It’s been more than six months since Steve Townsend lost his brother, Mark, but the pain lingers. It was etched across his face when I saw him at a coroner’s court in Sheffield last week.
He was awaiting the start of a preparatory hearing for an inquest he’d not remotely imagined would stem from Mark, a West Bromwich Albion fan, setting out at 7am one Saturday last September for a match against Sheffield Wednesday at Hillsborough. Mark suffered a medical emergency there and never made it home.
Retracing that fateful final journey from the family home in Birmingham last Thursday would have brought myriad sorrows for Steve. Information boards on the last stretch of road down to the court reminded locals of the weekend’s Hillsborough match against Hull City. There would be ‘heavy traffic’. Evidence that the football world has moved on.
Sheffield’s Medico-Legal Centre, as the coroner’s court building is known, has changed a bit since the days when Liverpool families arrived there in the immediate aftermath of the 1989 Hillsborough Disaster.
The pre-inquest hearings back then involved a few suited men in a room, including the coroner Stefan Popper, and no thought for the bereaved. Those families were being asked to return to the very same site where they had been asked to identify the bodies of their loved ones, just weeks earlier.
Nearly 35 years on, senior Sheffield coroner Tanyka Rawden afforded the family far more empathy, subtly working to ensure that the court business did not overwhelm them. They could step outside if it all became too much, she said.
Mark Townsend (left), a West Bromwich Albion fan, set out at 7am one Saturday last September for a match at Hillsborough. He suffered a medical emergency there and never made it home
Around 500 people attended his funeral, some only vaguely familiar with the man whose ‘Paul Weller’ sideburns made him a distinctive figure amid the weekly rhythms of supporting Albion
It became quickly apparent what one of the inquest’s main points of contention will be – though it was shrouded in court-speak. The Townsend family’s barrister, Jade Bucklow, said that there was a ‘disconnect’ between different witness accounts in relation to the ‘timings’ of events in the stadium on the day Mark died.
Wednesday will say they and their private medical firm responded quickly enough. The family feel they did not.
Wednesday’s barrister told the coroner that medics were on the scene ‘within three or possibly four minutes’ of Mark falling ill. The club’s private medical firm, Lambda Medical, who had won a competitive tendering process to staff Wednesday’s home games this season and are still operating at the ground, will have questions to answer when the inquest starts in full. One of Lambda’s directors was also a working medic on the day Mark died – the second of his firm’s staff on the scene in the emergency.
But the inquest’s most critical question may be for Wednesday themselves to answer. It is: How soon were those medics actually made aware?
The club, not the medical firm, were responsible for ensuring their stewards in the Leppings Lane End could quickly locate a colleague equipped with a radio to call the control room and summon help. And on this point, West Brom’s fanbase may provide the most vital answers of all.
An appeal for fans to relate what they saw elicited nearly 100 testimonies. Some will be read out at the inquest, last week’s hearing was told. It is yet to be decided if some of these witnesses will testify in person.
The coroner stressed the importance of hearing from witnesses who provide facts, not conjecture. Not all fans do, of course. Yet it was moving to hear the names of those ordinary supporters read out in court.
Here is a story of a club’s fans rallying around one of their own to help get to the truth. It was also heartening to see a West Bromwich Albion FC representative alongside the family in court, providing support.
Wednesday will say they and their private medical firm responded quickly enough. The Townsend family feel they did not
Mark’s shirt was left on his seat at his beloved West Brom for the club’s next fixture
The Hawthorns pays tribute to Mark in October with a minute’s applause
This is how it has been at Albion ever since Mark’s death. Around 500 people attended his funeral, some only vaguely familiar with the man whose ‘Paul Weller’ sideburns made him a distinctive figure amid the weekly rhythms of supporting Albion, home and away.
Fans attending his wake at a local Baggies pub chipped in for a defibrillator for the place, which now bears Mark’s name. ‘This is what our club do better than most,’ Ali Jones, of fans campaign group Action for Albion, tells me. ‘People wanted to help in any way they could.’
It is important to point out that Wednesday feel CCTV footage will provide a clear picture of events. The club told me in October that ‘just over a minute’ elapsed between the first steward being alerted and the control room being notified.
For so many years, Steve and Mark watched their beloved West Bromwich Albion together, putting the world to rights in the Hawthorns’ Brummy Road End, more recently with Steve’s son Matt alongside them. Row LL. Seats 184, 185 and 186.
‘We’re just glad we’re almost there with this now and grateful for all the support and help that fans have given us,’ Steve told me. ‘We hope this will be a thorough process. Mark was a stickler for detail. He would have wanted that.’
Inaction from boxing authorities with lives at risk
Britain’s boxing authorities don’t seem interested in dealing with the scandalous lack of safety and regulation in white collar boxing which I reported on a few weeks back.
In the Daily Mail’s letters page last week, reader Tom Walsh, from Woking, described his shock when attending a bout where ‘boxers’ were mismatched, including a diabetic who told him his sugars were getting low, so his fight had been delayed.
Three men have died in seven years and when another is killed, the authorities will be falling over themselves to provide some pretence that they acted. They haven’t.
Don’t laugh at promoted clubs – it’s coming for everyone
It was another week of failure and mockery for Southampton, Leicester and Ipswich
Financial rules have made it virtually impossible for clubs to be promoted to the Premier League and stay up
Another week of failure and mockery for Southampton, Leicester and Ipswich, yet financial rules have made it virtually impossible for clubs to be promoted to the Premier League and stay up.
I worry for Leeds. Stymied by those rules, they didn’t buy a striker or a keeper to replace error-prone Illan Meslier in January, having sold Archie Gray and Georginio Rutter to comply.
They can spend in the summer but Ipswich, with their £130million outlay, prove there are no guarantees a new squad will gel quickly enough.
Maybe Nottingham Forest had it right. Take a points deduction and hope for the best.
Leave it out, Arsenal
Arsenal’s dismal, classless gamesmanship could not work its tricks on Jordan Pickford
Arsenal blocking opposition goalkeepers at corners is one thing, but Gabriel Martinelli standing in front of Jordan Pickford to prevent him organising a defensive wall before a Bukayo Saka free-kick at Goodison on Saturday?
Dismal, classless gamesmanship.
A must-read recommendation
My former Daily Mail colleague Shekhar Bhatia has written a gem of a book, chronicling the experiences of being a young, British, Asian West Ham supporter in the 1970s.
To say there were challenges attached to being a fan and aspiring journalist back then is an understatement but Shekhar’s book, Namaste, Geezer (Football Shorts/Pitch Publishing £9.99), radiates optimism. It is a joy.
