'It’s something I’ll never forget': George Hamilton reflects on Hillsborough disaster
George Hamilton reflects on Hillsborough 35 years on from the disaster
In his forty-five-year-plus career as a sports commentator, George Hamilton has lived through some of football’s greatest moments. He was there when “Houghton!” stuck the ball in the English net, when “Whelan!” chanced it and got lucky with the spectacular against Russia and who can forget that penalty shootout against Romania? He guided us through those historic days, both a totem and witness to our growth as a nation. And yet he is also synonymous with a day when a city not so far from our shores seemed to crumble before our eyes.
Thirty-five years ago this week, hundreds of thousands of Irish football fans tuned into Sport Stadium to watch Liverpool take on Nottingham Forest in the 1989 FA Cup semi-final. The venue was Hillsborough.
“Everything was normal,” recalls the 74-year-old broadcaster. “I was with my producer, David O’Hagan. We went over Friday night and stayed in Manchester as was the norm for games in Sheffield because it's only forty miles across the Snake Pass of the Pennines and it’s a nice drive on a Saturday morning. We drove across nice and early. It was a beautiful day and it’s a nice part of the world. We came down into Sheffield and the traffic was busy. That was the route a lot of Liverpool fans would have taken. So the excitement was building from a long way out.”
Having met up with co-commentator, John Giles, the three took the opportunity to indulge in Hillsborough’s famous meat pies before taking their positions in the commentary box high above the halfway line. They had arrived early, parked close to the stadium and made their way in through the gate at the Leppings Lane entrance. This was the entrance through which thousands of Liverpool fans later entered the stadium and through which they expected to leave that afternoon.
“Brendan O’Reilly was presenting Sport Stadium so there was a bit of toing and froing before kick-off and then they handed over for the match,” recalls George. “There was nothing to suggest that there would be anything other than a great match. The Leppings Lane entrance was on our left. The Liverpool fans were there on the terrace and the grandstand above the terrace. The only thing I noticed was that there seemed to be some people trying to climb out over the railings as a corner was about to be taken. That was unusual.”
That corner to Notts Forest was the first of the game and was awarded less than two minutes after kick-off. As the ball is floated in, the usual roars can be heard from the crowd but listen closely and you can hear a woman screaming. Three minutes later, Peter Beardsley hits a thunderous volley towards the Forest goal. Thankfully it hits the crossbar.
“Then I remember from the near side corner flag an English bobby came trotting onto the pitch and went to speak to the referee,” recalls Geroge. “The referee then went to speak to Ronnie Whelan who was the captain and then everybody left the pitch. People were trying to get up out of the terrace into the grandstand above them as well as over the fence. Then the word came from Dublin: ‘We still have pictures, just keep going.’ Nobody knew the extent of what was going on. They just thought it would be sorted out, the players would come back on and the match would continue.”
“But the people spilling onto the pitch was more intense than anything I had experienced before,” says George. “Then an ambulance appeared from somewhere, one ambulance making its way slowly through the crowd and at this stage, people were using advertising hoarding to carry people to the ambulance. Then I remember seeing one with someone on it and there was a jacket over his head. He was obviously dead. It was clear it wasn’t crowd trouble. There was no rioting or fighting. It was awful but there was no violence and that was very obvious.”
Still in the dark, David O’Hagan decided to get closer to the scene to find out more.
“He was gone for maybe fifteen minutes and when he came back, he was white as a ghost. He told us they were lining up bodies on the back wall of the grandstand. He was absolutely shattered and shaken by what he had seen.”
“We relayed the information as decorously as we could,” says George. “John was magnificent. He found the words. It was awful.”
Back in Dublin, 14-year-old Jonathan Smyth looked on in horror as the tragedy unfolded.
“I remember the makeshift stretchers, the fans on the advertising hoarding,” says the Chairman of You Never Walk Alone Irish Reds Fan Club.
“It’s mad to think that it happened in front of our eyes. And as the day progressed people had died.”
In total, 96 people perished on that day. In the immediate aftermath, many press outlets vilified the Liverpool fans. The Sun ran a front-page story claiming fans had picked the pockets of the dead, had “urinated on brave cops” and had “beat up PC giving kiss of life”.
The coverage triggered a widespread boycott of the tabloid in Liverpool which still exists to this day. But it also galvanised the families of victims to seek out the truth of what had happened on the day. The Hillsborough Families Support Group got support from fan clubs across the globe, not least in Ireland.
“I remember years later being in the Anfield shop the day after a match and seeing this Hillsborough Memorial coin with all the names of those who died,” says Jonathan. “This was fifteen years ago maybe and at the time, it was still all about getting justice for the people who died and keeping their names alive. We wanted to show the families we were fully behind them and to help them with the fight for justice so we helped by selling these on their behalf to raise funds and we sold hundreds upon hundreds of them.”
The Irish Reds along with other fan clubs across the country organised fundraisers, commemorative walks and as many events as they could to help the families of the victims. They would go on to raise thousands but more than anything they helped to raise the spirits of families whose long road to justice was often arduous.
On the afternoon of the tragedy, George and David retraced their route through the Pennines.
“The [RTÉ] news got in touch with us before we left the stadium,” recalls George. “They asked me to do a piece. We were able to listen to that on medium wave on the way back to Manchester. I remember my out line emphasised that this wasn’t crowd trouble but an error in crowd control. 35 years later they now know that but anyone with half an ounce of sense could have seen that at the time.”
“We travelled back in silence really,” he continues, “and I remember thinking we drove here this morning among loads of cars with Liverpool red and white. How many of those weren’t driving back?”
The pair flew back to Dublin that evening to be met by a media scrum. Their pictures were splashed across the Sunday papers.
“I think I found it hard to sleep for a while,” says George. “I was very carefully looked after by my wife and we had two small children so it was possible to get away from it in the frenetic circumstances of life. Just looking at my diary for 1989 here and I actually can see that I commentated on Shamrock Rovers versus Derry City the following day. Goodness me. It’s still a difficult topic to talk about. Every time I think about it, it comes back vividly. It’s something I’ll never forget.”
