Search: ' Hillsborough disaster'

The real story told by the people themselves
by Kevin Sampson
Ebury Press, £12.99
Reviewed by Rob Hughes
From WSC 353 July 2016

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There are many horrific disclosures in the testimonies that make up this essential book. But perhaps the most shocking is that, of the 96 people who died at Hillsborough, as many as 58 could have survived had the correct medical procedures been in place. It’s a statistic that campaigner Sheila Coleman calls “obscene”. Compiled by Awaydays author Kevin Sampson in association with the Hillsborough Justice Campaign, Hillsborough Voices offers an unflinching account of the events of April 15, 1989 and its aftermath, from those who were there, those left bereaved and those who subsequently devoted their energies to the long struggle for truth and justice.

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When Saturday Comes, Britain’s largest independent football magazine, has put its entire archive online. Launched to coincide with the magazine’s 350th issue – available to subscribers now and in shops from March 10 – and 30th birthday, the project with Exact Editions sees subscribers gain free access to every issue of the magazine. From the first, hand-stapled editions, WSC has covered a period of huge change in the national game from an alternative angle.

Founded in 1986 when football was an outcast sport whose followers were demonised by the government and media, WSC has been there through the Hillsborough disaster, the introduction of all-seat stadiums, the foundation of the Premier League, the influx of multi-billionaire owners, mass commercialisation and rising ticket prices, to provide an alternative voice for intelligent supporters in both a serious and humorous way. The new, fully searchable archive showcases how football has evolved over the last 30 turbulent years.

A product of the fanzine boom of the late 1980s, WSC itself has developed and, during the mid-1990s boom in football publishing, established a niche in the then crowded magazine market. WSC has become recognised as a source of informed comment on all aspects of British football, featuring on major current affairs programming and in newspapers in this country and on radio and television around Europe.

WSC has provided an early outlet for many writers who have gone on to establish themselves elsewhere, notably Harry Pearson, Barney Ronay and David Conn – all of whom will feature in the 350th issue. That special edition will also include a reprint of the first issue at no extra cost as a birthday gift to our readers.

Alongside the magazines, WSC has a book publishing back catalogue that includes pioneering histories of football in Spain (Morbo by Phil Ball), Germany (Tor! by Uli Hesse) and the US (Soccer In A Football World by David Wangerin). Most recently they produced The Man Behind The Goal, a collection of short stories by the esteemed football writer Brian Glanville. They also have an established web presence and have launched WSC Photography, an ever-growing collection of images of football culture, drawn from WSC photographers and their archives. WSC also runs an annual competition for amateur and aspiring writers.

Editor and co-founder Andy Lyons will be available for interviews, and we can also provide access to the archive and guidance on finding historic articles on any subject you require.

editorial@wsc.co.uk">editorial@wsc.co.uk
020 3735 7580
When Saturday Comes
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London
E1 1DU

A football commentator’s journey
by Ian Crocker
Pitch Publishing, £12.99
Reviewed by John Earls
From WSC 346 December 2015

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Now in his second spell covering Scottish football for Sky Sports, Ian Crocker’s career is a potentially fascinating story of being one of commentating’s nearly men. Crocker says he was aware of his place in the hierarchy at Sky, in the rung below the channel’s big four commentators, but his defection to the ill-fated Setanta to become their top dog lasted just one season.

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A verbatim play has been touring the country which tells survivors’ stories of the Valley Parade fire of 1985 in Bradford, and Tom Hocking went along

There is a line towards the end of The 56 when one of the characters says that the city of Bradford “wrapped its arms around itself” in the disaster’s aftermath. The line evokes the coming together of a community, but also suggests why it was regularly called football’s “forgotten” tragedy. The city’s strength to bury, mourn and remember their dead but to try to “get on” as best they could inadvertently masked its impact.

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Surviving football’s money business
by Brian Laws with Alan Biggs
Vertical Editions, £16.99
Reviewed by Graham Stevenson
From WSC 316 June 2013

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For a manager who has spent over a decade employed by Scunthorpe United in three spells, it’s disappointing to find only 19 pages in Brian Laws’s autobiography about his time at Glanford Park. He’s led the club to a couple of promotions and a couple of relegations, so it’s not as if there is a dearth of interesting history between them, despite the balance sheet currently reading roughly “nil”.

Scunthorpe are now broke, broken and back in the basement division for the first time in several years – which is exactly where they were when Laws first arrived in 1997. For the small steel-town club he was a relatively big appointment and made an immediate impression. Rumours spread quickly of dressing-room dust-ups and car-park dusting-downs, but “Ol’ Big Hair” and his journalist co-writer don’t take many opportunities to fill in much colour between the lines here.

The Machiavellian boardroom-level manoeuvres during a bizarre three weeks in 2004, for instance, are dealt with in just over a paragraph. This involved Laws being fired by a new chairman, before the previous one stepped in to take back control of the club and reinstated him. “The whole thing got quite nasty,” Brian says. But nasty how? Were horses’ heads involved?

It’s much the same elsewhere throughout this (terribly titled) book. Laws’s time at Grimsby Town is over quite quickly and the aftermath of an injury caused by his launching a plate of chicken wings into Italian midfielder Ivano Bonetti’s face reads like only two-thirds of a story. The lessons learned seem to have been to do with Laws’s handling of the media rather than the handling of his players. Later managerial roles at Sheffield Wednesday and Burnley are similarly done-and-dusted in mere pages and key incidents at all of his clubs feel as if they are dealt with like clearances to be booted into row Z. Much more care is taken in detailing why Laws got the nickname “Ernie” during his playing days. It’s as simple as you imagine – team-mates’ reference to comedian Ernie Wise being short and wearing a wig.

Laws’s years on the pitch dominate – obviously none more so than successful ones at Nottingham Forest (during which he drank Mick Hucknall’s backstage bar dry and wet himself walking out at Wembley for a Cup final – events unrelated). A series of anecdotes about Brian Clough’s eccentricities add more to the mythos but it’s actually Laws himself who surprises with some poignant recollections of the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, such as his continuing embarrassment at not realising the seriousness of events and hurling verbal abuse at the first few Liverpool fans out onto the pitch.

It’s clear Clough had something of a soft spot for Laws and it’s easy enough to figure out why. Laws comes across as reasonably principled and workmanlike – qualities he showed as a player. He also seems prone to let his feelings boil over from time to time, an attribute he clearly takes into the dressing room as a manager.

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