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Hillsborough - 20 years later

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by NoOneLikesUs, Mar 17, 2009.

  1. albert77

    albert77 Well-Known Member

    I don't know how widely distributed the photo was, but I will never forget a picture AP moved of a teenage girl pressed up against that fence. She had an open-mouthed look of shock on her face that was just haunting. Never found out if she was dead or not, but either way, it was a disturbing image.
     
  2. NoOneLikesUs

    NoOneLikesUs Active Member

    Rupert Murdoch's paper. Fox News being Fox News. Even back then.

    Here's the news report from the day:
     
  3. Armchair_QB

    Armchair_QB Well-Known Member

    I don't follow soccer much and didn't follow it at all back then but I remember more coverage of the Heysel incident here than the Hillsborough one for some reason. I guess the international angle of the former had more to do with that.
     
  4. Inky_Wretch

    Inky_Wretch Well-Known Member

    I think it's a major miracle. Even with the explosion of satellite TV and the Internet.
     
  5. deskslave

    deskslave Active Member

    For anyone curious about the Valley Parade fire, the video from that. Hard to believe anyone thought wooden stands were a good idea.

    http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4biv1_football-stadium-on-fire_extreme

    The powers that be would just as soon this video not be anywhere on the Internet, but it's a battle they appear to have lost.
     
  6. dooley_womack1

    dooley_womack1 Well-Known Member

    Wow, that is wild. It just looks like a big ole flash fire with people bailing out of the stands, so you don't think of any loss of life right away. But then you read on wiki, and you learn of people actually going backward and running into locked gates. And the burning tarp falling from the overhang probably fell on some people. Two elderly fans were found dead while still sitting in the bleachers.
     
  7. deskslave

    deskslave Active Member

    The gates were locked to prevent people coming through without tickets. There were no fire extinguishers available because they'd previously been used as projectiles. Again, the culture of the game at the time.

    That clip has been used ever since as a fire department training video, basically to show recruits just how fast fire can move. I think there's a degree of editing in that clip, but I'm not entirely sure. In any event, it only took about four minutes to completely engulf the stand.

    And the man on fire at the end did not survive.
     
  8. deskslave

    deskslave Active Member

    Incidentally, Lincoln City were Bradford's opposition that day. Their own ground was also old and largely wooden, and all their stands were at one point ruled unsafe. They were able to retrofit it, but at a considerable cost, and they were relegated twice in the next two years, going out of the League for a year. They've since recovered and become a solid lower-league team, albeit the first in history ever to make the playoffs five straight years without managing to go up. (They're now managed by Peter Jackson, who was Bradford's captain on the day of the fire.)

    But because of the separation in divisions, the next time Bradford and Lincoln met was in a charity match -- after Hillsborough.
     
  9. Inky_Wretch

    Inky_Wretch Well-Known Member

    Just realized a Champions League leg falls on the anniversary of Hillsborough. Will UEFA will rig the scheduling so Liverpool won't have to play on the exact date?
     
  10. NoOneLikesUs

    NoOneLikesUs Active Member

    Much worse than any written account I've read and by far more graphic video than the stuff shown at Hillsborough (and that's not a picnic either).

    How public stadium policy was not changed after that fire is perhaps the bigger tragedy.
     
  11. derwood

    derwood Active Member

    Liverpool has made a request to UEFA to change the date.
     
  12. andyouare?

    andyouare? Guest

    Ugh. That was a gut-wrenching read. I knew a lot of the details but that still difficult.

    I have a question after reading the wiki article: How the hell is Kelvin MacKenzie, the Sun editor guy, still walking around in one piece.

    Also, Steven Gerrard's 10-year-old cousing died at Hillsborough. Wow. I didn't know that.
     
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