Too wet to go out

But at least all this rain is good for the garden - looking very green from the kitchen window. The weather on TV said 28mm of rain in Edinburgh yesterday - seems about right, and a bucketload more today.
Twenty-seven years ago today there was the Bradford Fire - the old wooden stand at Valley Parade, home of Bradford City FC burned down during the last game of the season, when Bradford were celebrating winning the old Third Division. Fifty-six people died and nearly three hundred were injured.
I was a student in London, but had I still been in Durham it quite possibly is a game I might have tried to get along to see on that last day of the season. As it was, I was in Birmingham, watching Leeds play Birmingham City in the old Second Division. Walking up to the ground close to kick-off I had been put off by the huge queues at the turnstiles into the Leeds end and decided better to see the whole game from the home terraces than miss the opening minutes standing in a queue. Earlier that season a group of us had been to Stamford Bridge to see Chelsea play Walsall in a Wednesday night cup match. As we were still in the queue we heard a big cheer and moments later another one. Then as I paid to get in, a third huge roar. And before I got to the top of the steps leading out onto the Shed end terracing a fourth roar from the crowd. Looking at the scoreboard it was already 3-0 to Chelsea and not yet 10 minutes gone. And there were no more goals in the remaining 80 minutes!
So I was keen not to miss the start. Leeds had a very small chance of promotion if they could win and the teams above them, including Manchester City, were all to lose. Getting into the ground I could see the Leeds end was pretty full already and then I noticed a few people being allowed to transfer from the terraces I was on into the Leeds end, through the empty cordon between the two sets of fans. So I asked a steward if I could do the same. I think he muttered something along the lines of, 'if you want to join that lot, then good luck to you' as he let me through.
The atmosphere as the game started was tense, and at times, poisonous. Towards the end of the first half a chant went up amongst the Leeds supporters, "City are losing, City are losing". Was it possible?
And then Birmingham scored, just in front to us. The crowd surged. And then a few objects were thrown over the perimeter fences onto the pitch. And a few more. More and more things flew over my head. Pieces of wood, bits of concrete. I turned around. Behind me there were supporters with scarves pulled up to hide their faces hurling things over the supporters in front of them. Others were hell-bent on demolishing a refreshment hut, led by one wearing a Rupert the Bear mask. Comic and yet chilling.
The referee took the players off the pitch. But the missiles rained down. The Leeds manager, Eddie Gray, a legend as a player for the club, walked along the side of the pitch to come and try and calm things down. He too had missiles thrown at him and had to return to the safety of the dressing room.
Which is when I left. These weren't Leeds fans I said to myself - how could they throw lumps of concrete at Eddie Gray? (Odd that it took that for me to leave, but I think I was a little in shock, or else having seen other crowd violence that season, primarily at Stamford Bridge it was almost like it was part of the football experience) Anyway, I walked out the back of the terracing and out the gates. Other people were leaving, fathers and young sons, but not that many. I passed police vans spilling out reinforcements, unloading riot shields like an army preparing for battle. I walked back to the station a little dazed and got the train back to London. That night I went to a party, which ended up going on all night and several of us stayed over. We woke the next morning to see the news from Bradford on the TV, and also to see that a young fan in the Leeds end had died after the game in Birmingham following a riot involving both sets of fans and a battle between police and supporters. A wall had collapsed in the area behind the terracing as fans had been leaving the ground. The same area I had walked through when I left. Apparently it had been his first football match, persuaded to come along by some mates. Very sad.
And at the end of that same month I was part of the group assembled in the TV lounge in the hall of residence to watch the European Cup Final between Liverpool and Juventus at the Heysel Stadium in Brussels.

(Oh, and I know you can see the reflection of the camera in the window, but like I said, it was too wet to go out.)