SWAN Hill’s Chris Craig-Neal, who was present at one of the greatest sporting disasters in history, has condemned the authorities of the day saying the tragedy should have been avoided.
Mr Craig-Neal was at the Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield for the 1989 FA Cup soccer semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest.
The 1989 match at Hillsborough entered history for all the wrong reasons when a police commander opened an exit gate at the ground, allowing 2000 supporters to pile into the stadium causing a fatal crush.
Last month, a British jury found the 96 people who died in the Hillsborough disaster were “unlawfully killed” — bringing an end to the victims’ more than 25-year wait for closure.
Mr Craig-Neal said the authorities’ decisions on the day still caused him to feel angry and said the tragedy should have been avoided.
“They should have delayed the start of the game, that’s the one part that makes me so angry when I found out that they considered delaying it but instead opened the gate.
“Not only did several thousand ticket holders stream in, but also people who just saw an opened gate converged.”
A Nottingham Forest supporter, Mr Craig-Neal said he could tell something was wrong at the ground just a few moments into the 1989 cup final.
“We were really close to the Liverpool pens, so we could tell there was trouble but we thought that it was the fans being hooligans, thought perhaps a fight had broken out, something like that,” he said.
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