Will be interesting to see how the timing is kept so tight. Are the players going to be in position for kickoff at 3.06 and the game starts when the ref signals the end of the minutes silence?
This thread on the Geordie board is dignified and respectful. http://www.not606.com/showthread.php/257525-Hillsborough-Twenty-Five-Years-On?p=6342192#post6342192
n death, the victims of Hillsborough never walk alone, and so it is that this weekend we honour their memory with delayed kick-offs, impeccably observed minutes of silence and memories of our own. Yet if the notion of paying respect to the 96 Liverpool fans crushed to death during the abandoned FA Cup semi-final in Sheffield seems obvious, it was not always so. One cannot mark the 25th anniversary merely by empathising with the dead and injured, their families and friends, and those Liverpool FC employees who, as Alan Hansen movingly recalled on our sports pages this week, remain traumatised to this day. Properly honouring the victims also demands we remember how they were smeared and ask why those smears, for all their transparent absurdity, were so blithely accepted for so long. Hillsborough was the most predictable disaster imaginable. In 1981, I was there to see Spurs play Wolves in another Cup semi-final when several hundred fans spilled out of the overcrowded Leppings Lane end and were led to safety. Thirty-eight people suffered cracked ribs, broken limbs and so on. The police, who thought that the lack of fatalities was pure luck, suggested safety precautions be taken. None were. That staggering complacency was born in part of the generic perception, in that Eighties heyday of hooliganism, of football fans as psychotic cattle to be herded into and out of pens, and just not worth the effort and expense of adequately protecting. [h=2]Related Articles[/h] Hillsborough: 'Alan, people are dying in there' 10 Apr 2014 Hillsborough inquest under way with roll call of 96 dead 01 Apr 2014 Late kick-offs in memory of Hillsborough 21 Mar 2014 Top 10 famous golf courses Visit Scotland Yet the specific depiction of Liverpool fans in the Leppings Lane end as inhuman beasts begs questions. Would it have been meted out to people from another city, and if it had been would anyone sane have believed it? Had the victims been from Bristol, Brighton, Newcastle or Norwich, would the perception that many fans were drunk, and stormed the ground without tickets – that some stole from the pockets of the dead and dying, and others urinated on officers as they tried to help the stricken – have taken more than two decades categorically to be debunked? That kind of propaganda is generally reserved for enemy armies. And yet when applied to fellow citizens who had suffered unconscionable horror, it was widely believed. How could a quasi blood libel on an entire city take such hold on the national consciousness? Why was the howling grief of Liverpool dismissed as yet more tiresome whingeing from “self-pity city”? By what reckoning had Liverpudlians come to be viewed as innately less human than the rest of us? The idea of Liverpool as an enclave of benefits scrounging, petty crime and violence did not emerge from a vacuum. What for a while during the Victorian era was the planet’s richest city had long since been shrunken and impoverished by the callous march of industrial history, and regarded as a leech on the nation’s blood. In the Eighties, when Mrs Thatcher dismissed Michael Heseltine’s splendid drive for regeneration as a self-serving public relations stunt, the screeching hysteria of Derek Hatton and Militant fed into the image. So did the crazed Yosser Hughes approaching strangers with: “I could do that. Gissa job.” So did Carla Lane’s sitcom Bread which, however fondly, painted the archetypal Scouser as a scally driven only to find ever more creative ways of defrauding the welfare state. Old-school club comics routinely told their audiences that they went to Liverpool once a year on holiday “to visit me bleedin’ hub caps”. In 1985, the violence of some Liverpool fans contributed to the Heysel Stadium disaster. The thuggery, however nasty, was no worse than that perpetrated on countless other European football nights by followers of other clubs. The consequences were, however, and reinforced the stereotype that permitted Hillsborough’s innocents to be portrayed as callous criminals. The lessons of Hillsborough go far beyond those learnt long ago about how safely to police a sports stadium. The lesson that perhaps will never be learnt is that at heart other people are not so different from us. Whether they follow other creeds or have joined us from foreign lands, or whether they come from a proud city on the Mersey that looks out towards the New World, they have the same feelings and sensibilities. They are numbed with fear and shock when they see their brethren lying dead and dying. They do not reach into the back pocket of a corpse for a tenner, or empty their bladders over coppers. They weep and grieve inconsolably for friends and neighbours, and for strangers with whom they share a postcode and the love of a football club. They – just like Mr Hansen, Kenny Dalglish and other Liverpool FC legends whose unflinching, unfading commitment to offer solace to the survivors of Hillsborough has been so humbling to those of us looking on from afar – never entirely recover. They are united with us all in this perplexing, painful business of being human. The greatest tragedy of Hillsborough is that so many needlessly died. The second greatest, and also worth remembering over the days ahead, is that so many of us sacrificed a part of our humanity by failing for so long to recognise theirs. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/fo...e-all-share-in-the-shame-of-Hillsborough.html
Please forgive the intrusion of a Spurs fan here but I wanted to pay my respects. I watched the events unfolding before my eyes on TV 25 years ago and could not believe how the police were so badly mishandling the crowd. Also to this day no copy of the Sun has ever entered my house nor will I pick it up if I see a copy anywhere. Today though should be about honouring the 96 however and I feel for those that lost their lives and their families and friends and wanted to express that here. As a 15 year old in the sixties I remember returning from a Spurs v Liverpool game at White Hart Lane and waiting for a train at Liverpool Street. I was alone on the platform reading the results in the Evening Standard when suddenly there was a great deal of noise and I looked up and saw shedloads of Liverpool fans coming onto the platform - these were days when football hooliganism was widespread and I was nervous. However they came up to me and surrounded me and shared in reading the results in a really good humoured way. My last memory of Liverpool fans was in 2007 when I was fortunate to be a Corporate Guest at the Champions League game against Barcelona - my son was with me experiencing his first taste of Anfield. The giant flag and the rendition of You'll Never Walk Alone toally bowled us over - he played it across his mobile phone to friends. The atmosphere was electric. OK - so just a couple of ordinary memories of Liverpool fans from a Spurs fan - but they are precious and I believe you have the best fans anywhere. As an aside I lived in Watford for a while and used to watch them when Brendan Rodgers was their Manager - his first manager's job. We always knew he was going to go on to become something special - I fervently hope he brings you the Premiership title this year. Good luck - and again please accept my thoughts and best wishes for all those touched by those tragic events.
A quarter of a century has passed since that awful day in Sheffield, today is much like that day, blue skies and warm spring sunshine, but today Liverpool FC are not playing a game of football they/we are paying our respects to our fallen brothers and sisters yet again in a show of unwavering solidarity with their families. The brave Anne Williams and other members of the families have themselves sadly passed away not witnessing the justice they fought long and hard for but thankfully for the families the day is nearing when they can put closure to the terrible injustices and obstacles they and their loved ones have faced over 25 years. I'm proud that our club has always stood by the families of the 96 and I'm proud that our supporters have always given the 96 and their loved ones total backing. JFT96, YNWA.
Hopefully by this time next year the inquest will have been completed and those deemed to be responsible for the cover up post the disaster will be in the grips of the courts. So maybe the closure that the families have been so desperately seeking all these years, is not too far away now. And while the event will never been forgotten and nor should it, it can be looked back on in future years as solely one of remembrance and not one of an ongoing battle.
Hope this is the right thread to come onto. I just wanted to say that today your club and your city will be in my thoughts, as it is each year on this day. As has been said above already, I hope that soon this day can become a day for remembering rather than a day that highlights an ongoing struggle. The truth is finally being shown up so that even the most cynical cannot deny the illegal way the government and the police acted on the day and since. Nothing can replace those stolen from you, but I hope that when justice comes it at least provide some comfort. In peace.
John Alfred Anderson (62) Colin Mark Ashcroft (19) James Gary Aspinall (18) Kester Roger Marcus Ball (16) Gerard Bernard Patrick Baron (67) Simon Bell (17) Barry Sidney Bennett (26) David John Benson (22) David William Birtle (22) Tony Bland (22) Paul David Brady (21) Andrew Mark Brookes (26) Carl Brown (18) David Steven Brown (25) Henry Thomas Burke (47) Peter Andrew Burkett (24) Paul William Carlile (19) Raymond Thomas Chapman (50) Gary Christopher Church (19) Joseph Clark (29) Paul Clark (18) Gary Collins (22) Stephen Paul Copoc (20) Tracey Elizabeth Cox (23) James Philip Delaney (19) Christopher Barry Devonside (18) Christopher Edwards (29) Vincent Michael Fitzsimmons (34) Thomas Steven Fox (21) Jon-Paul Gilhooley (10) Barry Glover (27) Ian Thomas Glover (20) Derrick George Godwin (24) Roy Harry Hamilton (34) Philip Hammond (14) Eric Hankin (33) Gary Harrison (27) Stephen Francis Harrison (31) Peter Andrew Harrison (15) David Hawley (39) James Robert Hennessy (29) Paul Anthony Hewitson (26) Carl Darren Hewitt (17) Nicholas Michael Hewitt (16) Sarah Louise Hicks (19) Victoria Jane Hicks (15) Gordon Rodney Horn (20) Arthur Horrocks (41) Thomas Howard (39) Thomas Anthony Howard (14) Eric George Hughes (42) Alan Johnston (29) Christine Anne Jones (27) Gary Philip Jones (18) Richard Jones (25) Nicholas Peter Joynes (27) Anthony Peter Kelly (29) Michael David Kelly (38) Carl David Lewis (18) David William Mather (19) Brian Christopher Mathews (38) Francis Joseph McAllister (27) John McBrien (18) Marian Hazel McCabe (21) Joseph Daniel McCarthy (21) Peter McDonnell (21) Alan McGlone (28) Keith McGrath (17) Paul Brian Murray (14) Lee Nicol (14) Stephen Francis O'Neill (17) Jonathon Owens (18) William Roy Pemberton (23) Carl William Rimmer (21) David George Rimmer (38) Graham John Roberts (24) Steven Joseph Robinson (17) Henry Charles Rogers (17) Colin Andrew Hugh William Sefton (23) Inger Shah (38) Paula Ann Smith (26) Adam Edward Spearritt (14) Philip John Steele (15) David Leonard Thomas (23) Patrick John Thompson (35) Peter Reuben Thompson (30) Stuart Paul William Thompson (17) Peter Francis Tootle (21) Christopher James Traynor (26) Martin Kevin Traynor (16) Kevin Tyrrell (15) Colin Wafer (19) Ian David Whelan (19) Martin Kenneth Wild (29) Kevin Daniel Williams (15) Graham John Wright (17) Rest in Peace
God bless to all the families of the victims, and never stop fighting until you get the truth you deserve. I must confess the romantic in me wants you to win the league this year, would be somewhat fitting on the 25th anniversary. RIP and Justice to the 96...
We're gonna win the league for the 96 in the sky. YNWA. [video=youtube;UKzqizf9cu0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKzqizf9cu0[/video]
Honest question (and I'm fully aware I might get blasted for this): Anyone else dislike the '96 in the sky' slogan? I appreciate the metaphor, but even most Christians I know would think it a touch crass. Am I over analysing it? Dave? You, in particular, I trust to answer this honestly.
I hadn't really taken much notice of the phrase until the last few days. To me is seems a little trite from a doctrinal standpoint but if it helps people to cope with their emotions ( I know that I find that difficult to do about the 96) then it is useful. It's not surprising though is it. Many people who hold no particular faith still use faith references in their every day life without even noticing them and this phrase is a classic example. But if you ask me if I like it then I would have to say that personally I find it trite but if others find it useful I have no objection. If it helps as an inclusive statement for those of faith and those of no faith then who are we to object?
