My Liverpool Home (29 page)

‘Peter, behave yourself,’ I replied.

Having stayed in discreet contact with Rushie, I’d gained the definite impression that he wasn’t completely happy with life in Italy, but he was doing well at Juventus. A falsehood has grown over Rushie’s time in Serie A, depicting him as a failure when actually his strike-rate of eight goals in 29 appearances was a good return in such a defensive league. Craig having fixed me up with satellite television, I tuned in to Rai Uno to watch Rushie. My Italian ran to ‘oggi’ and ‘domani’, today and tomorrow, so at least I knew when the match was on. The commentary could have been in Greek for all I knew but I didn’t need any words to explain Rushie’s performance. I saw all the hard work he put in, the closing down of defenders, and shared his frustration at his being largely isolated in attack. I also knew PBR was still in contact with Juventus.

A couple of days after PBR first mentioned it, he and I were enjoying a very pleasant lunch with members of the Merseyside press, John Keith, Colin Wood and Mike Ellis, good men to have a good meal with. Halfway through the meal, the waiter came over to inform PBR that a call had come through for him. As Peter walked back to the table, his smile signalled a momentous event. When the journalists were distracted by some line of jocularity, Peter leant across and whispered, ‘Kenny, we’ve got him, he’s coming back. We’ve agreed it with Juventus, he’s coming back.’ Somehow I managed to maintain control, not spill my coffee in the excitement and not mention anything that the Press lads might pick up on. How we kept Rushie’s return quiet was a miracle.

On 18 August, I drove to Manchester airport to meet him. PBR and I joked about my providing a personalised taxi service to make sure Rushie didn’t run. In truth, Rushie was delighted to be home. When I was asked by the
Irish Times
what Rushie had told me about life in Italy, I replied, ‘He said it was like playing in a foreign country.’ This quip became accepted as coming from Rushie himself, and I happily take the blame for that! Where I can plead total innocence is for Rushie’s remark when he arrived at Turin airport to be met by 10,000 cheering Juventus fans, beseeching him to say something. Rushie stood at the top of the plane steps and declared, ‘Welcome.’ People say Rushie is not the brightest but he was a bloody Cambridge don at football and, for me, that’s all that mattered. When I hear him on TV now, Rushie always impresses me with his thoughtful comments, a world away from the shy ‘Omar’.

‘Rushie is back’ Liverpool fans chanted when the returning hero appeared at the Charity Shield game at Wembley. We’d met Bugsy’s demand of qualifying for this meeting between champions and FA Cup-winners. Our next visit to Wembley was to prove the most emotional in Liverpool’s long history.

14

HILLSBOROUGH

R
ETRACING
the steps and memories of Saturday, 15 April 1989, is a soul-destroying task that fills me with pain and anger. Twenty-one years have passed but I can hardly bring myself to write or say its name – Hillsborough haunts me still. Drawn to face Nottingham Forest at the home of Sheffield Wednesday for the second FA Cup semi-final in succession, we drove across the Pennines on the Friday after a brisk morning training session at Melwood. We arrived at the Hallam Towers Hotel mid-afternoon after roadworks on the M1 slowed our journey, a frustration I noted with a shrug, little realising the devastating consequences of all the cones and contra-flow.

As a manager, I trusted the authorities to get the team safely and securely to the ground, expecting them to do the same for supporters who travelled 24 hours behind us. Having experienced the roadworks, I assumed the police would make allowances for the fans’ journey to Hillsborough. Planning was done weeks ahead, meaning ample time was available to notify everybody, including the FA, about delays. I strongly feel that the descent towards disaster at Hillsborough began with the lack of communications between the police forces of the various counties. Why didn’t they talk? Why didn’t South Yorkshire police contact their colleagues on Merseyside and tell them to advise punters to leave early? Lines of communication existed, as was verified on the Monday, when we returned from Anfield to visit the injured in hospital, a trip requiring the input of three separate police forces. We were given an escort by Merseyside police, then Greater Manchester police and finally South Yorkshire police. Radio contact eased the relay through the counties. If communication was in place for the Liverpool team, why not for the Liverpool supporters? Somebody screwed up.

Holed up at the Hallam Towers, we were cocooned from the gathering storm. In the morning, a bright sunny day, I took the boys for a stroll, giving them the chance to stretch their legs before the pre-match meal. Everything was normal, just another match-day shaped by long-established routine. Just before 1 p.m., I talked to Ronnie and Roy about including Al against Forest. Injured at La Coruna at the start of the season, Al had been back in training for just a few weeks, so this was a gamble. ‘It’s a semi-final, a big game, and I need Al’s experience,’ I explained. They nodded, the two of them having faith in Al’s ability to step back in without trouble. I sent Roy upstairs to find Al.

‘Look, we’re going to play you,’ I said to Al when he appeared.

‘Oh, I can’t play. I’m not ready.’

‘It’s not your problem, Al, it’s mine. I’ll take responsibility. You’re playing. You’re not going to be captain. It’s not fair on Vitch. He’s been captain all season while you’ve been injured.’

‘No problem, Gaffer.’ With that, we climbed on the coach for the short hop to the stadium.

I used to enjoy visiting Hillsborough, old-fashioned and atmospheric with its giant Kop, steel girders across the middle of one stand and slope on the pitch. Before 15 April 1989, whenever I set foot there, Hillsborough reminded me of the lengthy history of English football. Along with Villa Park and, occasionally, Elland Road, Hillsborough was a traditional semi-final venue, a stadium trusted by the FA, but I knew from internal discussions at Anfield that Liverpool were unhappy about being given one particular stand, the Leppings Lane End. Liverpool’s feeling was that the Kop was more suitable, providing sufficient space to accommodate our bigger support. Forest were loyally followed, passionately so, but not with the same numbers as Liverpool. Giving us 24,000 tickets for the Leppings Lane End, as opposed to the 28,000 handed to Forest for the Kop, was blatantly wrong, patently failing to reflect the respective size of supports.

I understand that, in mitigation, the authorities pointed to the same system and allocation being in place the previous season with no tragic outcome, although even then PBR requested the Kop for Liverpool, just as he did in 1989, because he felt the FA’s logic was flawed. Anybody who has dipped into the history books will have seen it chronicled that crushing was reported at Hillsborough in 1981, during a semi-final between Spurs and Wolves. I strongly believe that Hillsborough was an accident waiting to happen.

According to the authorities, the reason behind Forest being granted the Kop was simplicity of travel plans. From my frequent experience of trekking to Hillsborough, I dispute the argument that it was easier for Forest fans, arriving from the south, to access the Kop. Both sets of supporters were instructed to approach Hillsborough the same way, coming off the M1 at Junction 36 and being funnelled along the A61 towards the Kop. Whether fans were coming south down the motorway from Liverpool or driving north from Nottingham, traffic flowed inexorably towards the Kop. Reaching the Leppings Lane End, or West Stand as it was also known, was complicated whichever direction fans were coming from. Liverpool supporters, delayed by roadworks, faced a race against time to make Leppings Lane before the 3 p.m. kick-off.

Even early on, the police could have seen the usual match-day flow of people was merely a trickle. From their own evidence, the police acknowledged that by 2 p.m. only 12,000 fans had entered the ground, 8,000 fewer than at the same time a year before. The West Stand pens 1, 2, 6 and 7 were nearly empty but 3 and 4 were filling. In his subsequent report, Lord Chief Justice Taylor was critical of the fact that Liverpool fans had only 23 turnstiles through which to enter their areas while Forest had 60. I’m no architect or engineer but there seemed to be a serious design flaw, particularly as those Liverpool fans with tickets for the North Stand could access it only via the Leppings Lane. I know. My son Paul was in that area.

The configuration of Hillsborough should have been a concern – and problems had arisen in 1981 – despite the 1988 semi-final passing off without issue. But whatever the stadium’s imperfections, nothing can deflect me from my steadfast opinion that the Hillsborough disaster was rooted in bad management. Nobody could have anticipated such a tragedy but when problems materialised, when Liverpool fans began arriving late through no fault of their own, those in charge should have reacted better. Unfortunately, the police officer running operations at Hillsborough that day was doing his first game. Much of the blame for the tragedy must lie with Chief Superintendent David Duckenfield. A policeman’s job in any crisis is to think on his feet, yet Duckenfield froze.

By 2 p.m., and aware that fans were still stuck on the motorway, Duckenfield should have contemplated telling the referee, Ray Lewis, to delay kick-off. The tie wasn’t live so there was no fear of upsetting the broadcasters, and neither team would have minded waiting another 15 or 20 minutes. A few players would have muttered, ‘what’s going on?’ but the decision would have been accepted. Ray, a good man and a very good referee, wouldn’t have objected, and the FA couldn’t have argued either. The fact that a Tannoy announcement was made at 2.15, requesting fans in pens 3 and 4 to move forward, indicated that the police knew they had a problem, but why not take more substantial measures than a few words over the public-address system? The kick-off should have been put back there and then with information relayed via BBC radio to fans still on the road. Police outside the Leppings Lane could have told supporters they needn’t rush. As I learned from the Taylor Report, the police discussed delaying the kick-off shortly before 2.30 but then ruled out the possibility, and this terrible indecision was to prove fatal.

When the boys went out to warm up at 2.25, they were oblivious to the tragedy unfolding on the Leppings Lane. I stayed inside the dressing room, mulling over whether I’d forgotten any instructions, flicking through the programme, answering nature’s call, before slowly changing into my match-day attire of tracksuit and boots. Looking back now, thinking of the peace and quiet in that dressing room at 2.30, it is shuddering to realise that Liverpool fans were already suffering on the Leppings Lane End. Since then, I have spoken to many parents, including Trevor Hicks, an impressive man who lost his daughters, Sarah and Victoria. He told me he was in one of the side pens, which were relatively empty. Sarah and Victoria were in the central pens, which the Taylor Report proved were full by 2.30. The police had CCTV, they knew they had a problem, and yet they hesitated. I will never waver from my belief that Duckenfield lacked the experience to deal with a game of this magnitude. I don’t believe he understood how to manage a crowd, or realised how fans surge. The one decision he did make had catastrophic consequences.

Duckenfield had two areas of congestion to contend with – outside the Leppings Lane and inside it. Authorising the exit gates at the top to be opened at 2.47, Duckenfield unwittingly released a torrent of people into a stationary block of other Liverpool supporters. Anxious to reach the terrace, the fans charged into a tunnel beneath the West Stand, and I read in the Taylor Report that the flow was judged by the police to have reached 2,000 people flooding through in five minutes alone, the majority of them hurtling towards the densely populated central pens. With fences at the front and the side restricting movement, pen 3 turned into a slaughterhouse. Having attempted to alleviate the pressure outside, Duckenfield accidentally intensified it inside. I still cannot understand why the police didn’t think, when they opened the gates, to tell fans to turn left or right and not pile on down the tunnel. All it needed was for somebody to say, ‘Sorry lads, this pen’s full, go to the side.’ I still don’t understand why they didn’t open the gates earlier, before the bottleneck built up. The police must have known those who’d reached the ground had tickets.

Liverpool fans were treated like cattle, shepherded into pens 3 and 4. Even the word ‘pen’ suggests herding cattle, and that said everything to me about the authorities’ approach to supporters back then. For people used to entering the Kop at Anfield, and moving towards their favoured spot, arriving under the unfamiliar West Stand at Hillsborough made them even more likely to go in the same direction as everybody else. Swarming into the central pens, this wave of humanity caused the crushing down at the front. Some fans managed to climb up the fence only to be forced back by the police. This was the Eighties when hooliganism was the English disease, so most people outside the Leppings Lane would initially think fighting had broken out. The reality that fans were trying to escape a crush just wasn’t in the mind-set.

What I still don’t comprehend, even now, is the reaction of some of the police standing between the fences and the pitch. They must have been tuned in to their radios and heard all the communication about problems at the top, demonstrating that this wasn’t hooliganism. Some unscrupulous characters claimed that the baggage of Heysel still accompanied Liverpool fans, and that the police could be forgiven for thinking it was hooliganism because of what happened in Brussels. That’s not credible. The police were present the year before, overseeing that FA Cup semi. They would have based their view of Liverpool fans on the evidence of that day, when no problems arose. People did not instinctively think ‘there’s going to be a riot here’ when Liverpool were playing. Liverpool fans had a reputation for being lively, enjoying a few beers and a singsong. Not all of them were angels, but they never went seeking violence.