Are you mostly a football fan or Aston Villa fan? I'm a football fan first and Aston Villa is my club and I know I must have said that before as it's not a revelation for me and is sort of a running excuse with the wife as to why I'm watching my seventh game of the week. It's also the reason why I'm posting this today.
For those of us old enough, we'll know exactly where we were on April 15th 1989 and for those of you that are not old enough, then please take a minute or two to read this post and follow some of the links. It'll make for some interesting reading.
You see, on April 15th 1989 Liverpool were playing Nottingham Forest in the semi final of the FA Cup at Hillsborough and 96 Liverpool fans died.
I know this is an Aston Villa Blog, but the point of this post is to spread the truth about what happened on that day and to inform you all that next week, on April 15th, even if Aston Villa sign Kaka and Ronaldo, they'll be no blogging done on this site. I know it's not much but it's all I can do as a form of remembrance for the people that died and the families affected because of this tragedy.
If you are old enough, you'll understand why I'm doing this, if you're not, trust me, you don't want to be making any comments below about why I'm making a blog post about Liverpool Football Club.
So, if you didn't know, you now know that 96 people died. What maybe you didn't know is the truth behind what happened. So some links follow and on April 15th next week, instead of coming on here to read a post, come on here and follow these links instead.
There was a document created called 'Hillsborough for Dummies' and it's getting a re-launch under the name 'Hillsborough: Context and Consequences and it's getting done to 'shatter some of the myths' that are still associated with this disaster and to also act as a comprehensive reference point for people seeking an understanding of exactly what happened on that day.
You can visit and download the document from this website.
The document lists a chronological timeline of the key events before and after the tragedy, a table of failures and a study on the duty of care examining the area of responsibility for the authorities. If you're a football fan and think you know what happened on that day, this might be worth a read. If you have no idea, again, it's probably worth a read too.
So, some links for you
- Announcement on Liverpool FC official website of the project
- Hillsborough Disaster page at Wikipedia
- The Hillsborough Football Disaster: Context & Consequences
So, there you go. Some links to follow and read and if you can, email this page to just one other football fan you know and if in our little way we help spread the truth about what happened, then we've done our bit.
Also, if you're a football blogger, why not post a few links to these websites too and maybe take a day off next Wednesday?
I'm sending an email to the club now seeing if they will stop news for a day as I know a few people are doing it and I'll let you know the response or maybe they won't respond and maybe, actions will speak louder than words.
So, apologies if you were coming on looking for an Aston Villa post, they'll be one later, this is just to tell you about what is happening next Wednesday, or not happening and to help spread the truth.
I'll leave you with this video.