After each funeral I attended, when another set of parents buried a beloved son or daughter, when another grieving family mourned a relative who died following Liverpool, I would come home and climb into bed with my eldest son, Jamie, just to hold him, just to hear him breathing. We slept curled up together, Jordan, my second son, was just a baby and I would cradle him in my arms. For months after Hillsborough, I couldn't bear to be apart from my two sons. If one of them fell over, I ran across and hugged him, soothed him, showed him my love. Scarred into my mind was the image of those parents who could not hold their loved ones any more, who could not see them smile and grow up. That thought devastated me. So I hugged my children tight.
Before Hillsborough, I had always tried to keep things in perspective but what happened on the Leppings Lane terraces made me question so much in my life. When I struggled to get in the team at Liverpool and then Newcastle United, I said to myself, 'Does it really matter? I'm alive. My family are alive. That is all that matters.' Hillsborough crystallised my priorities.
Football lost it's obsessive significance; it was not the be all and end all. How could it be when ninety-six people died, when parents lost children and children lost parents? Bill Shankly's comment that 'football is not a matter of life and death, it is far more important that that' sounded even falser after Hillsborough. Football is a game, a glorious pursuit but how can it be more important than life itself?
Saturday 15 April 1989 should have been a day of excitement when a compelling FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest was played at the home of Sheffield Wednesday. I try not think about the day itself, but I will never forget it. The events were like a nightmare unfolding. I didn't realise anything was amiss on the Leppings Lane terrace until a couple of fans ran on to the pitch shouting, 'There are people being killed in there.' I thought they were exaggerating, like when players say 'that tackle nearly killed me.' I just thought the fans were getting a bit squashed. But Bruce Grobbelaar, who was closest to the Leppings Lane terrace, quickly realised there was something terribly wrong when he went to retrieve a ball and heard fans screaming - 'They're killing us, Bruce, they're killing us.' Bruce shouted at the stewards to do something.