It's the 34th anniversary of that horrible day at Valley Parade when their promotion party turned into an horrendous tragedy.

Thoughts with everyone at Bradford City today.

I echo every sympathy to Bradford City fans and families involved on that day and also to Lincoln City as well.

Beyond words. I recall it vividly. The video can be found easily but no way will I watch it.

RIP

The video is haunting. Fans on the pitch celebrating, obviously not appreciating the severity of the situation. At that point it’s a moderately small fire, but within minutes it’s an inferno.

There is footage of a man casually walking into the pitch engulfed in flames. It’s horrible. The commentator saying ‘That poor man, that poor man’ has stuck with me. I couldn’t watch it again.

Couldn’t believe that Everton was still a wooden stand (never been on Upper Tier before). I would have thought that all those stands would have been condemned after the Bradford fire. Seeing we had all seater stadiums thrust upon us around the same time.

Wasn’t there some allegations around a number of fires at businesses that came into the public eye in the last couple of years. Didn’t hear if that came to anything.

RIP to the 56.

The video is horrific. From a spark to a full stand on fire in 4 minutes. Horrific

RIP to the 56

claret wizard wrote:Wasn’t there some allegations around a number of fires at businesses that came into the public eye in the last couple of years. Didn’t hear if that came to anything.

A book written by someone who lost several relatives in the fire came out 4 years ago linking fires at the premises of the BCFC owner and his previous businesses. The police force, the IPCC and the Home Office have found nothing further to investigate. The judge who led the inquiry did not believe it offered anything new or worthy of revisiting his report. A retired police officer named, for the first time, a now-deceased fan who had said they dropped a cigarette which caused the outbreak of the fire; although relatives of that man said he had not told them of that.

That either confirms it was accidental or is further evidence of the cover-up depending where you start I guess.

claret wizard wrote:Couldn’t believe that Everton was still a wooden stand (never been on Upper Tier before). I would have thought that all those stands would have been condemned after the Bradford fire. Seeing we had all seater stadiums thrust upon us around the same time.

The only changes made at the time were to ban people from smoking in wooden stands.

RIP to the 56, I’m sure we were there for our previous away game! Maybe ct will know we were away that day but I can’t remember where, we didn’t really understand until we got back to Burnley.

Absolutely horrendous footage, such a sad day for football and not really commemorated as much as it should in my opinion.

cocotheclaret wrote:RIP to the 56, I’m sure we were there for our previous away game! Maybe ct will know we were away that day but I can’t remember where, we didn’t really understand until we got back to Burnley.

Absolutely horrendous footage, such a sad day for football and not really commemorated as much as it should in my opinion.

We were there three weeks earlier but had been to Swansea after that. On the day of the fire we won 3-2 at Walsall. I got home and went to a wedding that night and even then there was still no indication as to how serious it had been in terms of injuries and fatalities.

ClaretTony wrote:The only changes made at the time were to ban people from smoking in wooden stands.

Shocking really. I felt slightly uneasy in the Everton Upper Tier last week, and not because of lethargic start. One route out, wooden stand, narrow seating all would be a potential nightmare in an emergency. I can forgive crappy toilets and poor refreshment facilities but with the amount of money in the game having supporter facilities that could be dangerous is inexcusable.

That would have been at the bescott stadium, and were in the side stand with wooden seats!!!

Obviously everything else that day pales into relative insignificance, but we had won 3-2 away at Walsall that day and gave ourselves a chance of staying in the Division Three though we did go down as, if my memory serves me right, Swansea and Bristol Rovers played out a draw the following week to send us down.
R.I.P. to the 56.

cocotheclaret wrote:That would have been at the bescott stadium, and were in the side stand with wooden seats!!!

No, long before the Bescot. It was at Fellows Park which is now a Morrison's supermarket.

claret wizard wrote:Shocking really. I felt slightly uneasy in the Everton Upper Tier last week, and not because of lethargic start. One route out, wooden stand, narrow seating all would be a potential nightmare in an emergency. I can forgive crappy toilets and poor refreshment facilities but with the amount of money in the game having supporter facilities that could be dangerous is inexcusable.

There's far worse than Everton around to be honest. They are a bit hamstrung at Goodison because of the location which is why they are moving.

OMG I’m older than I thought!!!

That list of people chokes me every time I read it. Fathers and sons, husbands and wives, wiped out in a horrible few moments. Just terrible.

Lord Beamish wrote:That list of people chokes me every time I read it. Fathers and sons, husbands and wives, wiped out in a horrible few moments. Just terrible.

It’s the Greenwood, Ormondroyd & Stockman names that get me, dad and two kids. How on earth did those three mums cope?

ClaretTony wrote:It’s the Greenwood, Ormondroyd & Stockman names that get me, dad and two kids. How on earth did those three mums cope?

I just can’t imagine how.

Deffo Fellows Park. Not missed.

dougcollins wrote:Deffo Fellows Park. Not missed.

I think it was the last time we played there

For all Everton’s is a wooden stand, it’s far better than the old main stand at Valley Parade was. Sadly, that was an an accident waiting to happen.

You could see between the flooring, there was years of rubbish under there, and I’m sure that I read that they’d even stored loads of unsold programmes underneath, from years gone by.

A lit tab end falling through a crack was said to be the cause (despite the silly conspiracy relating to Stafford Higginbottom). You could have dropped a pack of 20 through some of the gaps in the flooring, never mind a discarded cigarette!

I’d forgotten until seeing pictures recently but it was a stand with seating at the rear and standing at the front - making exit on to the pitch all the more difficult (and the gates to Manningham road were locked)!



Before my time but didn’t the stand before the Bob Lord have standing in front of a seated area?

Can’t believe it’s 34 years ago!

DCWat wrote:Before my time but didn’t the stand before the Bob Lord have standing in front of a seated area?

Can’t believe it’s 34 years ago!

The old Brunshaw stand did have standing in front of it, in two areas separated by the player's tunnel.



On the subject of Bradford City. I was on the coach to Walsall that day and someone on the coach asked if I'd been in the stand at Valley Parade three weeks earlier. I hadn't, I'd been stood on the open terrace. The person who asked me had been and told me that it was a death trap with holes in the wooden floor filled in with paper. Just a few hours later, it happened.

We were in there for that game too, Tony.

Memory may be playing tricks but I think we pulled level, against the odds, and then bloody Bobby ‘five pints’ Campbell ran up the other end and scored the winner (3-2)?

DCWat wrote:We were in there for that game too, Tony.

Memory may be playing tricks but I think we pulled level, against the odds, and then bloody Bobby ‘five pints’ Campbell ran up the other end and scored the winner (3-2)?

We did - I think we were 2-0 down with about 6 minutes or so to go, scored twice to level it and then conceded to lose 3-2.

ClaretTony wrote:On the subject of Bradford City. I was on the coach to Walsall that day and someone on the coach asked if I'd been in the stand at Valley Parade three weeks earlier. I hadn't, I'd been stood on the open terrace. The person who asked me had been and told me that it was a death trap with holes in the wooden floor filled in with paper. Just a few hours later, it happened.

There was another sad coincidence when we were at Bradford just those 3 weeks earlier. There was a factory fire across the valley that we could see from the open terrace. Burnley fans were singing “Bradford city’s burning down, burning down”

Posted the other day that I was on my honeymoon when it happened. The pictures were horrific, and will live with everyone who has seen them. Thoughts are always with them. RIP