The Hillsborough disaster!

FA Cup quarter-final day and Liverpool, under Kenny Dalglish, put four past Brenford without reply to go through to their seventeenth FA Cup semi-final – a tie against the strong opposition of Nottingham Forest at Sheffield Wednesday’s Hillsborough stadium. Little did they know that the semi-final would turn out to be football’s most tragic day ever.

Liverpool were going strong in the league, very close to catching up with top of the table Arsenal. Impressive victories over Wednesday and Milwall eventually saw Liverpool back where they belonged – at the top of the table.

Cup semi-final day loomed as Pool would battle with Forest for the right to play Everton in the final of the cup. The script was written for LFC to win and go through to meet their local rivals in the final.

April 15th 1989 – football’s lowest day as ninety six Liverpool supporters lost their lives in front of the watching (in shock) world. The match started as normal, it would seem to a viewer in another stand or watching television but in the Leppings Lane end of the stadium there was confusion. As thousands of supporters were crammed into terraced stand. Six minutes into the game, the referee blew a holt on proceedings and what has been the scene for a picture-book football match turned into a scene of mass chaos as policemen and first aid men rushed onto the pitch treating the bodies of the wounded and, sadly, the carrying the bodies of the dead.

Expressions of shock lay on the face of the survivors at Hillsborough that day along with the millions in disbeleif watching around the world – some, the families of the disaster’s victims. The death count went up as the evening progressed and supporters arrived back on Merseyside to scenes of greif and sadness. By Wednesday the death count was up to ninety-five with a ninety-sixth through further reasons to follow. The country was in a state of shock.

Just days later, Anfield was covered in flowers, scarves and banners with people of all football teams and positions in authority paying their respect. Prince Charles was amongst the first to lay flowers on Anfield’s Kop.

Investigations into the disaster followed with many fans showing that their ticket for the semi-final hadn’t even been checked – still in it’s full tact. It was obvious that someone had opened too many gates at the Leppings Lane end, letting fans stream into an already full to capacity area surrounded by fencing meaning an overflow of fans were inside the enclosed area.

The events of one sunny April afternoon would change the face of the sport forever after families were left broken and bitter by shocking deaths which could have been easily averted.

The seeds of tragedy were sown soon after the FA Cup semi-final between Nottingham Forest and Liverpool was allocated to Hillsborough - Sheffield Wednesday's home ground and then a regular venue for semis.

Police gave Forest fans the Spion End of the ground which held 21,000 while Liverpool had the Leppings Lane End, which held only 14,600 - an odd decision considering the relative size of each club's support,

Half an hour before kick-off a bottleneck began to form outside the Leppings Lane. The turnstiles couldn't let enough supporters in quickly enough to ease the pressure building up outside the ground and by 3pm more than 5,000 Liverpool fans were still outside the stadium.

Police ordered a gate to the stand to be opened because they believed the pressure of fans outside the ground was "a danger to life". Gate C was intended as an exit and did not have turnstiles, so a rush of supporters entered the stadium.

As they sped in, they joined two already very overcrowded central pens, causing a huge crush at the front of the terrace. Men, women and children were pressed up against the security fencing with no means of escape.

However, more than five minutes of the match passed before the unfolding tragedy became apparent to those not in the Leppings Lane. Referee Ray Lewis, after being advised by the police, stopped the match after fans started climbing the fence to escape the crush.

Some fans were heroically pulled to safety by supporters in the upper tier of the West Stand while a precious few managed to escape through portions of fence broken by the sheer weight of people.

With the players in the safety of the dressing room, the pitch quickly started to fill with supporters - some unharmed, many injured, some dead. Advertising hoardings were torn down to form makeshift stretchers while the emergency services struggled to come to terms with the scale of the disaster.

At least 700 people were injured, about 20 seriously, while the death toll on the day reached 94. Fourteen-year-old Lee Nicol died in hospital soon after and four years later Tony Bland finally succumbed to his injuries and passed away.

The city of Liverpool spent the following weeks and months in mourning and the funerals - always attended by members of Kenny Dalglish's team - came horribly thick and fast. Players went to hospitals to see the injured and families, still in a state of shock, demanded answers as a cruel tabloid witchhunt by The Sun newspaper blamed supporters rather than the blundering South Yorkshire Police.

However the resultant inquest returned a verdict of accidental death, with little or no allocation of blame apportioned to the police services. The coroner ruled that all victims had sustained their fatal injuries by 3.15pm, based on advice from pathologists, and as a result, he did not hear any evidence of what happened after that point.

Many of the bereaved families believe their loved ones were still alive by 3.15pm and perhaps, given proper medical assistance, could have survived. To this day they campaign for the inquest to be reopened.

Lord Taylor's inquiry into the disaster found that police shortcomings contributed to the tragedy and subsequently recommended ground improvements including the tearing down of security fencing and the introduction of all-seater stadia.