We thought we were ninety minutes from Wembley. It turned out we were five minutes from hell.
It started as just another, pleasant spring Saturday. The fifteenth of April 1989 greeted us with sunshine, the way FA Cup Semi-Final Saturdays often do. The Forest team coach was alive with eager chatter, the usual disguise for nervousness among players approaching the fixture that is the worst one of all to lose.
It ended as one of the grimmest days in modern British history, certainly the blackest day British sport has ever known. We all recall it now with the mere mention of a single word, the venue of that ill-fated Semi-Final.
Hillsborough.
The coach journey back to Nottingham was made in almost total silence. Supporters' cars, buses and mini-vans – in front of us and behind us on the motorway – offered not one blast of recognition on their horns. We were all in a state of shock, still unable to come to terms with the magnitude of what we had witnessed. But the radio kept reminding us, with the latest update from the scene of disaster we had just left behind. The final, appalling death-toll became ninety-six. How do you comprehend that scores of people had lost their lives simply because they went to watch a football match?
The match had been under way for five or six minutes when it became obvious that a disturbance behind Bruce Grobbelaar's goal was more than a mere skirmish. As fans spilled onto the pitch the referee took the teams off. We were never to return. Only slowly were we made aware that what first appeared to be a disturbance was, in fact, a disaster on a massive scale.
We sat in our dressing-room, not knowing what to do or even what was happening outside. Then somebody popped his head round the door and said: 'They think there are casualties. They think there are people dead.' Our players just looked at one another. Nobody said much. It wasn't long before the full horror of it all began to unfold. Five dead ... seven ... ten ... fourteen.
The police came to say they wanted Kenny Dalglish and me to say a few words over the public-address microphone to try and calm things down. Forest fans, unaware that tragedy had struck, thought that the Liverpool supporters swarming across the pitch towards them had trouble in mind. They thought it was just another outbreak of hooliganism, when all the Liverpool fans were doing was escaping from the area in which people were being crushed to death.
When Kenny and I got out on the pitch there was bedlam and total confusion. Either the microphone wasn't working or there was too much noise for it to be effective. Maybe, in all the confusion, it wasn't even switched on. We were taken to the police control point. It's odd how unimportant things stick in the mind. They took us beneath the stands, through the kitchens, and I can see now all the trays and pies and pasties set out, the stuff they were going to sell at half-time – all untouched. I can still see the icing-sugar on rows of fruit pies. And the chefs still working on refreshments to be sent up to the restaurant and VIP quarters. They were not to know what was happening outside.
Once in the control box, there was little we could do. A few words into the mike about being patient and 'Don't let's have any more trouble', but by then bodies were being carried on improvised stretchers made from advertising boards, and all the spectators were aware of the seriousness of the situation. Any fear of confrontation between rival fans had passed.
Back in the dressing-room I told my players: 'Get in the bath – we're not going out there again.' It's strange, but even in such dire circumstances people with specific duties manage to stick to the set routine. The referee kept saying, 'Just keep calm,' while I was saying, 'Excuse me, but we're going home.' A high-ranking policeman came in and said, 'You can't go yet.' It was even suggested that the match would be restarted – but my players had returned from the bath, changed into their civvies and were ready to leave.
As the death-toll continued to rise, I made my decision. 'We can go any time we like now. There is no way we can play football – it's impossible. And we could be here until nine o'clock tonight.'
Yet another policeman arrived: 'You can't go, Brian.'
'I can go – and I'm going.' And I did. We filed onto our coach and left without permission from anybody. I wondered if there might have been an official comeback later, but of course the seriousness of what had taken place put everything else out of mind. It wasn't a cowardly reaction that persuaded me to leave. It was the realisation that there was nothing we could do, that so many poor people had perished, and that we were just adding to the burden of those trying to help the victims and the distressed. We were in their way.
I have never been one for stopping at an accident. I have never understood people who have to hang around and have a look wherever there is a police car, a fire-engine or an ambulance. If I know there is nothing I can do, no-one I can help, then I clear off and let the emergency services do their jobs.
I'm sure none of the Forest players went out mat night, although I didn't check up on them. If they did then they were uncaring. I just went home and never budged. That was where grief hit me – not at the ground where we were caught up in the chaos that inevitably occurs when large-scale tragedy strikes. There was confusion on the news bulletins, anyway. Maybe not confusion but uncertainty. I remember wanting it all to be untrue, to learn – I don't know, by some sort of miracle or mistake – that it hadn't happened. Not so many people dead. The radio or television would flash the latest figure – seventy-eight, eighty-four, and so on.
I thought of parents wondering whether their children had survived. I thought of parents who might not have known their kids had gone to the match in the first place. Then I wanted to share my grief with the people who had died. It was a feeling of complete helplessness, of inadequacy.
I am now going to say something that may sound harsh and I want to make sure I choose the right words. Many mistakes were made at Hillsborough, but I will always remain convinced that those Liverpool fans who died were killed by Liverpool people.
This is my opinion, made not in the heat of the moment or the immediate, angry aftermath, but following all the publicity and the official inquiry. All those lives were lost needlessly. It was such a terrible and avoidable waste.
If all the Liverpool supporters had turned up at the stadium in good time, in orderly manner and each with a ticket, there would have been no Hillsborough disaster. I have a good friend, Kenny Swain, who is a Scouser. He played for me at Forest, he was one of the best pros I ever worked with and he later went into management. His wife Lillian is also from Liverpool, and was friendly with my daughter. I remember her saying: 'It is always the innocent who suffer.' And so it is.
The man who is walking on the pavement, minding his own business when some drunk-driver mows him down. The one who gets his features rearranged by a hoodlum just because he turns round and says: 'Please, don't do that.' Always the innocent.
I'm not accusing Liverpool supporters of being thugs or hoodlums, but it was the innocent who were killed on that dreadful day – killed by others who arrived at the stadium later and in such numbers that mistakes were made. I could still cry to this day when I think of those who had saved their money and bought their tickets and rosettes and arrived at Hillsborough early enough to gain a place near the front of the terrace – not, in fact, the best of places because they were low down and behind the security fences that never offered the clearest of views. Men, women and youngsters who were never to return alive from a match they had prepared for in the right and proper manner.
Of course the police made serious errors of judgement. Of course that gate should not have been opened in circumstances that allowed so many people to converge in the wrong place. Of course they should somehow have been shepherded into a safe section of the Leppings Lane terracing, not one that was already full.
But they should not have been there. Not in such numbers and not, in some cases I'm sure, without tickets.
My sympathy didn't go out to the people who jammed in from the rear of that terrace, or to those who turned up without a ticket. My sympathy went only to the poor people who did everything right, and died for it. And, of course, to their families, who had also to bear the pain.
Lord Justice Taylor's inquiry into the disaster rightly decided that all football grounds should be seated. It was high time, anyway, that English stadiums were brought into the twentieth century and prepared for the twenty-first, in keeping with most of those in the major football-playing nations of Europe and elsewhere.
But fans who turn up late and in vast numbers will still spell danger, even at a ground where everyone is sitting down. I have seen crowd-control measures abroad that I believe should have been introduced at our major arenas for the bigger games long ago – barriers set up hundreds of yards short of the stadium itself, where tickets are checked and imposters turned away.
I am not a psychologist or a policeman, but it seems to me that the one thing that deters the bully, the pitch invader, the one who wants to hate, is fear. They don't like being frightened. Apart from the odd ones who are totally nuts, it does work. Present the bullies with a guy in a helmet holding an Alsatian or armed with a gun or a baton – then they're frightened and will cross over to the other side of the road.
It is not a cure, because I don't believe violence eradicates violence, but it is certainly a deterrent.
The police bore the brunt of the blame after Hillsborough, but I had enormous sympathy with them, because they were so outnumbered. Our police have such a difficult and thankless job to do. I exchanged letters with the one who okayed the opening of the gates. 'I still can't believe it,' he told me. 'I did the same routine I carried out before every match. Went jogging first thing, had breakfast, put my uniform on and went to the ground early.' Then he was caught up in the biggest disaster football in this country had ever seen. Yes, the police made mistakes, but I will forever remain convinced that a major factor was the Liverpool fans who flooded through those gates, after the police had become concerned that if they were not admitted quickly there was a danger of people dying outside the stadium. You need an awful lot of policemen to deal safely with a crisis like that.
And then we had to go to Old Trafford and play the Semi-Final all over again – well, start again, anyway, because we hardly played at all the first time. Somehow, it was like reliving the ordeal once more, although we had to try to forget and attempt to carry on with normal life. But how could anybody be expected to forget the appalling experiences of Hillsborough?
As soon as our coach arrived at Manchester United's ground, it all came flooding back. There were Catholic priests standing on the corner eating pies and waving. But they were not waving in joy, just in recognition. Personally, I was full of apprehension. Possibly we didn't bear our problems as well as we could – we certainly didn't play to anything like our potential and were soundly beaten, 3-1.
The signs in our dressing-room had not been good. Players who were normally relaxed and lively were shuffling uneasily. Hardly a voice was heard. The feeling going through my mind was; 'Not again.' My appetite for the game was not as it should have been, although in normal times I have always enjoyed taking my teams to Old Trafford.
The disaster was not mentioned in our dressing-room that day. We all shared a sense of purpose – maybe it was more a sense of duty – that we had to put previous events to one side, forget, and get on with it. I felt they had an urge somehow to put right what had happened. They wanted to repay or recover something that had been lost. My team just walked out of that dressing-room with intense expressions on every face and not the slightest sign of a smile. It was not a feeling of dread, more the feeling that 'I'd rather not be doing this, I'd rather be sitting at home.'
Our right full-back, Brian Laws, had the misfortune of putting in an own goal. For some reason, as Laws remained hunched, or kneeling in utter dejection, Liverpool's John Aldridge went across and ruffled his hair. That annoyed me a great deal. Even if it was a gesture of sympathy, which I doubt, it was out of order and unnecessary in the circumstances. I took exception to Aldridge's action and told Laws afterwards: 'How you can accept somebody ruffling your hair when you have just put the ball in your own net is beyond me.' I seem to recall a smile on Aldridge's face as he did it, but it was a long time before any smile returned to mine.
Afterwards Kenny Dalglish said: 'There was only one team who wanted to win out there,' or, 'We wanted to win more than they did,' or words to that effect. I thought his statement was scandalous. If he was suggesting that my team didn't have the stomach for it that day, he might well have been right. But he should not have said it, he ought to have kept his mouth shut. In truth, although it was difficult for us because the vast majority of public support went Liverpool's way, we wanted to get to Wembley just as much as they did.
There were arguments for and against the staging of the Cup Final that year. Those who called for its cancellation did it as a gesture towards the Liverpool fans who had died, and that was a nice thought. The FA trotted out ridiculous protests such as 'cancelling the Cup Final would be setting a precedent'. Garbage. If it is the right thing to do, then set one.
My Forest side, who went on to win their second cup of the season at Wembley – the Simod trophy, to go alongside the League Cup – were to finish third in the old First Division. We should have been able to reflect on a thoroughly successful season, but how could we? That timeless phrase 'Life goes on' remains perfectly true in most instances and most circumstances.
But not for those ninety-six poor people who died needlessly because of what happened at Hillsborough. None of us who were there, that terrible day, will ever manage to forget.