A brilliant piece from a Leeds fan:
https://roblufc.org/2016/04/26/the-hillsborough-disaster-warnings-that-werent-heeded-by-rob-atkinson/
I should have highlighted this part:
And, similarly, in 1987, when Coventry of the Midlands faced Leeds United of the North, the greater Leeds numbers found themselves packed tight in Leppings Lane, while the smaller Coventry band enjoyed the wide open spaces on the Hillsborough Kop.
So two years prior to the Hillsborough Disaster, I and thousands of others were packed into the smaller Leppings Lane End on that April the 12th of 1987.
We were jammed in like sardines on that terrace; looking up you could see fans climbing out of the back of the crowd, up over the wall and into the upper tier of the stand where space was more freely available.Yet the FA continued to decide which end of a ground was given to which set of fans
based on the direction from where they'd traveled and which direction they'd approach the ground from and not on the basis of the number of fans that needed to be housed in the relevant ends. So, what, the FA thought that fans would be inconvenienced, angry, what, about having to walk around a ground to gain entry from the opposite side from where they approached? They'd been prepared to travel how ever many miles to get to the ground, but wouldn't want to walk a few hundred yards to gain entry to the ground when they got there?
Nothing was learned from previous years. Our representations to the FA both after the 1988 semi final problems and again before the 1989 one, were completely ignored. Nothing was learned from the inappropriate condition of the Heysel Stadium to stage top level football, and not a crowd of 3 people and the resident pigeons.
On both occasions of the disasters that have enveloped our club, desperate representation had been made by the club, about the
exact conditions and circumstances that caused the two disasters, in a more than timely manner
prior to the games being staged. Both times the football authorities totally ignored what was raised by the club. 135 needless deaths resulted.
As a Liverpool fan it's impossible to ever get those thoughts out of my head, but having read those comments from fans of other clubs, and there's no doubt in my mind there will be fans of other clubs who shared the same experience, I'm just so grateful that it hadn't happened previously, but it just makes the loss of those lives even more fruitless, if that were possible.