VERY SAD DAY

I do remember watching that live as the scores were coming in, on Grandstand IIRC,- would cut away now - though they stayed with it, horrific indeed..
 
Still used to this day in fire marshal training courses. Horrific and scares the life out of me whenever I think about it all.
 
BobUpnDown said:
I do remember watching that live as the scores were coming in, on Grandstand IIRC,- would cut away now - though they stayed with it, horrific indeed..
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I remember watching that too - vividly remember a guy walking across the pitch in flames before a police officer frantically ran over with a jacket to try put the flames out. The camera cut away after that but I’m guessing he would have been one of those that died. I think John Hendrie was part of the Bradford team that day.
 
Horrific seeing it on TV. I didn't know about it until quite late in the evening when they put the news footage on the big screen in Leo's.

It just seemed like one thing after another back then....
Herald of Free Enterprise
King's Cross
Heysel
BA Flight 328
Bradford
Hillsborough
Piper Alpha

Never mind the Falklands, the city centre riots and the miners strike.
Jeez, what a time 😟
 
Merlin said:
I remember watching that too - vividly remember a guy walking across the pitch in flames before a police officer frantically ran over with a jacket to try put the flames out. The camera cut away after that but I’m guessing he would have been one of those that died. I think John Hendrie was part of the Bradford team that day.
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Yes, was watching it live and saw that. Was rightly edited out of later recorded news footage, and yes the poor guy died a couple of days later in hospital.
 
Rofesleg said:
Horrific seeing it on TV. I didn't know about it until quite late in the evening when they put the news footage on the big screen in Leo's.

It just seemed like one thing after another back then....
Herald of Free Enterprise
King's Cross
Heysel
BA Flight 328
Bradford
Hillsborough
Piper Alpha

Never mind the Falklands, the city centre riots and the miners strike.
Jeez, what a time 😟
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Yes as said above I was also getting on one of the Supporters coaches at Shrewsbury , the one with ( Fred?) Appleton chairman of the supporters club if I remember correctly. Brum v Leeds also happened that day which is possibly the worst violence inside an English football ground ever but it got obscured by Valley Parade, a fan died outside when a wall collapsed on him.
I also remember vividly a few days later the Heysel disaster and feeling sick at what fans from England had done to innocent people. That was where the path to closing down mass hooliganism started in earnest.
Next year we came back to Shrewsbury on the last day and the police had seen our behaviour on the previous last day and decided to catch as many divs as possible.over around 30 arrested on the day and over a 100 had early morning knocks on their door over the next few months.
 
It still vivid in my memory and brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it. Such a sad day. I remember seeing a police officer coming out of the touch line crowd with his hair on fire. He patted it out and turned around going straight back in to help others. A real hero.
 
I've done many many firefighting courses during my time at sea and have had to uncomfortably sit through the video of it many times.
The thing that i never can fully comprehend is the speed of it.
 
If there was anything positive out of that - as a result of the fire, Bradford Royal Infirmary now has one of the leading burns treatment units in Europe and have lead the way in treatment innovation over the years.
 
I think that it was actually on ITV, as I remember John Helm being the commentator.

Also. I think that they showed the fire “as live” later in the evening, as I had just come home from playing cricket and they re-played the coverage. It was very graphic and un-edited.

I wrote my Uni dissertation the following year on safety in sports grounds.

The Popplewell report highlighted lots of institutional issues, which tragically were repeated in the Taylor report after Hillsborough just 4 years later. So many grounds were unsafe for fans. And that’s before they added fences.

The Popplewell report’s focus on crowd behaviour attracted more attention than the points made about crowd safety and authorities carrying out their responsibilities properly. The same day as the Bradford fire, a person was killed at the Birmingham City vs Leeds United match. Membership schemes, CCTV cameras and fan behaviour featured heavily in the report and were prioritised in the media coverage.

In later years, I’ve met a firefighter who attended Valley Parade, and members of a family who were in the stand and survived, because the person saying to go out the way they entered was overruled by the one who said to get on to pitch.

There was an awful inevitability that something like this, and Hillsborough, would happen. But not because the warnings were not out there.

Steve Gibson’s commitment to leaving Ayresome for the Riverside and his comments about retaining it as an all-seater stadium are totally understandable in the light of the two reports.


Edit:

To be clear, both incidents were the responsibility of authorities not carrying out their duties as they were required, rather than crowd behaviour, even though media and political commentary about both reports focussed on crowd behaviour/hooliganism rather than institutional negligence.
 
We played them in the league cup early in that season. I remember thing what a dump it was. The fire was no surprise unfortunately. Listened to the news on way home from Shrewsbury. The video is often shown in health and safety videos at work. Horrific
 
Merlin said:
I remember watching that too - vividly remember a guy walking across the pitch in flames before a police officer frantically ran over with a jacket to try put the flames out. The camera cut away after that but I’m guessing he would have been one of those that died. I think John Hendrie was part of the Bradford team that day.
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John Hendrie was there that day. I went to a Sportsman Dinner a few years back when he was the guest speaker.

He did discuss the event during his talk, and by the end was pretty much in tears. For somebody who has probably done those events so many times over, it’s understandably still really difficult to discuss and a very traumatic experience to think back to. So sad.
 
On The Bob said:
John Hendrie was there that day. I went to a Sportsman Dinner a few years back when he was the guest speaker.

He did discuss the event during his talk, and by the end was pretty much in tears. For somebody who has probably done those events so many times over, it’s understandably still really difficult to discuss and a very traumatic experience to think back to. So sad.
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I’ve heard Gabby Logan talk about it on radio a few years ago. As a little girl she was there and witnessed the whole thing unfold. Stuff like that stays with you forever.
 
speckyget said:
Yes, was watching it live and saw that. Was rightly edited out of later recorded news footage, and yes the poor guy died a couple of days later in hospital.
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What particularly got me about that poor man was that he was walking slowly, almost striding, but slowly straight ahead as the whole of his back and head was afire, poor soul
 
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