If you follow football then you're never far from a controversy, usually involving cheating, diving, terrible off-field player behaviour or some kind of unsavoury incident involving rival fans. Just recently we've seen a pitch invasion from Villa fans following their win over West Brom, racist chants from Chelsea fans and a spitting incident between a Newcastle Utd and Man Utd players.
It doesn't take long for the press to trot out a 'like the dark days of football' line or some such, But we're a million miles from the bad old days of football. Granted, football today has endemic economic problems of far too much money at the top end and no trickle-down to lower league clubs and grass roots development. There's also more diving and play-acting than days of yore, but these problems seem kinda insignificant when you cast your mind back to the state of football in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s.
For starters, there was the culture of violence and hooliganism which reached a peak by the mid 1980s. Away day match experiences at the time involved a lot of smashing up 'footy special' trains and opposition pubs, invasions of the opposing sections of the ground in an attempt to 'take their end', pitched battles in terraced streets and patches of waste ground, mounted police ploughing into lines of fighting fans, a fashion for fans sporting butchers coats and signing songs about getting your head kicked in or going home in an ambulance.
Take this example from Luton vs Millwall in 1985 for an example of how bad hooliganism had got (see from about 7 mins 45 secs onwards):
Scenes like the following were fairly common, although on the wane by the early 1990s when this one took place, which I witnessed from the back of the away end. There were numerous injuries that day, and one Stoke fan was blinded by a missile outside the ground following an ambush from Birmingham City hooligans as fans tried to get away from the ground:
Then there was the state of the grounds themselves. Football grounds pre-Taylor Report were rusting hulks with crumbling Victorian bricks and concrete. Grounds featured terraces made from a cinder tip or grassy banks, often uncovered, or wooden stands, rusting roofs and crumbling masonry. Male toilets were usually a wall with a gutter behind them to urinate in, usually ankle deep already, and female toilets were few and far between.
The combination of a hooliganism problem out of control, and by now exported to European ties, and an incredibly poorly maintained and unsafe stadium resulted in the Heysel Stadium disaster in 1985 in which 39 fans died, most crushed by a crumbling masonry wall as they tried to flee the violence.
More supporter deaths came in 1985 as celebratory scenes at Bradford's Valley parade ground turned to disaster alarmingly quickly when a fire broke out in the wooden main stand. The fact that fans were packed into a wooden stand in itself is staggering today, but that flammable junk and rubbish was stacked underneath them and that smoking was permitted just blows the mind. Couple that with the fact that fire exits were chained shut - just think about that for a moment - and it doesn't take Einstein to see that a fire like this one that killed 56 and injured at least 265 was bound to happen sooner or later. Just watch the clock to see how quickly scenes of celebration gave way to a raging inferno:
Football fans by the mid 1980s were treated by the authorities like a problem to be contained, not human beings watching a sports event. The behaviour of the significant minority that contributed to the hooligan problem tarred the rest of us with the same brush, meaning that the authorities herded fans about into terraced pens with spiked fences at the front to keep us from kicking lumps from each other. Crushes had happened many times before, such as the Ibrox disaster in 1971 which caused 66 deaths and more than 200 injuries.
The warning signs were there that another serious incident was going to occur due to the way that spectators were squeezed together behind fences like wild animals to be contained. In 1981 at an FA Cup Semi Final between Tottenham and Wolves, 38 supporters were injured in a crush in pens in the very same Leppings Lane end at Sheffield Wednesday's Hillsborough ground that was to become infamous eight years later:
It seems no lessons were learned from that day whatsoever, and sure enough things finally came to a head in 1989 when 96 Liverpool fans were killed in a crush at an FA Cup semi-final match being held at Hillsborough. Police opened gates into an already over-crowded pen to alleviate a crush outside the ground, with the predictable results that fans at the front who had arrived early to watch the game were crushed to death on fences and barriers:
Following safety recommendations like The Taylor Report into making top flight stadia all-seater, an influx of TV money and an all-round family oriented sanitisation of the game, scenes like those above are now a thing of the past.
Yes, football might have its issues today, and people hanker after the rough-and-ready days of 'real' football, but at least you know if you go and watch a game you'll make it home alive.
It doesn't take long for the press to trot out a 'like the dark days of football' line or some such, But we're a million miles from the bad old days of football. Granted, football today has endemic economic problems of far too much money at the top end and no trickle-down to lower league clubs and grass roots development. There's also more diving and play-acting than days of yore, but these problems seem kinda insignificant when you cast your mind back to the state of football in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s.
For starters, there was the culture of violence and hooliganism which reached a peak by the mid 1980s. Away day match experiences at the time involved a lot of smashing up 'footy special' trains and opposition pubs, invasions of the opposing sections of the ground in an attempt to 'take their end', pitched battles in terraced streets and patches of waste ground, mounted police ploughing into lines of fighting fans, a fashion for fans sporting butchers coats and signing songs about getting your head kicked in or going home in an ambulance.
Take this example from Luton vs Millwall in 1985 for an example of how bad hooliganism had got (see from about 7 mins 45 secs onwards):
Scenes like the following were fairly common, although on the wane by the early 1990s when this one took place, which I witnessed from the back of the away end. There were numerous injuries that day, and one Stoke fan was blinded by a missile outside the ground following an ambush from Birmingham City hooligans as fans tried to get away from the ground:
Then there was the state of the grounds themselves. Football grounds pre-Taylor Report were rusting hulks with crumbling Victorian bricks and concrete. Grounds featured terraces made from a cinder tip or grassy banks, often uncovered, or wooden stands, rusting roofs and crumbling masonry. Male toilets were usually a wall with a gutter behind them to urinate in, usually ankle deep already, and female toilets were few and far between.
The combination of a hooliganism problem out of control, and by now exported to European ties, and an incredibly poorly maintained and unsafe stadium resulted in the Heysel Stadium disaster in 1985 in which 39 fans died, most crushed by a crumbling masonry wall as they tried to flee the violence.
More supporter deaths came in 1985 as celebratory scenes at Bradford's Valley parade ground turned to disaster alarmingly quickly when a fire broke out in the wooden main stand. The fact that fans were packed into a wooden stand in itself is staggering today, but that flammable junk and rubbish was stacked underneath them and that smoking was permitted just blows the mind. Couple that with the fact that fire exits were chained shut - just think about that for a moment - and it doesn't take Einstein to see that a fire like this one that killed 56 and injured at least 265 was bound to happen sooner or later. Just watch the clock to see how quickly scenes of celebration gave way to a raging inferno:
Football fans by the mid 1980s were treated by the authorities like a problem to be contained, not human beings watching a sports event. The behaviour of the significant minority that contributed to the hooligan problem tarred the rest of us with the same brush, meaning that the authorities herded fans about into terraced pens with spiked fences at the front to keep us from kicking lumps from each other. Crushes had happened many times before, such as the Ibrox disaster in 1971 which caused 66 deaths and more than 200 injuries.
The warning signs were there that another serious incident was going to occur due to the way that spectators were squeezed together behind fences like wild animals to be contained. In 1981 at an FA Cup Semi Final between Tottenham and Wolves, 38 supporters were injured in a crush in pens in the very same Leppings Lane end at Sheffield Wednesday's Hillsborough ground that was to become infamous eight years later:
It seems no lessons were learned from that day whatsoever, and sure enough things finally came to a head in 1989 when 96 Liverpool fans were killed in a crush at an FA Cup semi-final match being held at Hillsborough. Police opened gates into an already over-crowded pen to alleviate a crush outside the ground, with the predictable results that fans at the front who had arrived early to watch the game were crushed to death on fences and barriers:
Following safety recommendations like The Taylor Report into making top flight stadia all-seater, an influx of TV money and an all-round family oriented sanitisation of the game, scenes like those above are now a thing of the past.
Yes, football might have its issues today, and people hanker after the rough-and-ready days of 'real' football, but at least you know if you go and watch a game you'll make it home alive.
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