On this spring day, 15 April, the clocks move round to 35 years since that terrible afternoon in 1989, when 97 people were unlawfully killed attending a prestige football match at Sheffield Wednesday’s home ground, Hillsborough.
English football will remember its deepest shame as a different age, the appalling crush on unsafe terraces with fenced-in “pens” for supporters, at a stadium nevertheless deemed suitable to host an FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. A last disaster, after which clubs were finally forced by law – and given public money – to make their grounds safe, then sold their TV rights to Sky and grew rich on supporters’ subscriptions.
