Hillsborough - Twenty Years On

Hillsborough - Twenty Years On

April 15th 1989.

Anyone, especially football supporters will know where they were and what they were doing on that awful day.

I was at Deepdale, home of Preston North End, watching a League game with some friends of mine who lived there. Preston obviously had a deep dislike of Blackpool and Burnley but for some reason also had no love for Liverpool or scousers.

At half-time the PA announcer told the ground that the FA Cup Semi-Final had been abandoned due to a pitch invasion by Liverpool supporters. The PNE fans were unanimous in condemning Liverpool - how little anybody knew at that time.

We got back in the car after the game to hear Peter Jones on the radio start the football round up by saying that a gym at Hillsborough was now being used as a mortuary. The four of us in the car fell silent and just listened. It was horrible. As a pretty hardore, every game Aston Villa fan I was used to terraces and terrible away grounds and disgraceful treatment by police from all around the country. I was used to being treated like an animal and cages, pens and the like were the norm for us all.

Only weeks before we had been to a League Cup game at Upton Park where Villa had taken thousands upon thousands for this midweek game - more than West Ham had expected. My feet had barely touched the ground 10 feet from the turnstile and the crush was intense once inside. We got near to the front and just swayed about with no control over what we did - a policeman shouted "move back". We just told him we couoldn't.

Luckily for us all that night, West Ham didn't have fencing and the police were alert enough to open up some of the pen to our right to relieve the crush. For the 96 Liverpool fans, the South Yorkshire Police didn't offer them the same protection.

That night we were all going out in Preston Town centre but before we did we headed to a local pub where my girlfriends Dad liked to go. The guy had the news footage playing on the TV - it was so horrifying he actually turned it off and a normal bustling pub was very, very quiet.

Every normal football fan realised it could have been them. As far as I can recall, our next away game was at Norwich - Carrow Road fell silent for a minute before the match and both sets of fans sang "You'll Never Walk Alone" before the game started. Like many others, I'd sent my Villa scarf up to Hillsborough via some Sheffield Wednesday friends of mine who lived in Foxhill near the ground.

When you look back at some of the photo's of Hillsborough then it looks pre-historic. When Villa played Sheff Weds in the first game of the 1991/92 season we were the first set of supporters to sit in the Lower Leppings Lane since 1989. We walked through that tunnel and everyone just shuddered at the thought of what went on that day.

Now, because I've mentioned this one here before, is not the time for me to apportion blame. Everyone knows where it lies but justice will never be done. I looked at the mothers and fathers and despair for them - if it was my son I would fight until my last breath and never ever give up hope of seeing someone pay for the targic events on that day.

Today at work has been very strange, everything being normal until the afternoon as I looked at some of the awful pictures on the BBC site - they warned that some photo's would cause distress and they weren't wrong. Everything got put into perspective. It makes me very, very sad.

RIP. Justice for the 96.