I TRAVELLED TO THE KING POWER TO WATCH A MATCH... I ENDED UP STARING AT A FIREBALL
I WENT to the King Power to watch a football match and ended up staring at a fireball.
In less than the time it took the helicopter to drop out of the sky and burst into flames on the club car park, what happened out on the pitch melted into insignificance.
The full extent of the tragedy might not be known for some time – the shattering realisation of what might have been was mind-numbing.
Make no mistake – if that chopper had hit the stand or any of the streets surrounding the stadium, there could have been hundreds of fatalities.
I can’t count the number of times that I’ve seen the Leicester owner’s helicopter fly over me as I’ve walked back to my car as the whirr of the blades took him high into the early evening sky.
The sound was commonplace, normal, routine – it’s what happens an hour after a Leicester game. This night was different.
I’d just personally spoken to West Ham’s Mark Noble about his sending off and then got five minutes with Ben Chilwell.
Noble was gracious and accepting of the fact that referee Michael Oliver had got it right, though he had not intended to hurt anyone.
He laughed when I suggested that he had used all of the hot water in his early shower. I’d heard word that there had been no hot water and put it to Noble that he might be the culprit!
It was all lighthearted stuff and I thanked him for being gracious enough to stop and talk when he probably wasn’t in the best frame of mind after being red-carded with over half the game to go.
Then the courteous and well-spoken Chilwell, a young man just setting out on his football career, detailed how well things had gone for him in the past week or so with a full England debut and a whopping new five-year deal with Leicester which should set him up for life at just 21.
He was more concerned with team-mate Daniel Amartey who was stretchered needing oxygen with what looked a serious injury.
The Ghana star appeared to break his ankle in a tussle with Michael Antonio and had just been taken to hospital. Adjectives like ‘tragic’ and ‘horror’ sprang to mind. Then, minutes after getting back into the press room, there was an eerie buzz as it became clear something had gone horribly wrong outside and a major news story was breaking.
The car park told its own story – emergency crews flying past, stewards and police urging people to get away from the scene and just over the way the fireball that had been the chairman’s helicopter only minutes earlier. You could smell disaster.
It was a scene that ‘tragic’ and ‘horror’ are supposed to be reserved for.
What had happened before was just a football match.
For the record, Fabian Balbuena gave West Ham a 31st-minute lead only to get in the way of a shot from the Foxes’ Wilfred Ndidi to deflect the ball past his own keeper in the last minute. LEICESTER: Schmeichel 7, Amartey 6, Soyuncu 7 (Okazaki 80, 5), Maguire 7, Chilwell 8, Ghezzal 6, (Vardy 46, 7), Ndidi 7, Iborra 7, Albrighton 7, Maddison 7, Iheanacho 6 (Gray 61, 6)
WEST HAM: Fabianski 8, Zabaleta 7, Balbuena 7, Diop 6, Masuaku 6, Rice 7, Diangana 6 (Cresswell 75, 5), Noble 4, Snodgrass 6, Anderson 7(Ogbonna 81), Chicharito 6 (Antonio 61, 6)
REF: Michael Oliver ATT: 31,848
MATCH STATS