As I eluded to in yesterday’s post about Liverpool’s exit from the Champions League, today marks the 20th anniversary of the Hillsborough Disaster. 96 Liverpool fans died and 766 fans were injured on that fateful day in April 1989. The disaster was caused by poor police crowd management opening exit gate ‘C’ to alleviate the crush outside the ground allowed a further 2,000 fans into already overcrowded pens ‘3’ and ‘4’. The resulting crush toppled the dividing fence while fans were climbing over fences into surrounding pens and the pitch in fear of their lives. 94 died on 15th April 1989 with the 95th victim dying in hospital four days later and the final victim was Tony Bland who died in 1993 after being in a coma for almost four years. This disaster caused a massive reform in stadia design with many stadia being converted to all seated stands. The whole disaster was the fault of police mismanagement at Hillsborough allowing so many fans into the ground without adequate channelling into other pens. The police were more worried about stopping Liverpool and Nottingham Forest fans clashing than helping the the injured as fans tried to escape the crush as more than 3,000 fans packed into pens that were designed to hold half that number of people. R.I.P! The Hillsborough 96! You’ll never walk alone!