Hillsborough

Re: that argument that went on earlier. I dunno about anyone else - but I've always taken wrong, misinformed views about Hillsborough more personally than almost anything else I can think of. For the following reasons:

1. I knew a couple of those involved

2. Even though I wasn't even 11 at the time, it was always horribly obvious to me what had happened. I think it was to most football fans with a brain

3. Far and away most important: for me, the most insidious thing of all about the 20 year long aftermath was, such is the awful nature of tribalism in football, how many fans of other clubs WANTED their prejudices to be confirmed.

Those fans didn't bother reading the Taylor Report. Some of them clearly still haven't looked through the documentation which is now publicly available, and sets out the comprehensive, unfettered, inviolable truth. And given its accessibility, I find it indefensible that some still choose to opine on a subject which they've just not bothered informing themselves on.

The point about Hillsborough is this: it could've been us. If we'd come out of that semi-final draw at a different moment, it could've been us who experienced that. Us who lost 96 innocents. Us who then spent the next 20 years being smeared, slandered, lied about and labelled. Us who still haven't got justice - by which I mean, criminal prosecutions of those responsible - even now.

I think most football fans find it uniquely powerful and shocking for that reason. There but for the grace of God go all of us - and 25 years tomorrow, so did 96 Liverpool fans. Who went along to a football match, and never came home.

RIP. Justice For The 96.

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Posted By: thebigfeller, Apr 15, 00:43:52