SITTING IN THE main stand at Valley Parade was, I once observed, like watching football from the cockpit of a Sopwith Camel. All wires and struts, timbers and tarpaulins. I even suggested the stand was worthy of preservation. But Valley Parade was not the only curio. In common with many other travelling fans, I also enjoyed the creosoted benches at Gigg Lane, Bury, and the bouncing planks of Colchester United’s Layer Road End terrace, which, it was said, had been nailed together by German PoWs.
Blackpool’s Bloomfield Road had a wooden stand whose labyrinthine undercroft was like a dense forest. It must have been terrific fun standing there as steam trains hurtled by only a few feet away, as they did until the early 1960s, spitting out sparks and embers. With their creaks and crannies, their sags and warps, wooden stands at the likes of Doncaster Rovers, Exeter City, Grimsby Town and Crewe Alexandra seemed more human, somehow, compared with the slick, unforgiving, steel and concrete monsters rising up in their place in the upper divisions. Wood was warmer underfoot and far better acoustically.
Fires, of course, were commonplace. Usually starting in the dead of night — for “faulty electrics”, sceptical fans usually read “insurance job” — they were seen as part and parcel of the business. With luck, the centre forward’s favourite boots would be rescued by some plucky groundsman. But until May 11, 1985, no supporters had died in a stand fire. And until the publication of Mr Justice Popplewell’s report into the fire, no members of the public had quite realised the risks they were running simply by entering the premises of one of our lower-division clubs.
Popplewell exposed a catalogue of errors and oversights. True, the Bradford stand was a unique design, being built over the side of a hill with a void between the earth and the wooden seating deck (into which litter was dropped, or deliberately swept as I once witnessed). The rear exit corridor was also at the topmost level of the stand, at the point where the most smoke would accumulate in the event of a fire.
But Popplewell’s list of Bradford City’s safety lapses could have applied to any number of clubs: the lack of fire extinguishers, the lack of trained stewards and of clearly signposted evacuation routes. No one knew who was in charge of match-day operations. Specific warning letters from local authority officials concerning the ground’s safety, going back to July 1981, were found to have gone unanswered or not been followed up. Most seriously of all, most of the exit gates at the rear of the stand, where most of the victims perished, were padlocked.
Popplewell made two biting judgments. First, he wrote: “Had the Green Guide been complied with, this tragedy would not have occurred.” Officially known as the Guide to Safety at Sports Grounds, the Green Guide was first published in the aftermath of the 1971 Ibrox disaster. One of its prime aims was to assist first and second-division clubs whose grounds were to be “ designated” (that is, required to have a local authority safety certificate) under the 1975 Safety of Sports Grounds Act.
As the home of a third-division club, Valley Parade was not designated. Yet because City had just won promotion, the match at which the fire occurred was its last as an undesignated ground. Workmen were due to start on the roof’s replacement the following Monday. A terrible irony no doubt, but also an indictment of the system. The main reason that the 1975 Act had not been applied to smaller grounds by 1985 was that both the football and the local authorities pleaded poverty. No money for repairs. No money for inspections and paperwork. Money before lives.
Popplewell’s second telling comment revealed that “almost all the matters into which I have been asked to inquire and almost all the solutions I have proposed, have been previously considered by many distinguished Inquiries over a period of 60 years”. In that sense, the Bradford fire was caused by a dropped match or cigarette only in as much as the First World War was caused by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in June 1914.
May 1985 should have been English football’s lowest point, what with Bradford, the Birmingham City riot on the same day and the Heysel disaster on May 29. Yet barely four years later, heads would be shaking in disbelief again as yet another tragedy unfolded, at Hillsborough. This time Lord Justice Taylor put the boot in. Not only did he abolish terracing (for which he is most remembered), he also made it clear that there was no point in local authorities issuing safety certificates if their demands were not met (which was common), or if their advice was unsound (which also happened).
From 1990 onwards, therefore, the newly established Football Licensing Authority (FLA) became the watchdogs’ watchdog, with real teeth and sound expertise, based on best practice at a national level. Should anyone then or now doubt the need for such a body, chilling proof came when the first FLA inspectors set about their duties in 1991. Six years after the Bradford fire, shockingly, and shamefully, they discovered on their travels exit gates that were locked and unmanned. The rest you can guess. Stands with no fire extinguishers to hand, stewards with no training, safety certificates that were out of date . . .
So it was not the wood that was to blame, or even the fag end. It was complacency. It was neglect. It was the systemic failure of an industry that had lost its way.
- Simon Inglis is the leading authority on football stadiums and is the author of The Football Grounds of Great Britain
A SEASON IN THE SHADOWS
July 5: Tottenham Hotspur are fined £1,900 for bottle-throwing incident in second leg of Uefa Cup final.
December 12: A fan attacks the Rapid Vienna goalkeeper in a Cup Winners’ Cup match against Celtic.
January 5: The Burton Albion goalkeeper is knocked out by a missile thrown from the crowd in an FA Cup tie against Leicester City, forcing a rematch behind closed doors.
January 5: Manchester City supporters rip out 500 seats during the FA Cup tie against Coventry City at Highfield Road.
February 13: Nearly 100 arrests after first leg of League Cup semi-final between Sunderland and Chelsea.
March 4: In return leg at Stamford Bridge, police horses are required to keep the crowd off the pitch as play goes on.
March 13: FA Cup quarter-final between Luton Town and Millwall at Kenilworth Road is held up for 25 minutes as police battle with fans on the pitch.
March 28: A ministerial meeting chaired by Margaret Thatcher, the Prime Minister, discusses football violence.
May 11: On the same day as the Bradford fire, a boy dies after a wall collapses on him at St Andrew’s during rioting at the match between Birmingham City and Leeds United.
May 29: Thirty-nine fans are killed when a wall collapses after fighting at the European Cup final between Liverpool and Juventus at Heysel Stadium in Brussels.
BILL EDGAR
