does anyone else think that the cover up and subsequent inquest has taken away from the underlying reasons here?
This was always going to happen, in fact, it has happened several times before. Bolton Wanderers, Rangers both lost fans in crushes iirc. Valley parade, Heysel. There was only so many times you could throw pissed up blokes into ancient old stadiums without causing a huge disaster.
I can remember bunking over the turnstiles at Roker Park for a lot less than actually paying to get in as a kid, and I bet that happened at Hillsborough.
That ground was an absolute shit hole, the terraces were as steep as the stairs in my house, the exit staircases were far too small, yet I still managed to get stuck, feet off the ground, in a surge to get out of the ground in an FA Cup semi in the years AFTER The deaths of those fans. You just can’t see that happening in the grounds of today, yet it took those deaths to change things.