I was 13. It was a warm Saturday afternoon and I was stuck indoors. Mum was in the kitchen making sandwiches, sister was upstairs listing to music, and I was sat on the living room floor dressed head to toe in my Liverpool kit, football boots and scarf, surrounded by my few programmes and glossy photographs of John Barnes, Peter Beardsley and Steve McMahon. It was a warm afternoon and I didn't want to be outside.
Cup semi-final day and my hands hadn't even come close to a ticket. The weeks anticipation had only been shared with a couple of Liverpool fan friends at school before the assembly bell went, so most of my thoughts were wrapped up like a whirlwind inside my head. Everything Des Lynam said on Grandstand I responded to - "That's rubbish, Forest have only got Clough, we've got Barnes, Beardsley and Aldo" or "Wow, those crowds look amazing, I wish I was there".
These were the days before the Internet streams, page updates and Sky Sports. Games of this magnitude weren't moved for Live TV. 40,000 people in the country got to see the game and the rest of us just waited. Kick off was at 3pm on a Saturday and the next thing you'd hear about was a change in the score.
Until Des came back on at 3.05. The Live Swimming was interrupted and I sat up straight. Des had his finger pressed to his ear and told me that although Beardsley had just hit the bar for Liverpool, stories were emanating from the stands. Seconds later the game was called off and Des took us to live pictures of Hillsborough. Confusion reigned, players reluctantly went off and masses of bodies were running across the fresh green turf. It looked like a pitch invasion but the BBC weren't saying that. They were confused as well, as the sense of foreboding swelled up. History was being written and I felt helpless sitting on my living room floor.
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Three years later and I had a project to do for my General Studies A Level and there was only one option. The events of 15th April 1989 and the following months had not left me. The trophy that no-one wanted to win, the reluctant smiles of Bruce Grobbelaar dressed in black, the procession of flowers lining fields, the tired eyes of Kenny Dalglish. And the legal battle that I never really understood. My fledgling mind knew that 92, then 95, then 96 lives bad been lost to crushing and I didn't understand what there was to argue about. Compensation wasn't even talked about, the police and ambulances had done their job, and everyone had been laid to rest. That was until my project took me under the surface.
Day after day, night after night I'd be making phone box calls to my Mum to say I'd nearly finished, from Birmingham Central Library, almost 8 miles from my home. I was submerged in the detail. There was no Internet - that was probably still on someone's home computer in California. Instead I waded through newspaper after newspaper, analysed the Justice Taylor Report, and stopped for several moments every time I seen one if the harrowing photographs from the day. I still remember the girl crushed against the barrier as people clamoured for air around her. Bodies lay on hoardings carried onto the football pitch; where the ball was once passed now lives were passing. I simply couldn't leave the library of information as microfiches of comment, opinion and judgement reshaped my thoughts. I felt an ounce of the 10-tonne pain that each family had carried, and it hurt me.
With a friend I travelled to see Brian Hall at Anfield to garner the club's opinion, and after joking and lightening the mood in the presence of youngsters, his tone changed dramatically after my first questions. I wanted to know - I needed to know - the root of what happened. I learned why Kelvin McKenzie is such a despicable person, I was inflamed at how time was called at 3.15, but moreover I was sad. This had become far beyond a school report for me. It was a trail of maddening discovery, neither cathartic nor empowering. But it was educational. I learned about the need for survival, not in a living and breathing sense, but in a political sense. I understood the squeamish ways people could wriggle and squirm their way out of a difficult situation to protect themselves, their careers and their reputation. I learned that every story is just a way to make money for the worst of journalists and editors.
I can't be there this year, to join the 20,000+ people who trade their 15th April to remember. I've been there and it's a unifying day. You feel togetherness with people in the row behind you who you've never met but who each tell their own story. You are not united by a badge, or a day, but by the same basic human instinct that struck those frightened supporters that Saturday. The need to survive as a collective and a community against all the injustices life can throw at you.
Justice for the 96.
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