THE MANCHESTER BOMBING

Journalist Gavin Newsham recalls his experience of the IRA terrorist attack

As a staff writer at 90 Minutes magazine, Euro 96 was my first major tournament working. In the build-up I had spent two years watching interminable friendlies at a ghostly Wembley, 0-0s with Norway, Uruguay and Croatia sandwiching yet another goalless draw against Colombia in front of 20,000 other lost souls. Thank God for Rene Higuita’s scorpion kick. But it was all forgotten once Euro 96 began.

My Deputy Editor pulled rank and bagged the press pass for England’s meeting with Scotland at Wembley, so I headed north – via my parents’ house in Manchester – for the consolation prize of seeing France vs Spain at Elland Road.

It was an uneventful train journey until the train stopped just outside Manchester Piccadilly, where silence greeted us. There was no mobile phone to check, no Twitter – just snippets of information, rumours and the occasional announcement about ‘an incident’ somewhere in town.

When I finally disembarked the train, it was very clear that something serious had happened. Police were everywhere, sirens were ringing and people were in a panic. I heard a Manchester Evening News seller say there had been a bomb on Corporation Street, but it was only when I eventually got home and turned on the TV that I saw the chaos caused by the largest peacetime bomb ever detonated in this country.

I didn’t make it to France vs Spain, but it didn’t matter. A day later, Manchester did what it always does: it got on with things. Russia vs Germany went ahead in front of 50,000 fans at Old Trafford – astonishingly, given the horror of what had taken place. But the fact that not a single person died that morning? That really was a miracle.