Disaster inspired me to make things better, says Wednesday chief Richards

12 April 2009 13:57
The Hillsborough disaster changed the face of football forever, both in Britain and abroad.   Rules imposed on British clubs following the tragedy became the benchmark for football safety throughout the world.   Indirectly, the changes also paved the way for the Premier League to become the force in football that it is today.   Lord Justice Taylor's report following Hillsborough led to football clubs becoming obliged to improve their grounds, the biggest change being all-seater stadia for top-flight clubs.   This was a revolution for English football and the gentrification of the game soon followed as clubs came under pressure to treat fans as customers rather than second-class citizens, in return benefiting from higher ticket prices and increased merchandise sales.   The Premier League was on its way to becoming the most glamorous, most wealthy and most popular league in the world. The tragedy was that it had needed the deaths of 96 people for football to wake up to its responsibilities. One of those helping the crush victims on the Hillsborough pitch on April 15, 1989, would one day become the chairman of the Premier League.   Dave Richards was at Hillsborough with two surgeon friends for the semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. When the scale of the disaster became apparent, they went onto the pitch to offer what help they could.   For Richards, it was a defining moment in his life. A few weeks later he joined the board of Sheffield Wednesday, and before the year was out had become club chairman.    Richards, who went on to become Premier League chairman and was knighted in 2006, said: "Being involved with Sheffield Wednesday for a lot of years it has been a big thing in my life. I was at the game and I don't think that anyone will ever forget what happened that day.  "I was on the pitch. I had two doctors as my guests at the game and we all went down onto the pitch. It was very difficult and it took a long time to get over what happened but that tragedy drove me on to try to make things better.  "I was an ordinary fan and came onto the Wednesday board the following June. It was a turning point for me because I became involved in football because of the Hillsborough disaster.   Respects: Margaret Thatcher, then prime minister, visist Hillsborough in the wake of the disaster "It was a major turning point for the game in general thanks to Lord Justice Taylor with all-seater stadia and the way we come in and go out of grounds. It's a very significant date. A lot of great things have happened since and we have to do what we can to remember that."   In his interim and final reports Lord Justice Taylor did not just call for all-seater stadia. He also pointed the finger at mismanagement by South Yorkshire Police and failings on the part of Sheffield Wednesday and Sheffield City Council - the ground did not even have a safety certificate, for example.   Chief Supt David Duckenfield, the police match commander, was found by Taylor to have committed several mistakes, not least ordering an exit gate to be opened to ease congestion yet not closing the tunnel into the Leppings Lane end as 2,000 more fans surged through into the central pens.   In his report, Taylor later called this "a blunder of the first magnitude".  This was compounded by the police's failure to realise the disaster that was unfolding - indeed some officers pushed fans back into the stands as they tried to climb the spike-topped fences to escape the crush.  Within minutes, the scale of the tragedy became apparent. In total, 96 people died and a further 766 were injured.

Source: Daily_Mail