Hillsborough, 20 Years On

5:35p.m., Wed 15 Apr 2009

A lot of talk about The Hillsborough Disaster today. And rightly so. We shouldn't forget.

But while there's ben a lot of talk, there's been a lot of unqualified people spouting absolute rubbish. What particularly annoyed me was a woman on Radio 5Live this morning advocating a return to standing areas in stadia and offering up the argument that "we have rock concerts in stadiums that are all standing and there's seldom a problem". Well, that's ignoring so many factors it's laughable.

Comparing an English football crowd to any other kind of crowd is missing the point by a country mile. Rock concerts have one crowd, united in the music. Football matches have two crowds in opposition. Rock concerts are, generally speaking, a much more even emotional experience, hopefully an uplifting one throughout. Football matches are tense, nervous affairs punctuated by moments of extreme despair, elation and anger. The two crowds and the behaviour they display are incomparable.

What you've also got to consider is that most matches involve a home crowd outnumbering the away fans by roughly 10 to 1 (let's say). For cup matches, at enutral venues, they're split 50-50 which is just and fair. These events have a much bigger potential for crowd trouble. And while it's unlikely that Darlington F.C.'s stadium will ever be the neutral venue for a match that hosts a capacity crowd, all our stadia should be built around the same principles and guidelines.

The Taylor Report might have seemed over zealous at the time. But it sparked a massive investment in football and football stadia which has brought the game on light years. To undo all, or any of, that investment would be a backwards step. More people would go to football matches if terracing was re-introduced, but only at the very top level where demand for tickets far outstrips supply. I don't believe for a second that people would choose to go to a football match just becasue they could stand instead of sit. And we're in a situation where many of the top stadiums have been purpose built as all-seaters. New stands at Old Trafford and The Emirates Stadium haven't been designed to accommodate standing crowds - it's not just a case of ripping seats out. I don't imagine for a second that ticket prices would be lower as a result of re-introducing terracing.

What we shouldn't forget is that Hillsborough wasn't one of the most dilapidated stadiums back in 1989, it was one of the absolute best stadiums in British football. Most football grounds were horrible places. Was the atmosphere better? Possibly, it depends on your definition of "better" and whether you miss the heavy tinge of antagonism that the eighties atmosphere carried with it. The overall experience of going to a football match is certainly much, much better. I think if these people could travel back in time to a football ground of 1989 they'd be shocked at the atmosphere, at being pinned in by permieter fences, at the rivers of urine flowing down over the concrete at half-time and at the general condition of the buildings.

Let's not undo the good that came out of the Hillsborough Disaster. That would just be another disaster.