of pens as at Hillsborough, probably stopped people being killed.

All All-Ireland finals were made all-ticket after that match.

Again, it's important to stress that unlike what happened at Croke Park in 1983, no gate was broken down at Hillsborough and the Leppings Lane terrace was under capacity.