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Hillsborough is a football stadium in Sheffield, UK, which is home to football club, Sheffield Wednesday

On the 15th April 1989 something went horribly wrong in the stands when the crowd surged forward at the FA Cup semi-finals game between Nottingham Forest and Liverpool. .

What started off as excited anticipation of the FA Cup semi-final by the Liverpool fans, ended up as one of the deadliest disasters in football’s living history.

Penned in like animals ready for slaughter, 94 people died in the deadly crush of human suffering, whilst very little was done to free them. –

There were no metal cutters on site, nor any oxygen apparatus. Security was lax and the police presence was not effective. The enormity of what was unfolding left police unsure of how to free the victims or how to deal with the escalating situation.

Faces squashed up against the metal of the high pens which were trapping them, people fought for breath as a clamber of bodies crushed the life from the Liverpool fans that were only here to support their team. -

Minutes into the fateful game, a bad decision was taken, to open side gates to let the remaining supporters in, as the turnstile couldn’t handle the huge queue.

Fans that had travelled from Lancashire to watch the game had been stuck on the M62 motorway due to road works, making them late for arrival.

This caused a build up outside the turnstile entrance at the Leppings Lane end of the stadium with fans eager to get in before the match started.

People who had been refused entrance through lack of tickets were stuck in front of the latecomers, causing a bottleneck and a danger of crushing at the turnstiles.

Thousands of waiting fans were desperate to get into the match, with feeling running high. Security then took the decision to open a side gate to let someone out and at this stage some 20 people rushed through the gate eager to watch the game.

The police, worried about crushing outside of the turnstiles then opened a set of exit gates which led to the stadium, giving full reign to thousands of supporters who stampeded upon the already heaving stands. –

The crush that followed defies belief, with no escape for the innocent Liverpool supporters. Two central pens were severely overcrowded causing the people at the front to be crushed against the pens from the weight of the people behind them.

Small children were standing at the front for a better view; they stood little chance of surviving with the sheer weight of bodies pushed up against them.

There was no stewards or police presence at the entrance to the narrow tunnel which led to the pens. They would normally have directed fans to the side pens if the central pens were full. For some reason never explained, there was an absence of both, stewards and police who were not there to control the fans on that day.

People died where they stood of compressive asphyxia, the life crushed out of them. People who could free themselves clambered over the perimeter fence that contained them and spilled out onto the pitch gasping for breath. People on the upper terraces were hauling some up to safety.

Police pushed the Liverpool fans back over the metal fence into the death-pit, thinking that they were football hooligans out to cause trouble. They simply stood no chance. The lack of decision making and quick thinking was appalling and nobody seemed to know what to do.

Nottingham Forest fans rushed forward to help, but police beat them back thinking they were about to cause trouble.

At 3.06 realisation set in at just what was unfolding and the game was stopped. -

Eventually some people were pulled over the fence and laid on the pitch. It was hard to get them out as they were packed in tight. Dead bodies were laid out on the field which was quickly starting to fill up with the casualties. The stewards, ambulance and police were quite simply overwhelmed with the enormity of it all.

Ambulances started to arrive, but out of the 44 that came, only one was let in by the police. There was no way to get them onto the pitch. The whole scenario was shambolic, with nobody knowing what to do.

It was a scene of true horror which resulted in great loss of life. Eventually the fence holding the people in collapsed under the strain and a mass of bodies collapsed onto the football pitch. -

What happened next is written down in the history books as the shame of the FA, with their failure to have foreseen the tragedy that might occur from caging football fans in pens like animals.

Dehumanisation and lack of respect for the very people who supported the game led to ill informed decisions to pen people in, with high metal fences for supposed safety purposes in the name of football security.

Caging fans in and not keeping them safe was the wrong priority and a sad and telling lesson was learned that fateful day.

- Footage of the Crush at Hillsborough -

- 96 people in total lost their lives at Hillsborough due to the human crushing -

94 died on April 15th 1989, at the match. A 14 year old boy died 4 days later and in 1993 Tony Bland died after a four year coma; bringing the death toll from Hillsborough to 96.

There were also 800 people injured and survivors who daily live with the trauma and horror of that day.-

I was watching this game on TV and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. As the true horror of the events unfolded, I was angry and shocked at what I was witnessing. I was mortified at the lack of response. It was heart breaking. I watched people die before my eyes. -

A vital lesson was learnt that day and the pens were pulled down. In a civilised world people must be treated as humans. I cannot imagine who passed the idea of caging people in such a way, as safe.

That’s a big responsibly to shoulder, in the light of what of what went down at Hillsborough on the 15th of April, 1989.

Warning signs were there eight years prior to the Hillsborough tragedy when 38 Spurs supporters at the FA Cup semi-final were injured in a crush at the Leppings Lane end of Hillsborough.

There is a lot of understandable anger and many questions hanging over the Hillsborough tragedy, and they are questions that have never been answered.

Nobody was held accountable for the tragedy at Hillsborough and till this day the families of the 96 brothers who lost their lives have never received a full apology as a mark of respect. -

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‘The inquiry into the disaster, the Taylor Report, named the cause as failure of police control, and resulted in the conversion of many football stadiums in the United Kingdom to all-seater and the removal of barriers at the front of stands’.

At the time, most United Kingdom football stadiums had placed high steel fencing and even barbed wire between the spectators and the pitch, in response to hooliganism which had plagued the sport for years.

Hooliganism was particularly virulent in England, where it often involved pitch invasions, the throwing of missiles, or both pre and post-match violence. British stadiums had a history of crushes occurring since the 1960s.
The Hillsborough Disaster