Hillsborough disaster

Fans pulled out of the Leppings Lane end

 Saturday, 15 April, 1989, the day of the FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest, was a bright sunny spring day.

The two teams had met at the same ground at the same stage of the competition the previous year, Liverpool winning 2-1.

Liverpool fans were confident of success again and were looking forward to another trip to Wembley.

Mike Jolliffe and his friends, like many other Liverpool supporters arrived in Sheffield early before the game and amused themselves as they waited for the kick off time to approach, "I just remember we all ended up round this park," Mike recalls.

"We bought a flyaway [football], I think we’d done it on many occasions.

"We’re booting the ball round the park, you want to be your favourite player.

Mike Jolliffe (second left)

"We got to the ground I reckon about 25 to three, at the infamous Leppings Lane, to the gates.

"It gets a bit busy around the gates, we get through the turnstile and it’s a little bit busy, but the atmosphere’s good.

"It’s semi-final day, you’ve got a ticket to an FA Cup semi-final, you can’t believe it.

"You’re following you’re team, you’re going to win.”

As fans streamed in to the ground most of them headed through a tunnel for the central pens of the Leppings Lane end as it was the area directly in front of them, Mike and his friends did the same, "There is this tunnel as you walk through," Mike remembers.

"The minute you walk through the sun comes through, hits the green pitch which is perfectly laid out for a semi-final, beats straight in to the tunnel and you’re like a rabbit in the headlights, that’s where you want to go.

"There was nothing untoward at all, the fans were just really buzzing.

"Eight of us together in the same area of Leppings Lane, behind the goal."

Mike and his friends were close to the front of the terrace at this point unaware of the build up of fans coming in behind them, "There was a wall in front of you," Mike says.

"The fence went up about another metre, metre and a half and then curved over you with spikes on the end of it.

"I’d say I was about four or five [people] from the front with the spikes being directly over my head.

Mike remembers a sudden shift in the atmosphere inside the Leppings Lane end, "I can’t recall why but it just changed, it just did.

"It just changed, there was panic.

"I don’t think I panicked, and I think that’s one of the reasons I’m still here now.

"But there was panic, there were screams, there were young children in the Leppings Lane end.

"We had young, very young people around us, between eight and 15 years old, and that’s where there was panic. That set the tone, it just changed.

The crush at the Leppings Lane end

"It didn’t become ‘What’s happening in the game?’, it became ‘This is not right and I don’t want to be here’.

"We were all in the squeeze, this is a battle for survival.

"I don’t recall how my hands got seven to eight feet in the air and got hold of those spikes, all I recall is ‘If I can just keep my top half safe, I don’t care what happens to my legs’."

As the crush developed Mike managed to get out the front of the stand through one of the small gates opened by police and stewards, he then tried to help fellow supporters who were trapped inside the pens, "We jumped back in because we started hauling people out,” he says.

"It never ever crossed my mind that these people for any reason had died or suffocated.

"But, I’d be telling lies if I said they were all awake and they were all switched on when we were helping them out.

Now standing in the middle of the field at Hillsborough, Mike met up with several of his friends and they continued to help in the rescue efforts.

"We got on to the pitch and we met five or six of us," he recalls.

"We made our way down the player’s tunnel, we were guided in to start bringing water on.

Mike now with his son Michael and wife Karen

"My mate banged on the home dressing room door, Dalglish came out and my mate was talking to Kenny Dalglish and telling him what was happening on the pitch.

"As we were on the pitch giving water it was just horrendous.

"I’d say it took me until about twenty to four when I went in to the gymnasium and I realised that people were actually dead because there were other people crying over them."

After the disaster Mike, along with many other fans still unaware of the number of people who had died, made his way to the train station to head back to Liverpool, "Eight of us were walking along together and there were people with their car radios on and as you’re walking along, mixed fans all heading the same way, the numbers were coming out, ‘Have you heard? There’s ten dead.’

"And then we carry on walking and someone else would wind the window down, ‘It’s just said there’s 20 fans dead.’

"We came in through Lime Street station and we were met by a wall of press, it was as if there were more press than fans, there was crying, there was sobbing."

Twenty years on Mike’s memories of the day are still fresh in his mind though he believes he was lucky, "Let’s put this in perspective, I didn’t suffer like other people, I didn’t lose anybody.

"I knew of people who died but I didn’t lose anybody, but it’s still there, the pain’s still there.

"I wouldn’t say I go to bed every night and it’s the last thing on my mind but its certainly there, it’s there all the time.

"It was just wrong."