Quote: hi de hi "..The fact of the matter is that the decent fans who turned up early to watch the match were victims of the drunken yob element who stormed the ground in a drunken rampage.'"
Utterly shameful remark. There really is no excuse for such knee-jerkery when the comprehensive facts of what actually happened are in the public domain now. I would urge you to read the full report before making any more completely wrong comments. Ironically, you have basically just repeated what Kelvin McKenzie finally today abjectly apologised for claiming all those years ago in THAT headline. Even he accepts there was no truth in it, yet you repeat it.
There was no drunken yob element and you should apologise unreservedly.
There was no drunken rampage. In fact, the efforts of the police to fit up the deceased by disgracefully running blood-alcohol tests spectacularly backfired as the tests showed that, actually, the vast majority had drunk only modest amounts if anything. And that any blood alcohol level should in any case clearly be judged by the standards of a pedestrian at a social occasion, not the legal limit for a driver behind the bloody wheel as they tried to do.
There was no rampage, and no evidence of fans without tickets causing problems. Anyway, if you had no ticket, wouldn't you be away from the turnstiles finding a tout to buy one from?
The crush outside the ground happened simply because the police let anyone who wanted approach the turnstiles instead of imposing any sort of queuing. As there were several turnstiles, each operating at a snail's pace, and many fans anxious to get in to a game that was starting, a crush developed which would not have ever happened if the fans had been organised into queues. As had been done in previous games, and is not rocket science.
The crush inside the ground happened because the access that the police insisted was opened led directly to the central tunnel into the pens that were already full. But the police at the back of the pens did not know that and the police who were supposed to be watching the pens incomprehensibly failed to tell those at the back to close the tunnel into the central pens first. By simply closing the tunnel gates, nobody would have died. Whereas the fans streaming through the opened gate were immediately confronted by a tunnel leading into the pens, and of course had absolutely no idea that the pens were already full.
The exhaustively comprehensive report fully absolves the Liverpool fans. Further attempts to demonize and blame them are disgusting and totally inexcusable.
