merse
TFF member
Posts: 2,684
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Post by merse on Apr 15, 2009 18:06:41 GMT
 Lest we forget. Twenty years ago today, at a place where many of us later experienced such pleasure and exhilaration following OUR club; there occurred the singularly most sad and tragic event I hold in my memories of the game over half a century. Year after year, whenever the anniversary is occurring; I am overcome with emotion and right now I'm trying in vain to recall where I was when I heard that tragic news. My age and emotional state tonight prevents me from remembering whether it was Hillsborough or Valley Parade that was brought to my attention at Leyton Orient that day by David Thomas leaning forward from the press box and breaking the beginnings of what was to be a night of horrific news updates. Just WHO were Torquay United playing on that awful day and where? It might have been at Brisbane Road, but as I said that could well have been the day of the equally shocking Valley Parade inferno....................the gravity and national significance of BOTH tragedies dwarf such personal minutia (and was it not that day too when Kenny Veysey broke his leg and thus missed our first Wembley experience?) and I know a couple of contributors on here who will soon fill in the statistical detail. Please, no debates on the rights and wrongs of what happened; but perhaps a few memories and recollections of those who also remember just where they were, just what it means to them two decades after and whether they too so heavily feel the effects that this one member of the football family still does after all this time.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Apr 15, 2009 18:16:22 GMT
Torquay were playing at Leyton Orient on 15 April 1989 and for some reason - financial probably - I was at Frome Town where everybody, understandably, soon lost all interest in what was in front of them. I remember sitting in a cafe afterwards - listening to the radio - and feeling totally shell-shocked and angry.
As for Valley Parade, I was at a wedding in Preston chatting away to a colleague - the daughter of a Bradford City season ticket holder - when the news came through. In those pre-mobile phone days she endured an anxious half-hour before discovering he was safe.
The 1980s were a time of major disasters in this country and, in several cases, I felt a chill because I'd been at the scene of the tragedy at some stage in my life: I'd sat in that old stand at Bradford City many years before and noticed the debris; I'd been to Hillsborough many times and had stood on those very terraces at our FA Cup game earlier that year; I'd been on a ferry to Zeebrugge just a few years before that tragedy happened. I also think of the times when I've been caught in crushes at football matches, the most scary of which was at the Wolves v Liverpool game in 1976 when Liverpool won the championship and Wolves were relegated. I won't go into the rights and wrongs but there is a feeling of There for the Grace of God...
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Dave
TFF member
Posts: 13,081
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Post by Dave on Apr 15, 2009 18:38:57 GMT
I agree Merse its not the time to discuss any rights or wrongs, but would just say I feel the people Of Liverpool should have more answers than they have. So very moving watching the events at Anfield today.
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Post by Budleigh on Apr 15, 2009 20:01:59 GMT
I was at Orient that day and what always sticks in my mind is the announcer coming on the tannoy and apologising for having no news about the match at Hillsborough because there was a hold-up at the ground due to too many people trying to get in. He then suggested a few should be sent down to Brisbane Road and the chap next to me leant over and said 'He doesn't know, does he?' as we listened to the horrors unfolding via radios tuned in.
Our game went ahead, we lost 3-1, but the walk back to the station after was so eerie, quiet with the only sound being the continous reports coming in over the airwaves. People walking in groups listening intently. A dreadful, dreadful day... And to think it was only 3 months since we ourselves had stood on the self same Leppings Lane terrace for the cup game against Wednesday. That image of standing in the exact same spot looking through the fencing behind the Hillsborough goal has never left me...
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