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Football365, Thursday 15th April 1999
'The day football changed forever'
Ten years on and Nigel Clough is reminded of the Hillsborough disaster around every corner. Memories of that harrowing afternoon back in 1989, when overcrowding on the Leppings Lane terrace at Sheffield Wednesday's ground claimed the lives of 96 Liverpool fans, are still vivid for the former Nottingham Forest star.

With the tenth anniversary of the tragedy today, the blackest day in English sporting history is again in the news and for those involved, the mere mention of 15 April is especially poignant. But with fans now able to enjoy attending this country's new and improved super-stadia, the contrast between football in 1999 and the dark days before the Taylor Report is huge.

It seems an aeon ago but only a decade has passed since supporters were treated like cattle, herded into pens with crude wire fences keeping them off the pitch and police regarding even the most mild-mannered follower as a potential hooligan.

Hillsborough changed the face of English soccer forever and Clough, now player-manager at Dr Martens Premier Division club Burton Albion, said: ''What has happened in football since has had a lasting effect. It's just a tragedy that it took what happened to kick people into gear. I know it will be no comfort at all to those who lost family and friends but it was what happened there that has resulted in these new stadia.

"You look at the stadia and you think they're fantastic, and at the back of your mind you think why they are there. You also think that money was suddenly found for them when before it wasn't. You just hope that more and more families go to games in the future and not one single person loses their life going to football ever again."

But while the Taylor Report improved the lot of supporters throughout the country, Clough feels that silver lining has a cloud to it. The sight of a heaving mass of fans rolling up and down terraces is long gone, save for the occasional lower division ground, and the 33-year-old former England striker believes Taylor may have overreacted.

''I think they've gone too far the other way,'' said Clough. ''When I moved to Liverpool a lot of people there were sad to see The Kop going. I would have liked to have seen them update the stadia for the safety aspect but to have kept one end standing. A lot of people like standing and every ground had one end with people standing.

"I think they could have dealt with all the safety things and kept standing, because if you reduce the capacity severely you're on the way safety-wise. In the circumstances, though, it's very understandable what happened.''

Save for the Bradford fire four years earlier, Hillsborough is the only disaster to befall English football which most current fans can readily remember. But while what happened on 15 April, 1989 affected almost everyone involved in the game, either directly or indirectly, one cannot begin to comprehend the impact of that day on those actually at the ground.

Words cannot describe the mental scars inflicted on those present at the time but Clough's eye-witness account gives as good a description of the events as one is likely to get:

''I think we played for about ten minutes or so and we were just concentrating on the game,'' he recalled. ''It started off at such a frantic pace; it was incredible. A couple of people spilled onto the pitch but we knew it wasn't crowd trouble; we thought it was just too crowded and we'd let the police sort it out.

"We went off and sat in the dressing room for an hour-and-a-half with no knowledge of what was going on. The referee popped his head in every 20 minutes or so to say we'd hang on a bit - he wasn't aware of the tragedy at that stage.

"When it got to one-and-a-half hours we thought there was very little chance of starting again but in terms of the extent, we didn't find out until about 5.30pm. You can't contemplate it. If somebody had said one person had died, you would have thought it was absolutely horrible but as the numbers went up it got worse.

"All our thoughts were with the Liverpool fans who had lost family and friends. I think it hit home that it could have been at the Forest end and it could have been our fans. It was a difficult situation for us at Forest because I think the whole country wanted Liverpool to win the rematch but in the circumstances the game was almost secondary.

"I remember being so pleased that the game was over. FA Cup semi-final day is such a special day and it didn't feel like that. Normally the sets of supporters involved are extremely excited about it because they might be going to Wembley but there wasn't that sense of feeling."

Originally published on Football 365, Thursday 15th April 1999
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