I’ve been back for the 3rd, 20th & 25th anniversaries, i’m very upset that i can’t make this years 30th anniversary.
I was there in 1985 & in Rome the year before. I was 28 years old in Brussels that day.
I had met a bloke called Lorenzo Farranto who was a couple of years younger than me at Brussels airport, i think he was from Manchester or somewhere close, he was from an Italian family. We got on very well & decided to share a room in an Italian run Hotel. Neither of us had a ticket so we went out that night and had a drink or two in a couple of bars and asked around for tickets, no joy with that.
The next morning we went to the ground fairly early to try and get a couple of tickets. Lorenzo bought one, for Z section. We found out soon after that that section was supposed to be for the Belgian neutrals, so we decided that i would buy the ticket from him and he would try and get one for the other end to be with the Juve fans. I never saw any trouble outside the ground. I saw plenty of drunk Liverpool fans, but no drunk Juventus fans.
I was in Z section & saw everything.
After the match (which i think should definately not have been played) I hung around the ground at the bottom of the terrace near the fence to talk to the police, but had to turn around to stop myself from being hit with bottles thrown by Liverpool fans at the police from the top of the terrace for about 10 minutes, the running track was covered in broken glass. If they knew of the deaths they didn’t look like they gave a [Poor language removed] about it, maybe they didn’t yet know that anybody had died, still no excuse though.
I was in a tramcar with plenty of Juve fans, one of them went berserk at me, it was very sad, he had lost his passport, all his money. I gave him some money and my Liverpool scarf, christ knows why i gave him my scarf, why would he have wanted that ? We parted with a handshake as i got out very sheepishly from the tram not really knowing where i was, somewher near the city centre. I met a fellow Liverpool fan who was lost as well.
As we tried to find our way back a coach full of Juventus fans passed us, it stopped and one Juve fan in particular went mad at us and tried to get at me and the fellah i was with, he was restrained by his mates, who actually apologised for his rant, they had no need to, i would have done the same had the roles been reversed. As we ran off we ducked into a hotel and i ran straight into Gordon Banks, close by him were ex-Liverpool players Ian Callaghan and Ron Yeats. Normally i would always chat to footballers, but other than a hello to Gordon Banks i just couldn’t manage a word to them.
Finally i got back to the Hotel to eventually meet up with Lorenzo, we were both stunned and shocked by what had happened, i’m not sure what we said to each other now.
The next day we went to buy the papers for further details. I broke down reading the news and looking at the photographs. A girl came along and asked me in Itailan if i was alright, she put an arm around me but quickly removed it when i said to her in Italian that i was English and not Italian. I looked Italian with my long dark hair, she obviously thought that i was, i felt sick and ashamed to be English. The man who had sold me the newspaper saw what had gone on and so took me for a strong coffee in a local cafe.
A little later Lorenzo and i went to the stadium to try and find a young groundsman we had met the day before. I had assured him that there would be no trouble as Liverpool fans were very well behaved. We had a good chat about the match and he took a couple of photographs of me and Lorenzo on the running track with the Atomium building in the background.
We couldn’t find him, so we walked around for a while, talking of the previous night’s events and trying to understand it all.
I saw a few people taking photographs of the stadium through a fence and gave them some abuse for doing so. It turned out that they were from various newspapers around the World including what turned out to be a very nice bloke from the Daily Express, he eventually took us back into the ground, i believe we were the only fans that were allowed back in to the stadium that day. A photograph of Lorenzo and i appeared in the next day’s edition of the Daily Express, full page i think, me with my arm around Lorenzo.
At some point i rang somebody back home in Portsmouth, i can’t remember who, to let everybody know that i was okay.
Lorenzo and i shook hands at the airport in England and that was the last occasion that i saw him. I hope that one day we can meet again.
I was taken back to Heysel in 1988 by the Portsmouth sports paper the Football Mail, i also returned ther for the unveiling of the sculpture to commerate the 20th anniversary of the tragedy in 2005. I met that day amongst other people Dora Coppola, an Italian who had moved to Brussels in the late 1950’s, she gave me a commerative scarf. I also met that day many lovely Juventus fans who showed not the slightest animosity towards me, including a group of Belgian blokes of Italian ancestry who worked for a radio station in Liege called Radio Italia. I am still friends with them to this day.
I gave a lot of radio interviews that day to the Belgian and Italian stations trying desperately to answer their questions, it wasn’t very comfortable with up to a thousand Juve fans who had made the trip from Turin listening to me.
I returned again to Heysel for the 25th anniversary to meet up with my Italian friends from the radio station Gianni, Lorenzo, Vincenzo, Fabian and Dora. On the pitch they presented me with a plaque marking the anniversary of the tragedy, i couldn’t help but shed tears as Vincenzo gave it to me, surrounded by the relatives of the people who had died all those years ago.
They invited me to return the next week as a guest of Radio Italia to watch the Italy versus Mexico match the following wednesday, which i did. I again met many Juve fans, some who had lost fathers and sons that terrible night, all of them without exception friendly and warm towards me as i showed them my ticket from Z section 25 years before. I think Mexico won 2-1. I had made friends with an Irish fellah, Michael O’Shea in Brussels the week before, he said i could stay at his place after the match, which i did. Whilst waiting for a lift from a friend of the fellah in charge of Security, i decided to stroll around the pitch and bumped into the Italian Goalkeeper Buffon, who was having a quick fag, he looked a bit guilty as i tried my best Italian on him.
I seem to have drifted a bit from the events of that night.
This is the only match that i have watched abroad since the tragedy.
It was a terrible, terrible night the 29th May 1985.
I can never forget it.
It doesn’t seem to get a mention in the papers on the anniversary of that night very much. I always check for a mention of it but most time there isn’t a word about it, shame on the Press for that.
As for the comment written by Mark Godfrey and said i think by Tony Evans, that people going to Prison and jobs being lost although not entirely satisfactory, went a fair way towards it. WHAT !
Ask the relatives and loved ones of the Juventus fans who died that night what they think of that comment.
An absolutely idiotic, stupid, disgraceful thing to say.
39 football fans went to watch a football match that night and ended up in the mortuary.
Most of the gates had no turnstiles, the Police were woeful, the ticketing was awful, the fencing between the fans was inadequate, but the main contributing factor in the tragedy was 99% the aggresive, cowardly, drunken behaviour of my fellow Liverpool fans.
This is the first time i have ever written anything of that night.
