RIP - Ian Hambridge

Always a sad occasion returning to St Andrews after all the years ........

Ian's brave parents blamed no-one for the death of the 15-year-old, crushed when a wall collapsed during the sickening horrors that unfolded that day and night.The whole day was awful even on the train down from Leeds to New Street station you could sense it was going to kick off.

I still have copy of a Police witness report I gave which is a dire read.

Riotous coach loads from Leeds arrived early too that day and the route down was littered with reported pub chaos in Nottinghamshire,Leicestershire and Staffordshire - in fact the pub at Brum station when we arrived had all its windows kicked in via earlier brawls with waiting Brum hooligans.Our train was covered in anti Police graffiti as the Striking miners had points to prove that day.Arriving at the ground walls were being scaled turnstiles rushed and total anarchy reigned.Bottles,bricks,concrete was hurled at us (10,000) as we crammed into fenced pens followed by coins which resulted in the Leeds end rushing the pitch fence and pulling it down,Eddie Gray came over to 'cool' matters down and got the lot thrown at him from Brum fans too including a kettle.Police horse got hit by smoke bombs and then after getting us off the pitch by baton charges some Leeds fans started smashing the executive box up lining along the terrace sides.

Then the wall came down as a result of the pen being over crowded,idiots climbing over it didn't help as the Police kept us in and kept baton charging us up against it and sadly it eventually gave way toppling on top of others outside the ground killing Ian who was attending his first football match.

500 injured,60 in hospital and 21 Police injured with 125 arrests and £85000 of damage done.

Lessons learned ? Yep,many and even today lessons still to be learned .........

MOT