Three decades down the line, two yellowing sheets of lined A4, handwritten in the spring of 1989, reacquaint me with my 17-year-old self. Dismal haircut, rolled-up jeans and baggy tops, Walkman and carefully collated mixtapes, traipsing up and down the country to watch football, last year of school, head full of big ideas. I was never a regular diarist but when something felt unmistakably important I would grab a biro and everything spilled out. The first sheet is dated 23 April. The second is dated 26 May. The two dates are inextricably linked. On both occasions I visited Anfield and traversed a rite of passage. There is of course a third date that is necessary to understand any of this – 15 April – but I did not feel capable of finding any words, least of all the right ones, back then.
On 23 April I was supposed to be revising for A levels, but found it impossible not to be drawn to the small red rectangle of card then in my possession. It was my ticket to the match between Liverpool and Arsenal. Away terrace, £3.50. The ticket would go on to represent something seismic. But that day it evoked only a profound sadness.
The game had been postponed. Football was in mourning for the brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, fathers and mothers who had been killed at the Hillsborough disaster the previous weekend. Although it was Liverpool’s tragedy, with the cities of Sheffield and Nottingham also entwined, everybody who cared for English football felt connected to this devastation.
I had never been to Liverpool and wasn’t sure how to articulate my sympathy, how best to show my empathy, but I knew I wanted to go to Anfield that day. I had planned to be there for the match and felt compelled to go anyway, drawn by the sense that the least we could do as fellow football fans was to metaphorically link arms and wrap the bereaved with support. It was a Sunday morning. I phoned Liverpool Clubcall to hear the recorded announcement that Anfield would be open all day to the public and headed to Euston to catch a train to Lime Street.
At the ticket office I met Kevin, a Liverpudlian working in London who was going home for a few days to make his own pilgrimage to Anfield and to attend a friend’s funeral. We sat together on the journey. I noticed how he became more nervous and subdued the closer we came to the train’s destination. Three of his friends, Peter, Ted and Jimmy, met him at the station and they insisted on taking me to Anfield with them. They took me under their wing and looked after me all day. A couple of them went to get fish and chips and came back with some for me, which they wouldn’t let me pay for. Later that evening they phoned my house to make sure I had got home safely.
We spent almost four hours queuing for a couple of miles in the streets outside Anfield. It was the most thoughtful and respectful queue I have ever seen. I would later describe it, and note down every club I saw represented, in my diary entry. ‘There was an incredible sense of unity and strength of spirit. Fans of what must have been every league club spanning the whole of Britain intermingled and waited together, clutching flowers, scarves, messages and personal mementos they were going to give in honour of those who died. The walls were covered with messages and many had written poems and stuck them up. It was totally overwhelming. People had laid down treasures, given up in memory of their friends and relatives, and many messages of reassurance that Shankly will look after those in heaven.’
So that was how I found myself at Anfield on the afternoon of 23 April 1989. At the exact time that I should have been watching a football match, I stood on the visitors’ terrace looking at a field of flowers that stretched over the halfway line in front of the Kop. At the exact time that I should have been immersed in those tribal instincts as an away supporter entering opposition territory, I lay down my Arsenal scarf on the Liverpool turf in a small act of solidarity. It all felt unbearably poignant. I took a taxi back to Lime Street and the driver, an Evertonian, refused to take my fare.
Little did I know, or even much care at the time, that the ticket would still be valid for the rearranged game that would take place on 26 May, still bearing its original date. I returned to Liverpool to take up position in the away terrace, feeling incredibly lucky to be at the match and still mindful of those who weren’t. That particular day has gone down in football folklore as, in the words of commentator Brian Moore at the time, ‘maybe the most dramatic finish in the history of the Football League’. That ‘maybe’ was a good hedged bet with a few seconds to go but there remains no doubt.
The genesis of this book had been brewing for many years but began to take this particular shape during the creation of the documentary, 89. This was a film that deconstructed an iconic football moment, built around testimony from players and central figures, mixed with rare archive footage. I was part of the production team, and it became obvious in the editing process, when so much golden material hit the cutting room floor, that it would be a waste to leave so many fascinating memories hidden, so many powerful thoughts unspoken. That prompted the idea not just to salvage them but also to search out even more voices, enabling this book to expand and bring extra layers to the story.
The other aspect that was so striking during the interview process was how vivid, how crystal clear, the memories were. Talking about that time, particularly with George Graham and the players involved, there were often moments when it felt like nobody dared to breathe, so caught up were we all in the clarity of the recall. It was strange, like watching the protagonists go back in time in their own minds and appear to be there. Details. Conversations. Feelings. Things that were nearly 30 years old catapulted forwards into the present as if they had been perfectly preserved in a time capsule.
An oral history felt like the best way to portray that energy, that sense of people talking intensely about memories that stayed so intact because they meant such a lot. While the book focuses on the inside track, the desire for the ripples of this moment in time to also be felt encouraged me to seek recollections from anyone and everyone who felt moved by it, who remembered their exact circumstances. Where were you? Who were you with? What did you do? The hundreds of people who took time to tell their own versions of events, from pitchside to far flung places, emphasised the powerful effect that can be distilled into one event – in this case one goal.
The snapshots build a collage of the time. How David O’Leary wished his son happy birthday on the morning of the game. How Nigel Winterburn’s wife’s sister-in-law kept phoning up with a sixth sense about what was about to happen. How the staff back at Highbury rolled up the banner that had been ordered for the open-top bus and hid it under a desk ready to throw away on Monday morning. How the players had to fight for their places on the team bus because so many bigwigs suddenly wanted to take official transport to Anfield. How the physio told George Graham that Michael Thomas’s knee tweak meant he could start the game but probably wouldn’t finish it. How the referee needed a nod from the TV reporter to be able to relax about his decision on Alan Smith’s goal come the end of the match. How the photographer behind the goal worried he would run out of film in stoppage time. How Lee Dixon ended up in a Liverpool chippy with his club suit on.
It soon became apparent, seeking stories from way beyond the people on the pitch, that this event somehow reverberated with people as a kind of footballing JFK moment. Outside of monumental international news, or personal milestones like the birth of a child, it is not often something hits you with such force you can conjure up all the tiniest details for years to come. The more stories came in, the more the fascination grew. I heard from a new British Army recruit who drove through the night in East Germany to pick up a VHS, an ex-pat in Oman searched for the BBC World Service broadcast in 38-degree heat, a faraway fan eventually found a newspaper days after the event in Tasmania, Australia, a boy peered through the net curtains of a stranger’s window in Guernsey to catch the TV pictures … Closer to home, some quit their jobs or abandoned exams to go, others tried to bunk in, or smuggled portable TVs into work, kissed strangers, heard from old friends, fell in love, fell out of love – in all cases they scaled the extremes of emotions and that is why they remember exactly what they were doing when Mickey Thomas scored in the final seconds of the season.
I am very grateful to everyone who wanted to contribute, particularly those from the Liverpool perspective who looked back on a period of great pain. If the voices are predominantly one-sided that is out of respect for those lost at Hillsborough and their families who fought so long for justice. There are definitive accounts about the tragedy I would urge anyone to read. It did not feel appropriate to go into depth with those from Liverpool about the final game without the context of that season, so the choice was made to recall events from a different perspective, from outside the city looking in.
As for me, that time remains a touchstone. It feels extraordinary that the two most extreme football-related emotions I have felt in over 40 years absorbed by the game took place within a six-week timeframe. Every reminder of Hillsborough to this day remains heartbreaking, and there we were, so soon afterwards, acclaiming a footballing miracle. I am old enough that I ought to know better now but I distinctly remember the serene feeling on 26 May 1989 that life would never get any better. That seemed strange and impossible and yet it was fine.