The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
‘Disaster still lives with me every day’
For m er Rangers striker Colin Stein admit she still struggles to deal with the pain caused by the Ibrox disaster 50 years on.
The frontman sparked scenes of jubilation among the Light Blues legions back on January 2 1971, as he scored a stoppage-time equaliser to seal a 1-1 draw.
But within minutes of the final whistle, tragedy had struck as 66 fans were killed following a crush on stairway 13.
Stein had met one of the victims–Margaret Ferguson, the only woman to lose her life – only days before when she dropped off a gift for his young daughter at his home.
And the 73-year-old says the anguish caused that day has barely faded in the five decades since.
Covid- 19 means there will be a scaled-back memorial ahead of today’s derby clash with Celtic – with Steven Gerrard’s team set to lay wreaths on the pitch before kick- off – while club bosses have vowed to hold a more fitting tribute to mark the anniversary once the pandemic is over.
But Stein could not hide his disappointment that he will not be there to pay his own respects.
He said: “It’s a sad time for me and still brings back a lot of bad memories.
“A young girl who was killed that day, Margaret Ferguson, had been along at my house the week before the game to give my daughter a teddy bear. These things live with you.
“It’s still in my heart after all these years.
“I think John Grieg will be laying a wreath at the memorial on Saturday but it will certainly be hard not being there myself to pay my respects.
“It’s 50 years on but it doesn’t get any better. It lives with me every day, of course it does.
“You can’t really shake those memories. It’s one of those things.
“It never leaves you – 66 people went to a game and never came home.
“It’s a hard time when this comes round every year.”
The tragedy remains the worst sporting accident in Scottish history.
In the days before mobile communications, fear and dread spread throughout the country as people waited for their loved ones to return safely from the match.
There are countless stories of people queueing up at public telephone boxes in towns and villages as they desperately sought news, while others gathered at train stations and bus stops in the hope that partners and relatives would appear unscathed.
Meanwhile, one of the world’s leading stadium safety experts admits it took the Ibrox disaster for British football to wake up to the dangers of overcrowded grounds.
Rangers were later criticised by a judge for their failure to improve safety on the passageway after a number of earlier accidents at the same spot, including one in 1961 which claimed the lives of two men.
But Dr Keith Still, visiting professor at Suffolk University, has suggested much of the criticism aimed at the club was with the benefit of hindsight.
And he says it was only after the 1971 disaster that the full impact of the domino-effect which led to the crush was realised.
Dr Still, who is originally from Aberdeen and is widely regarded as the UK’S leading expert in crowd safety, said: “The incident led to not only a radical rethink in safety but also the development of the Safety at Sports Grounds Authority, and people became much more aware of those kind of risks, with stairways inevitably a focus of much more attention.
“So, it does take a disaster of that kind of scale before people will make changes.
“Ibrox made a huge difference to our understanding of risk. It took a disaster of that scale for people to realise there was more involved.
“It’s only been in the last 10 or 15 years that we have had the technology to run simulations. Before that, you could not put a crowd into the environment and knock them over to see what would happen.
“You can test steel to destruction, you can test concrete to destruction – but you can’t test people to destruction.
“So, techniques have improved, the science of crowd dynamics has developed and people understand a lot more the levels of risk.”