CROSSWORD PUZZLE
Prompt - Crossword Puzzle : Open up a newspaper or find a crossword puzzle online and choose one of the clues to use as inspiration for your writing
Clue - _____ Disaster, happened 51 years ago today (5) (The answer is Ibrox)
They moan about the price of a ticket, that the seats aren't that comfy, that there isn't the legroom, that it isn't as warm as it must have been when everyone huddled in together. Maybe they've stood on terracing in the past and enjoyed the experience. Maybe they've just heard about it and been given the rose tinted version. Maybe their memories aren't too good.
I remember. And yes, it was warmer, it was more 'together' in some ways. And the prices were cheaper because you could get more people in. many, many more people, especially if you weren't too scrupulous about counting. But I have another memory, one that none of them do. Because if they had it they wouldn't even dare suggest we went back to those days.
It wasn't Ibrox. Nowhere near that scale. But it was, in it's smaller, less headline-grabbing way, a contributor to where we are now. To safety. And if you'd seen what I saw, felt what I felt - and feared what I feared - you would never make a joke about 'health and safety gone mad'. You'd know it wasn't.
We were 2-3 down, the clock was belting along and there had to be less than five minutes left. A cup tie, against a much bigger, much wealthier, club from the division above. More people packed into that wee ground than there had ever been. Or ever would be. I remember the goal in detail. Johnson nutmegging their star name full back down the left touchline and taking flight to get to the line, the cross in delicately weighted and curved, right into the path of McKenna, who one timed a half volley into the top right corner. I can see it all, played back a thousand times, I can feel the elation, hear the roar, taste the disbelief. To equalise, and with such a goal, the stuff of dreams.
And then it gets confused. And I'm glad of that, for the less I can recall the better. Off balance from jumping up and down, I was easily pressed forward, as those behind gained momentum. My instinct was to grab the barrier, two feet to my left, and I missed. That miss saved my life. After the goal that nearly ended it.
I tried to keep my feet as I moved inexorably towards the front, with a speed that went beyond my control. I used what I could - and who I could - to try to remain upright in a press of bodies that had to contend with gravity and mass and the unforgiving concrete, and the boots and bodies of those to come. It all happened in seconds of course, so I can't take any credit for my luck. But somehow I slipped into a gap between two sets of falling fellow humans and found a gap under the next barrier before me. Most of me made it, but I was trapped by who knows how many men on my legs. I blacked out with the pain, so I have no clear idea how long I lay there before I was able to cry for help, for that help to arrive, for those on and around me to be moved. Even that incurred another wait, for the few stretchers they had were in constant use.
But move me they did, and give what help was available, and then hospital, recovery, rehabilitation, acceptance. Accepting that I would always walk with this limp, always have pains in my left leg, always have the memories, the recurring nightmares, of the great collapse that day.
It took many years before I could return to the ground. And then only because the changes made it almost unrecognisable. To challenge the memories. I can enjoy the games now, and cheer along with the rest. But I never complain about the prices.
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