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38 years ago, 56 football fans lost their lives in the Bradford City fire. For me, one of the saddest days in football history.
I can remember watching the events unfold on Grandstand on the BBC. It sticks in mind as I can remember reading the articles about in the newspapers on the following Monday as I travelled to Darlington by train, on my way to Catterick to start my army basic training. It feels like yesterday.
Was before my time but remember seeing the footage on YouTube out of curiosity but quickly regretted it. Desperately sad sights that stick with you including the man walking around while completely alight. Also reading about the man who had to decide whether to save his young son or elderly grandfather. RIP.
That must have been a tough time for football, a teenager died the same day at Leeds v Birmingham after a wall collapsed and weren't the Millwall v Leeds riots and Heysel the same month?
I’m old enough to remember the Ibrox disaster in 1971 I think it was, but Scotland was like a different world then so, wrongly, it never had that big an impact on me. Therefore, the Bradford fire felt like the first Football disaster I’d experienced and then there was another one a fortnight or so later. Being in a football ground felt a bit different for a while after Bradford and Heysel.
Years ago you could walk under the wooden terracing of the old Grange End to get to the bob bank. A not too dissimilar environment to Bradford's.
I walked under there stacks of times - this may just be my memory playing tricks, but I seem to remember rubbish being piled up under there on the Sloper Road side of the Grange End.Originally Posted by A Quiet Monkfish
We used to walk under there, looking up through the slats in the timbers without a care in the world. Fans bouncing up and down on the timber terracing, never a thought of how strong the structure was. I wonder if it was ever tested/checked for stability and if it was, how often over its life? Amazing how things were just accepted, the crowds, I and you were in, against Leeds & Arsenal in the cup particularly were water off a duck’s back to us. Looking back, the place was an accident waiting to happen. Thank God we got away with it down the City, unfortunates at other grounds didn’t. RIP.
I mentioned Ibrox earlier, I watched what might have been a fiftieth anniversary documentary about it quite recently. It was a real eye opener - the stairway that was the scene of the disaster had seen earlier deaths and was deemed not fit for purpose some eight years I think it was before sixty six died in 1971. The accident happened because people who were leaving by the stairway turned back when a late goal was scored and created a crush with those coming down the stairs. It’s not the same thing, but I’d say there was the potential for something similar to happen under the Grange End if, say City had scored late on in that 1969 FA Cup game with Arsenal.
Yet, nobody gave anything like that a second thought until that Safety of Sports Ground inspection in 1977 which signalled the end of the old Grange End - despite it all though, it was by far the best and most atmospheric location I’ve ever been in watching City play at home.
Those 4 years, 68-72 ( I’d been watching from other parts of the ground before then), were exhilarating for a teenager on the Grangetown End, the plastic fan phenomenon hadn’t really caught on and all my mates were City fans. No segregation giving it an aura of tribal resistance and a definite smell of evil, sounds so un PC now but but we were like bees to honey. It was fantastic!!
I know we regularly get 20 thousand + now but our regular 20 thousand + in those days seemed so much more tightly knit and those cup games with over 50 thousand, wow!!! I mention those four years particularly because it’s as if Scoular was building a club destined for Division One in those years. If only we’d had a board with bollocks this club could have taken off, I truly believe that, the South Wales area was ready & waiting. The plastics would,nowadays, be few & far between, So annoying!
Ninian Park had to go, it was decrepit in latter years, a disgrace with no scope for development really, a one street entrance was always going to be a hindrance to improvements. I’m glad we’re over the road now, I was getting to hate Ninian Park and it’s abysmal faciities, we had to move on or I dread to think where we’d be now, the dungeon or, God forbid, worse. But it was of it’s time for those teenage years of mine and I’m so thankful I’ve lived in the era I’ve lived in.
I was at Plough Lane that day (the last time we got relegated from the second tier, incidentally). They had a couple of wooden stands there that weren't allowed to be used again if I remember rightly. I wouldn't credit the Soul Crew with prescience but they'd been dismantling one of them bench by bench as the afternoon wore on. I'm sure I wasn't the only one thinking 'that could've been us' when they heard about the tragedy. There were so many accidents waiting to happen in grounds back then, as others have said.
I moved to Bradford a few years after the fire . The memorial is in the city centre which is good as its easy to spot with the flowers and a reminder of what those poor people went through .
My second game I was on the Grange End. 1976. City 3-1 Hereford. It was so intimidating. I remember going up the back to see some mates. I was shit scared. There were some proper nutters up there.
I remember being under there once when city scored, it was like a bomb went off!
Rained coins though, so not all bad.
The footage and the commentary by John Helm is one of the most harrowing things I've ever seen. It's still quite shocking how fast the fire took hold.
They used footage from the tragedy in fire fighter training to show how quickly it can spread. Possibly still do.
Great post.
Regarding only being able to get into the ground from Sloper Road, I mention in Tony Evans Walks on Water that the new Board which took over in the summer of 1975 had plans to develop the Bob Bank and Ninian Park station so that there'd be direct access from the station into the ground. Nothing ever came of it, but it seemed to me that sometime in the past, work had started on an exit from the back of the Bob Bank and it always seemed to me that there would not have been a huge amount of work required to turn the 1975 Board's plans into fruition at a pretty modest expense.
Great post SP.
Spedger
I was at Wimbledon that day, watching us get relegated. Tarki scored for us. We heard about the fire on the radio as we were getting on the bus. One fan that died at St Andrews Brum v Leeds the same afternoon, after a wall collapsed in away end. I was on that same terrace the week before when we got beat by Brum and they got promoted.
Spedger
When you are young sometimes you don't have the right sense of danger. However, even in those days I remember a pre-Hillsborough derby at the Vetch in the early 80s. We were on the West terrace, the West Upper wooden stand was condemned. The terrace was cut in half by a fence with a narrow gap. Eight foot fences between us and the pitch.
Fans were treated like dangerous cattle in those days. To be herded not protected!
That away terrace was incredibly steep
Loads of bother that day the police were a shambles
On a few occasions between 79 and 85 I can remember being in similar circumstances on away trips. Being herded in narrow walkways, feeling not in control as the crowd moves like a river at its own pace and my mind shouting repeatedly ‘stay on your feet’. In those days I was young and stupid but even then that always felt dangerous.
I use it all the time on safety courses. I showed it on Friday. Was even more poignant than usual being the actual anniversary.
For all the moaning about identical soulless stadiums for those of us who remember back to the 70's the grounds then were disgraceful.
They really were death traps and I was and still am glad to see the back of them.
Frankly I am surprised that there were so few incidents when looking back and remembering the state of the grounds, policing and general behaviour.
Possibly the relatively low crowds of that era meant that the potential dangers were mitigated.
Exactly, that’s what I was getting at in my post. We City fans got away with it, if you like, in those massive crowds against the likes of Leeds, Arsenal etc in the late 60s/early 70s. Even more so in the 60 thousand + crowds in earlier years. There but for the grace of God.
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