Middlesbrough FC - Leeds United - 09/12/1989Source: mail
Leeds
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Source: https://www.gazettelive.co.uk/
ust six months after the 96 deaths at Hillsborough had left the game in a state of shock, they were confronted with the sight of ordinary supporters - not ‘yobs’ ‘ hooligans’ or even ‘the lads’ but mundane everyday fans including women and kids - being crushed right up against spiked fences while the gates remained locked.
There was genuine icy fear that someone would get killed in the away pen.
Half an hour into a high-stakes Second Division showdown, Boro supporters stood transfixed in apprehensive silence as scores of terrified Leeds fans in the heaving Clive Road corner were forced to risk the vicious rotating spikes and scramble over onto the pitch.
The horrors of Hillsborough were still fresh and frightening and the realities of fencing were inescapable. Almost literally.
Screaming children were hoisted over the vicious spikes and stretcher bearers raced over to help the injured.
Others climbed over the segregation fences into adjacent home areas to escape the growing crush at the front of the pen while stewards and police hesitated and stood looking at the unfolding crisis.
Boro fans, more attuned to crowd dynamics than the police after having often been in very similar circumstances – it was an occupational hazard for travelling supporters in those dark days of crumbling grounds with lethal cages – started to chant an accusatory insistent chorus of: “You don’t know what you’re doing”.
Angry Leeds fans later claimed it was five minutes before gates in the fence were opened to relieve the pressure. It felt a lot longer. A long, powerless era of waiting and hoping.
Title-chasing Leeds had sold all their ticket allocation so the game kicked off with the 2,108 capacity away pen already a tight squeeze.
But the problems were soon deepened as Carl Shutt took advantage of some sloppy defending in the Boro box to fire Leeds ahead after just 10 minutes.
It quickly became obvious that there were scores, if not hundreds, of visiting fans mingling in the crowd on the Holgate.
It was easily done, pay on the gate, no tell-tale alien accents if you had only travelled from Thirsk or Whitby or Northallerton as many had.
And there were plenty of ‘Teesside Whites’ dotted around in the crowd, people who didn’t want to go in the ‘away’ end in case they were detained or marched off and put on a train to Leeds after the game. Or worse, picked off and attacked as they left.
Police were quickly into the Holgate End to take out the pockets of celebrating Leeds fans and to avoid potential flashpoints. They did that bit well. It was routine.
Then with the game still in progress, they marched the problem down the touchline and past a baying Chicken Run paddock and – with the old unused Boys End empty and an obvious temporary overflow area – the Leeds fans were poured into the already heaving away pen. From behind.
Another good Leeds effort on the half-hour sparked a surge among the now sardined Leeds fans in the away end.
That led to dozens at the front being rammed up against the fence, crushed by the weight of their fellow supporters moving forward and struggling to escape as the pressure of the crowd built behind them.
After Hillsborough people steeped in football culture were more aware of the dangers of crowd dynamics and cages in what was commonplace on the terrace.
Leeds boss Howard Wilkinson was one of the first to react as he dashed over.
With the anxious Leeds bench, subs, the police and medical staff quickly congregating among the walking wounded, the referee called a halt to the game and players stood in huddles waiting for almost 15 minutes before the restart.
There were 19 Leeds fans who needed treatment, with five taken to hospital and one, a ten-year-old boy, detained overnight. It had been a lucky escape.
Then, again, as was the norm, the game resumed. The incident barely made a paragraph in the match report in the Sports Gazette. It was all so routine. That was the really frightening thing about it.
The combination of fences and crushes had the potential for problems that fans were well aware of.
Almost everyone who regularly travelled to games will have been in situations that were seen as completely normal but which lin retrospect were in fact highly dangerous. The amazing thing is that more serious injuries and deaths did not occur.
I remember a night game at Sunderland when Boro fans were held back after the whistle because home fans were gathered outside preparing a warm reception.
Fans who had already made their way down the steps from the Roker End were funnelled into a pitch black concourse under the stand.
More and more forced in by police horses and jumpy baton wielding foot-soldiers, stumbling in the dark and jammed right up against metal and concrete struts. If anyone had gone over it doesn’t bear thinking what may have happened.
I remember other crushes at Goodison. Elland Road. Derby. Norwich. And Ayresome, especially at night, in the small quadrangle outside the Holgate turnstiles as fans from the alley were piled in from behind.
Incredible really. Incredible that police and clubs thought it was an appropriate form of crowd control and equally incredible that we supporters put up with it and accepted it as the norm.
Back on the pitch action resumed. It was a bad day for Boro who were stung by a defeat that dropped them into the bottom three.
Yesterday at 2:34 pm by UFW Maltchickers
