The Red Mist - like anyone actually cares…

- in 1989, 21 years ago, 96 of my fellow Liverpool fans went to a football match, and never came home. I count myself lucky that I wasn’t amongst them, as I could so easily have been. I travelled to many Liverpool matches at that time, but becase of the ticket allocations, my season ticket didn’t qualify me for a match ticket for that fated FA Cup semi-final against Nottingham Forest. Had it done so, I would almost certainly have had a standing ticket, probably in the Leppings Lane end of the ground.

The Hillsborough disaster, the biggest sports-related tragedy this country has ever seen, remains a stain on the establishment of this country. Successive governments have failed to deliver justice to the families and loved ones of the 96 who died. Still, no-one has been officially held to account for the criminally negligent way that the match was organised, administered and policed, or for the treatment of the victims and their families in the aftermath of the disaster.

I would never be a reader of the Sun newspaper anyway, simply because it’s rubbish, but there are many people on Merseyside who continue to boycott the rag for the disgusting way it exploited the disaster simply to sell papers, and the way it besmirched the innocence of the victims. Their hollow apology years after the event was a transparently simple attempt to restore sales.

The annual memorial service will take place today at Anfield, at 2.30pm. In these days of money-driven sport, it’s good to see that Liverpool FC still hold the memory of that day dear, and that everyone associated with the club do too. It’s being broadcast on Sky channel 434, if you want to watch it.

Surely no-one seriously believes that it was anything other than an all-too-avoidable tragedy that was waiting to happen. It’s probably too late now to expect it, but the families still deserve their justice. If, after the forthcoming general election, the new Home Secretary were to put the wheels in motion to re-open the issue, and deliver their justice, it wouldn’t be a moment too soon.

If you’re too young to remember the disaster, just Google “Hillsborough” and you’ll find plenty of material to clue you in. Anyone who attends football matches in this country now is witnessing the direct results of the disaster - all-seater stadia being the most obvious, but in many other facets as well. You should be aware of the consequences of the deaths of the 96 football fans that went before you, and who were so badly let down by the football authorities, the police, the courts, the media, and even the government.

They paid for it with their lives.

Justice for the 96.