Schuetz

It seems that the United Kingdom has had numerous problems with their soccer games in the past few years. The causes are insufficient security, and the lack of crowd/riot control. Also contributing to these factors are the poor design of the grounds and administrative incompetence. All of these contributed to the Hillsborough Stadium Disaster.

The physical face of British-but especially English football changed more fundamentally and more quickly in the 1980s and 1990s than at any comparable period in its history. As indicated, the metamorphosis was due primarily to a series of tragedies at football grounds which killed so many people, which appalled millions who saw the tragedies unfold on TV, at home and abroad, and forced the government and football authorities to address the games most pressing problems.

Undoubtedly, the events at the Hillsborough football stadium, in Sheffield on 15 April 1989 resulted in one of the Britains worst sporting disaster.

The occasion that hosted the disaster was a football match-the 1989 FA Cup semi final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest-which was held at a neutral stadium in Sheffield. Underline that Hillsborough, the home of Sheffield Wednesday Football Club was recognized as one of the premier soccer stadiums in the country, and had been chosen to host the corresponding fixture twelve months earlier, ironically between the same two teams, when no major crowd problems had been reported. Simultaneously, the fixture itself is recognized as being one of the most prestigious in the domestic football calendar and as such was transmitted live on TV sets in countries around the world.

Before examining the factors which were conductive to the tragedy, it is worth making an overview of the incident itself. Due to several circumstances many Liverpool supporters were delayed and arrived at last minute. Therefore the existence of anxiety about getting into the game on time and an associated impatience was apparent. The situation was exacerbated by a refusal to delay the kick off, while in the queue spectators, particularly women and children, were beginning to faint and suffer distress.

With this in mind, the police, in order to prevent a crush at the turnstiles outside the stadium, opened the exit gate C and at this point, within five minutes, around 2000 people with or without tickets flowed directly into the stadium, and particularly towards pens 3 and 4 which were already full beyond capacity. Add that exit gates below were locked because of fears of trouble and the police were slow to realize that people were dying inside the crush against the fence.

The outcome of this resulted in 96 fatalities [only 14 of the 96 who died made it to hospital] which were due in the main to crush asphyxia and over 600 other people were injured. Undoubtedly, the above outcome is due also to the fact that emergency planning in Sheffield was not well developed at that stage and the initiative as far as the injured is concerned, remained only with the social services.

At this point, it is worth referring to that despite the existence of closed-circuit TV (CCTV) cameras and a police control room, which overlooked the pens, it is clear that there were serious communication problems. It is worth mentioning that the processes of communication between the people responsible for the management and the communication to the crowd as a whole, is absolutely critical to safe evacuation under normal circumstances. They add that it is this communication that is often the difference between life and death in emergency situations. Therefore, it is suggested that: An electronic visual display message above the tunnel entrance and a clear emergency public address message could have informed the visiting football supporters that pens 3 and 4 were dangerously full, and provided people with directions to the adjacent pens.

Thus, it is obvious that FLA was not a child of Hillsborough, on the contrary, was already playing a protagonist role as Governments involvement in the affairs of the sport.

The question is whether the Football Association (FA), who selected Hillsborough as the most suitable venue and was responsible for the allocation of tickets and places to each team, had followed any legislative process related to the safety certificate of FLA.

Hillsborough stadium tragedy is also salient because of the legal actions that followed it. It is stated that the aftermath of Hillsborough was marked by anger and demands for criminal prosecutions. Just one week after the disaster, Grayson (1989), in his work regarding the legal aspects, had prophesied arguable claims against not only the South Yorkshire Police Authority for apparent lack of crowd control, but also against the Sheffield Wednesday Club and the Football Association for at least lack of adequate medical facilities, ticket distributions and stewarding, apart from co-operation and co-ordination with the police.

In conclusion, nowadays, football is a business with a moral duty to care for the safety of its consumers. Unfortunately, it took the horror of the Hillsborough disaster before football and government fully reassessed their commitment to the safety of supporters.