Thoughts on a Home Ground: Part One

I was in Bradford for the weekend recently and was in a pub as Bradford City fans floated in after a home game. The pub isn't far from Valley Parade, and is close to Bradford Interchange, one of the city's main train and bus stations. They were just ordinary everyday fans, doing an ordinary everyday thing, having a pint with their family and friends after a game before heading home. Perhaps they'd also stopped off for a pint on the way to the game. 

Later in the week the same fans popped back into my head, and for some reason I was reminded of the Bradford City stadium fire. A rather random and morbid thought to just 'pop' into anyone's head I know, but it is one of the few standout things I knew about Bradford City football club.

Such an awful occurrence as a stadium disaster may seem like an unlikely and inappropriate topic for an article on Evertonia, but I think there is a relevance to it. 

For context, the Bradford City stadium disaster happened in May 1985. Bradford City had just won the old Third Division that season and had been presented with the trophy before the game started. Their opponents on the day were Lincoln City, and between the two sets of fans, fifty-six people died and two hundred and sixty-five were injured. 

The investigation and report following the fire highlighted a number of issues with what was an old ground and what seem to have been common lapses at the time around health and safety at football grounds. The report appears to have formed the basis for much of the improved regulations we now see today.

I knew little to nothing about the disaster and had to look it up. A number of thoughts struck me. It should have been a huge day of celebration for Bradford City — title winners, promotion, trophy presentation, a summer of hope and expectation in front of the club and its fans. Instead, there was grief, upset, and loss on a scale that is truly awful. 

I didn't even know that Lincoln City were the opponents that day. Even during the club's renaissance under the Cowley brothers in recent years, there had been little mention of the club's involvement that I can remember. 

For both clubs, you would hope the lack of reporting, of highlighting the disaster, was something they had control over, had a choice in. For the sake of the families, the fans, and the clubs themselves, is this really something you would want pored over, dissected and regurgitated repeatedly in the media? Perhaps both clubs and respective sets of fans have behaved with admirable levels of tact, decorum and class in their handling of the disaster. 

Liverpool, by comparison, had to grieve following the Hillsborough disaster in a very public way. They had to go through the courts in a very public and prolonged manner in order to get what they felt was proper justice, apologies, and a full and frank report. There was also trial by tabloid media, to an extent that a certain rag was blacklisted in the city. Fairly or unfairly, Liverpool fans have been criticized by rival fans for how they have openly borne the scars of that day.

As an aside, Nottingham Forest were Liverpool's opponents on the day. As with Sheffield Wednesday, whose ground hosted the tie, they are an invisible component of the disaster. For both clubs, do they prefer to be out of the limelight, to not be included in the ad nauseum discussion of the disaster? While not impacted in anywhere near the same way as Liverpool, has it made it easier for the clubs, and their fans, to move on, to compartmentalize, to carry on a normal existence? 

For Sheffield Wednesday, what had the club as a whole needed to do over the years to exorcise the shadow of that day from their home ground?

Now, for the Bradford fans I observed perhaps they too have learned to compartmentalize the disaster, to place it in its proper place as part of the club's history, and their collective memory. Regardless of its magnitude, perhaps the disaster is now just part of the good and the bad that the fans have experienced supporting their club. At the risk of sounding dismissive, perhaps they have kept it simple, haven't overthought it, and have gone about supporting their club in the best way they know how. 

One thought that particularly struck me is that both Bradford and Sheffield Wednesday have continued to use both grounds in the intervening years. As both clubs' spiritual homes, has it made it easier for everyone involved with them to carry on? Is there an emotional attachment, a bond that provides comfort and a sense of stability during the roughest of times?

Now, to the disasters' relevance to Everton. The same month of the Bradford disaster was probably one of the best months in Everton's history. As with Bradford, we had won the league and been presented with the trophy at home, had been to an FA Cup final, when it still meant something, and of course won the Cup Winner's Cup. At the time, Goodison Park was perhaps already becoming a relic, an antique, a stadium like so many others up and down the country that was a potential disaster waiting to happen. Like with so many other clubs, did the Bradford disaster provide the impetus to bring Goodison up to a standard that a disaster of our own was avoided?

I shudder to think what the emotional fallout for the club and its fans would have been. Would we have been afforded the same opportunity as Bradford City or Sheffield Wednesday to grieve in private? Or would we have had to go down the route of Liverpool in fighting the same regional police force, the same tabloid press with its distain for the city? 

Another question is that with a partial destruction of, and then rebuilding of Goodison, would she have lost some of her lustre, her magic, that essence which made her the Grand Old Lady? Would we as fans have lost some of what bound us to the club, with a home ground that wasn't quite ours anymore, that wasn't the fabled and storied place we were used to?

Did the Bradford City fans I saw in the pub feel the same way about the new and improved Valley Parade once completed? Did they have to rebuild the bond, the memories, a feeling of nostalgia, a sense of home all over again? Was it done slowly and laboriously, one goal, one game, one child's first attendance, one star player at a time? Perhaps they did, perhaps the pre- and post-match rituals, that included a pint in the pub I mentioned, helped. The sense of familiarity, of routine, around a home game, hadn't fully disappeared. Perhaps it all helped with the grieving process. 

Would the same fate have awaited us as Evertonians? How would the club have coped? Thankfully, we've never had to find out. Goodison saw out her days in the same graceful way she lived them. We moved seamlessly to her replacement with nostalgia, sentimentality, of fondness for what she had given us in all of her years of service.

(To end on a positive note, the name of the pub in Bradford, if ever you are there, is Jacob's Well. It's a beautiful old school boozer with decent cask ale, pies, and a lot of character.)