Every child must be told of that day 25 years ago
HILLSBOROUGH. Say the word to those of a certain age on Merseyside and almost all will be able to tell you where they were, and what they were doing, on April 15, 1989. I was at Villa Park on what turned out to be the darkest day in English football’s history. Everton were playing Norwich in the FA Cup semi-final, Pat Nevin scored the winning goal and it should have been one of the great days of my young life. Instead it was anything but. I remember an announcement at half-time to say the other semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest had been abandoned, but nobody knew why. It was only when I got into the car with my dad that we began to learn of the horrors that unfolded 70 miles away in Sheffield. We travelled back from Birmingham in near silence, worrying about my cousin, Jamie, and all the other Liverpool fans who we knew had gone to Hillsborough. Only when we got back did we hear the full extent. I was 11 and my final memory of the day was when the BBC announced MatchoftheDay had been cancelled out of respect to those who had died. Everyone we knew came home. For the families of the 96, however, the nightmare was just beginning and it is a national disgrace they were made to suffer for so long. Those families have fought tirelessly for justice over the past 25 years and at Anfield tomorrow, before Liverpool’s showdown with Manchester City, then again on Tuesday, when the annual Memorial Service is staged, we will pay tribute to the ones who so tragically passed away. Across Stanley Park, Everton will do the same, as pictures of the service will be beamed on to a big screen at Goodison Park; Everton have stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Liverpool over Hillsborough, which is why you should never class it as a one football club tragedy. It wasn’t. It affected the whole city, as Evertonians had family, friends and work colleagues at Hillsborough. The rivalry between the clubs is intense but, for this particular matter, the bond is unbreakable. When I started attending the Memorial Service as a Liverpool player in 1996, I understood what had happened, but it was only after I became a father in 2002 that I really gained a sense of perspective on the agony those parents who lost sons and daughters must have endured. At times during those services, when I heard the congregation singing for ‘justice’, I lost hope that they would ever get a resolution but their resolve, courage and determination to fight on has been inspirational, not just to everyone at the club but around the city and far beyond. The families got their breakthrough in 2009, at the 20th Anniversary Memorial Service. Andy Burnham, the then Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, addressed the crowd but he was shouted down. Afterwards, I attended a reception at Liverpool Town Hall with Steven Gerrard and Kenny Dalglish as the families were being honoured with the Freedom of the City; Burnham was visibly shaken and he said that night: ‘We will get to the bottom of this’. Hopefully, now that the fresh inquests into the deaths have started, some form of closure will arrive in the near future, but that does not mean what happened that day in Sheffield can ever be forgotten. This weekend, young children will ask their parents why matches in England are kicking off seven minutes later, after a period of silence. It is important they, and future generations, understand what happened.