Latest news with #ValleyParade
Glasgow Times
6 hours ago
- Sport
- Glasgow Times
Medal awarded day of Bradford City stadium fire up for sale
Bradford City defender Tony Clegg's winner medal is set to be sold at McTear's Auctioneers in Glasgow on June 19 as part of its Sporting History Auction. Tony was part of the club's 1984/85 Third Division title-winning team. Read more: Rangers legend Davie Cooper memorabilia to be auctioned The season ended in heartbreak on May 11, 1985, when the Valley Parade fire claimed the lives of 56 fans and injured hundreds more. Tony said: "This medal represents the pinnacle of my footballing career, but it's impossible to separate it from the heartbreak we all experienced that day. "I've kept it for four decades, and I now feel the time is right to pass it to someone who understands both the pride and the pain tied to that season." The fire, which started during the match against Lincoln City, is still one of the most tragic days in British sporting history. (Image: Supplied) Brian Clements, managing director at McTear's, said: "This is not just a medal, it's a deeply emotional artifact from a defining moment in English football history. "We are honoured to handle its sale." Tony's time at Bradford City included one of the most unusual moments in the club's history. Read more: Former Rangers star Gattuso set to leave managerial position During an away match against Hull City late in the 1984/85 season, goalkeeper Eric McManus was injured just four minutes into the game. With no substitute available, Tony stepped in to play in goal and kept a clean sheet as Bradford secured a 2-0 win. Tony played for Bradford City from 1983 to 1987, scoring two goals in his 48 league appearances. His medal is expected to fetch between £700 and £1,000. McTear's Sporting History Auction will also include Old Firm medals, rare football shirts, early match tickets, and programmes. More information and a full catalogue of items can be found on McTear's Auctioneers website.
Irish Independent
30-05-2025
- Sport
- Irish Independent
Forty years on from Heysel: The lessons football still needs to learn
The Heysel disaster embodied what were the darkest days of football. Four decades on, there are still lessons to be learned. The catastrophe took place on the game's biggest stage: the 1985 European Cup final, contested between Liverpool and Juventus. On that tragic day in Brussels, 39 fans lost their lives while 600 were left injured after fans were crushed against a wall that collapsed. Abject failures in crowd management and poor stadium design were at the heart of the disaster, as they were for the calamities of Hillsborough and the Valley Parade fire that same decade.
Yahoo
29-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Forty years on from Heysel: The lessons football still needs to learn
The Heysel disaster embodied what were the darkest days of football. Four decades on, there are still lessons to be learned. The catastrophe took place on the game's biggest stage: the 1985 European Cup final, contested between Liverpool and Juventus. On that tragic day in Brussels, 39 fans lost their lives while 600 were left injured after fans were crushed against a wall that collapsed. Abject failures in crowd management and poor stadium design were at the heart of the disaster, as they were for the calamities of Hillsborough and the Valley Parade fire that same decade. Among the three, Heysel is somewhat the forgotten tragedy, despite its seismic short and long-term impact. There was a widespread perception that Liverpool fans were solely responsible, with the crush culminating from crowd disorder sparked by Reds supporters crossing a fence separating them and a neutral stand which contained mostly Juventus fans. Fourteen were later found guilty of manslaughter and jailed. It resulted in English clubs being banned from Europe for five years and fuelled a reputation of English hooliganism that still stands to this day on the continent. Four years later at Hillsborough, where poor crowd management once again devolved into disaster, costing the lives of 97, the fans were blamed once more, almost habitually given the precedent of Heysel. However, the systemic causes of these incidents were yet to be addressed - a problem in fan safety that was being brushed over by simply laying blame at the feet of 'unruly' supporters. After first Heysel and then Hillsborough, learning finally began to flow from catastrophe. 'You get a major disaster like Hillsborough or Bradford, and off the back of that, inquiries get developed - Taylor or Popplewell, for example - and those inquiries then highlight the broader system failure,' said Professor Clifford Stott of Keele University, a specialist in crowds and policing and the co-author of the independent report that delved into the chaotic scenes at the 2022 Champions League final in Paris. 'It was very much about unsafe stadia. Those [inquiries] have created an environment where stadium safety has advanced exponentially over the last 40 odd years.' Post-Heysel, there was a recognition that the failings of the authorities and crumbling state of the Heysel stadium were also key factors at play. However, popular understandings continued to point the finger solely at fans - with hooliganism the far more eye-catching topic to both the public and the media. As such, it was crucial that the narrative moved away from simply citing hooliganism as the overarching cause for such tragedies. 'It is completely useless as a narrative to help us to understand the nature of the problem,' Stott adds. 'What we're dealing with isn't hooligans, it's crowd management, crowd dynamics and crowd psychology.' And as the powers at be finally addressed the core issues, what evolved in the decades after were undeniable improvements in fan safety protocols - which were primarily represented in the Saint-Denis Convention. Adopted by the Council of Europe in 2016 before being officially ratified by the UK government seven years later, this effectively set the framework for how major sporting events should be managed. On paper, this was the solution to years of toil over how to make football universally safe, preventing any future disaster or case of crowd mismanagement. A continent-wide legal instrument, it set out to ensure an integrated, multi-agency approach to sporting events that prevents security from ever overruling safety and service, with no single stakeholder - such as the police - able to address an issue by itself. However, this requirement of international police co-operation for each and every event that goes beyond country lines was - and still is - aspirational, idealistic and massively difficult to implement. 'The ideal situation is the policy agreements that were reached in 2016, and they're still not being realised,' Stott said. And as we've seen across the past few years, there have been numerous shortcomings that have not only led to fan safety being put at serious risk, but also the narrative to regress back to blaming supporters. The 2022 Champions League final was the key case failing, which demonstrated that 37 years on from Heysel, the same problems still existed. Poor communication between stakeholders - something that the Saint-Denis Convention acts to weed out - was rife as the Paris police started acting by themselves, leading to Liverpool supporters being funelled into a bottleneck towards an entrance at the Stade de France that was not fit for purpose. Crowds inevitably begun to overwhelm the police as a result, culminating in fans being tear gassed. Ticketless supporters were then blamed for the ordeal by French authorities. 'There was a focus on public order at the expense of public safety,' Stott said, whose independent report found fans were not responsible for crowd problems in Paris. 'There were a lot of parallels between what went wrong at Heysel and what went wrong in Paris. So despite all of that policy development and learning, ironically, we find ourselves in 2022 in a situation that wasn't that distant from 1985.' Paris 2022 was hardly an anomaly, especially in regard to the prioritisation of order over safety, or indeed the blaming of fans. Just this week, unfounded social media speculation over the Liverpool parade crash spiralled out of control, with some baselessly accusing the fans of enraging the driver who ploughed into the crowd, injuring 79. In Wroclaw ahead of the Europa Conference League final, Chelsea fans were blasted with a water cannon by police after disorder broke out. And earlier this season, ahead of Manchester United's Europa League quarter-final first leg with Lyon, the French police once again resorted to tear gas, claiming it was 'proportionate' to restore calm. Of course, these incidents of rogue, excessive policing do not adhere to the Saint-Denis Convention. Part of the problem remains the reputation around English supporters. After all, many of the key case studies detailing recent failings of the Saint-Denis Convention involve Premier League clubs. A stereotype of dangerous hooligans that come across the channel - something that was hugely exacerbated by the events of Heysel - still exists among fans and foreign police. This is despite, as Stott insists, football culture having vastly changed in this country: 'We don't really have the risk groups operating in the way they did in the past - the legislation has gone a long way to removing that threat.' However, there is still a reflex among European states to load up increased force to prepare for the arrival of English fans, which often devolves into a harsh, unjustified and overblown police response which puts supporters at risk. 'The key problem in the European context is risk assessment,' Stott adds. 'That risk assessment is often not very sophisticated. Say you've got a host police force in somewhere like Italy, Greece or Spain. They'll say: 'Are these fans English?' If the answer is yes, they'd see it as a high risk, and then throw loads of policing resources around it that weren't necessary. The English fans travelling weren't actually going there for disorder, but they get treated as if they were. That dynamic would actually precipitate disorder.' This does not reflect the regulated, 'one approach for all' ideal that the Saint-Denis Convention, a ratified piece of legislation that is meant to tick all the boxes when it comes to fan safety, sets out. That's because at the end of the day, seven years on from the agreement, 'aspirational' is still the way the convention is described. 'The policy is there, everybody knows that policy is the way to go,' Stott asserted. 'The problem is delivery - not in its entirety because many events do deliver that. The problem is you get is these sporadic events where that policy isn't adhere to, and there doesn't appear to be any kind of regulatory mechanism to say if you don't deliver, then what's the consequence? If there's no consequence, then these deviations are just going to continue to happen.' For Stott, a huge step towards making the Saint-Denis Convention the norm regards the involvement and control of Uefa. While he notes that the governing body's adoption of the agreement has been the 'driving force' in 'shifting the agenda', the situation could be vastly improved if Uefa took a more hands-on approach to regulating match policing in its competitions. 'Uefa doesn't really control policing,' he said. 'Policing is controlled by the nation states, and those police forces and nation states will at times completely vary away from that agreement. And this is where we have argued, certainly in our report around the handling of the Champions League final in Paris, that Uefa should take more responsibility and more control over the policing of their events. It's their failure to do that which is one of the primary issues that needs to be confronted. 'It's really their failure to oversee the delivery of the safety and security operations in these locations that lies at the heart of the problem. If they took a more proactive role in overseeing that these events were going to be policed in line with these agreements, then we would have safer events. That's what went wrong in Paris, and it continues to go wrong. 'When Manchester United fans ended up getting tear gassed again, Uefa could have stepped into the fray and said 'if this continues to happen in France, your teams aren't going into the Champions League anymore'. It could take this much more assertive position, but it doesn't. We really need a much stronger and more robust regulatory framework to ensure more systematic and coherent delivery of the existing policy.' Football is obviously in a better place than it was 40 years ago. Heysel was one of a handful of tragedies that shook the game and forced change to be made. And while legislation proves that, we are still seeing shortfalls in practice when it comes to the policing of events, especially on the international stage. There is still vast work to be done to ensure the safety of travelling supporters, preventing disorder from once again unravelling into disaster.
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Bantams photos on display to celebrate promotion
Photographs taken while Bradford City were last in the top tier of English football have gone on display to celebrate the club's recent promotion. Renowned social documentary photographer Ian Beesley added the images to his exhibition at Salts Mill in Saltaire after the club secured League One status. He took the black and white photos while he was artist in residence for the club after they gained promotion to the FA Carling Premiership in 1999. For two seasons, the lifelong supporter took pictures of fans as they watched their team compete against the best football sides in the country. Discussing his time as club artist in residence, the 71-year-old from Bradford said: "I was given an access all areas pass, I thought I'd landed my dream job. "How wrong I was - I found the transition from fan to photographer, spectator to observer, unbearably difficult." He added: "I really didn't enjoy the experience." After two seasons in the top flight, Bradford City were relegated and he handed in his pass and returned to the stands - where he has "stayed put" ever since. He was with his daughter Fay at Valley Parade earlier this month when a last-gasp winner ended the Bantams' six-year stay in League Two. "Every couple of months we put a new section in to keep the exhibition current," Beesley said. "Ever since it looked like the Bantams might be going up I've been planning to add these images to the walls at Salts Mill. "I refused to jinx it by installing them too early, being a football fan I'm always a bit pessimistic." The Life Goes On exhibition at Salts Mill runs until 31 December. Listen to highlights from West Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North. Thousands gather to celebrate Bantams' promotion Bradford City promoted with late Fleetwood win
The Guardian
11-05-2025
- Sport
- The Guardian
Unforgotten: The Bradford City Fire review – teases a daring tale of humanity out of a devastating inferno
On Saturday 11 May 1985, the last day of the football season, Bradford City's fans were celebrating. They had already won the Third Division: the team was presented with the trophy before the final game, at home against Lincoln City, kicked off. An unusually large crowd turned up at Valley Parade for what was more a party than a match. What happened next has perhaps faded more than it should have from public memory, the rancid injustice of the Hillsborough tragedy having come to represent all the calamities that befell English football fans in the 1980s. But, 40 years since 56 people died in an inferno at Valley Parade, the sober, thoughtful documentary Unforgotten: The Bradford City Fire remembers them anew. Before a tale of stunning horror takes hold, the film puts what was meant to be a glorious day in context. Jim Greenhalf, a journalist for the local Telegraph & Argus, remembers how he gradually appreciated the importance to the community of trips to Valley Parade, with its wooden main stand looking 'like it used to be a railway carriage in world war one', at a time when one of the city's main sources of worthwhile employment, heavy engineering, had dwindled and once-proud streets were turning to ruin. Greenhalf recalls what he was thinking in the winter and spring of 1985: 'This club is becoming more and more important to a fairly large group of people, because everything else is being taken away from them.' Bradford City had survived a brush with bankruptcy in 1983, a predicament that prompted players and fans to organise a crowdfunding appeal before businessman Stafford Heginbotham stepped in. The Third Division title was meant to be Bradford's reward. But just before half-time against Lincoln, a lit cigarette or match fell from the hand of a spectator through one of the many gaps in the main stand's floor. It set fire to a pile of rubbish that had collected in the void below the tiered seating area. The construction was almost entirely made of wood and flammable bitumen: within four minutes the entire stand, a whole side of the ground, was ferociously blazing. Perhaps the film's most memorable sequence arrives when we watch television coverage of the game, which soon becomes a report on the fire, in the company of fire safety expert Ben Hanney. He commentates on the pictures, which are timecoded so we can see the sheer speed of the developing catastrophe. Hanney points out behaviours that seem odd with hindsight but are just human nature: fans initially stand watching the flames, rapt or amused; then they panic when they appreciate the danger, with no middle phase in between. The shortness of the time that elapses between minor incident and major disaster is wholly terrifying. Unforgotten might frustrate some viewers with how little time it spends on recrimination. Rather than focus on the warnings that had been received by the club about the litter below the stand, it explains that several other similar venues had seen wooden stands catch fire in the years before the Bradford blaze, fortunately without the same dreadful consequences: such events were, apparently, just how things were back then. There is contemporaneous footage of Heginbotham defending himself against a reporter's questions, but the programme mirrors the approach of Sir Oliver Popplewell, who led the official inquiry and is also seen answering queries in news footage from the time. 'This is to improve things in the future,' Popplewell says of his upcoming analysis. A journalist asks him: not to apportion blame? 'No.' This decision becomes more understandable in the light of an interview with one of the police officers on the scene, Adrian Lyles, who tried to usher fans away from the fire when it had just started and did so successfully, despite their initial reluctance to believe this was necessary. Moments later, he remembers, smoke had 'replaced the air' and scores of lives depended on him: there is a devastating moment where he says he has never recovered from hostile questioning at the inquiry, suggesting that his decision to direct fans towards the rear turnstiles – which, it turned out, were locked – had been wrong. Unforgotten's document of the aftermath takes in survivors' guilt, the moral dilemmas faced by Greenhalf and other media figures as the fire became a huge story, and the pure grief of Hazel Greenwood, whose husband and two sons went to the match and didn't come home. But it prefers to speak more about the way the community united afterwards, the safety upgrades that were made at football grounds nationwide, the fundraising that established a burns unit where globally significant medical innovations took place. Courageously, it tries to rescue hope and humanity from the ashes. Unforgotten: The Bradford City Fire aired on BBC Two and is on iPlayer now
