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This is an edited version of a piece that was originally published in September, 2012. We have republished it to mark the 25th anniversary of the tragedy.

The morning could not have been more perfect. A cobalt blue sky, blood orange sun and a warm air filled with birdsong and blossom. Spring's optimism flooded Liverpudlian hearts.

It was the second year running we'd been drawn to play Nottingham Forest in an FA Cup semi-final at Hillsborough and those of us in that red procession which snaked along the M62 to Sheffield had few worries about reaching Wembley again.

But different kinds of doubts were creeping in. Major roadworks, an accident and persistent police checks were causing delays, and fears spread that the kick-off might be missed.

On reaching Hillsborough those fears were realised. At 2.30pm, Leppings Lane, the entry point for all Liverpool fans, was human gridlock.

No police or stewards were on hand to filter the thousands of fans into queues.

The only visible authority was half-a-dozen forlorn figures in blue on horseback and a few on the ground, screaming at the swaying crowd to back away from the turnstiles.

For the second year running, and despite protests, Liverpool were given 4,000 fewer tickets and the smaller end of the ground - despite having a much bigger following than Forest.

Geographically it made the police job of getting fans in and out of Sheffield easier.

Ensuring safety is how they termed it. It meant all 24,000 Liverpool ticket-holders, whether in Leppings Lane or the West and North stands, had to pass through 23 turnstiles, most so old they constantly jammed.

At the much newer Kop end Forest had 60 modern turnstiles. As the ground erupted with expectation at the entry of the teams, outside in Leppings Lane, there was pandemonium.

Fans, angry at the lack of movement and organisation, berated the police, some of whom were screaming into their radios for assistance. Many of us moved away from the turnstiles and looked on from a distance, convinced the kick-off would be put back while they sorted out the chaos.

Instead, at 2.52pm a huge blue exit gate opened and 2,000 of us poured in.

At the back of the Leppings Lane terrace, stewards who were supposed to be dispersing the supporters evenly into five pens had vanished. Consequently the bulk of fans ignored the lesser populated pens at the sides of the terrace and headed into the two central ones behind the goal, already over-crowded. Those at the front became packed tighter and tighter. The game was now under way and fans at the back, ignorant of the crush, concentrated on trying to get a view of the pitch.

They weren't to know that ahead of them on this shallow-sloping concrete there was panic, fear, hyper-ventilating, fainting, hair drenched in sweat and vomit matting on the metal fencing.

And death.

Survivors speak of faces pushed against them that were wide-eyed and blue, of their bodies going numb and limp, and their minds suffering near-death experiences.

Eddie Spearritt, whose 14-year-old son Adam died in the crush, lost consciousness. He said: "They've said it was a surge but it wasn't. It was a slow, constant build-up of pressure, like a vice getting tighter and tighter until you couldn't breathe."

Fans screamed at passing police to open the perimeter gates but they walked on by. Some who tried to climb over the fence were battered back down. Others crawled on all fours above heads towards the back of the terrace and were hoisted to safety by fans in the stand above.

Despite the obvious density of the crowd, the screams, and the pain etched on the faces of the suffering - and despite CCTV cameras feeding these images back to the police control room - the perimeter gates remained locked.

When one was temporarily forced open by fans and a few spilled on to the pitch, the police thinking became clear.

Reinforcements moved in with dogs. They believed what they were seeing behind the cages was not innocents trapped in a killing field, but hooligans orchestrating a pitch invasion.

Goalkeeper Bruce Grobbelaar, a couple of yards from the unfolding disaster, was one of the first to raise the alarm.

He said: "There were people with their faces pinned against the fence saying to me, 'Bruce, can you help me. We can't breathe'. So I asked a policewoman to open the gate and she said, 'We have to wait for our boss to give the word'."

By 3.04pm, when Liverpool striker Peter Beardsley crashed a shot against the bar causing a surge, many of the 96 had already lost their lives.

Some died standing up, of traumatic asphyxia. Others were crushed or trampled when a crash barrier gave way.

At 3.06pm after the police reinforcements had signalled the severity of the problem, the referee led both teams off.

The perimeter gates were opened and hundreds of seriously injured fans spilled on to the grass and collapsed, desperate for ambulances, stretchers and oxygen that never arrived.

The penalty area looked like a battlefield.

Between the bodies, casualties staggered around, dazed, confused, weeping.

Apart from a handful of St John Ambulancemen, the only medical aid for the dying came from fellow fans.

They tried resuscitation and tore down advertising hoardings to ferry victims the length of the pitch to what quickly became a makeshift mortuary. Some policemen joined in. Others berated fans for ripping down the hoardings to make stretchers.

Dozens more police were drafted on to the pitch, not to help casualties but to form a wall across the half- way line to prevent rival fans getting at each other.

Clearly back in the control room the carnage was still being put down to hooliganism.

Half an hour after the players had left the pitch a solitary ambulance made its way slowly towards the Leppings Lane end. That even one made it was a minor miracle.

Tony Edwards, the only professional ambulanceman to reach the Leppings Lane end, recalled what happened outside the ground. He said: "A policeman came to my window and said, ' You can't go on the pitch, they 're still fighting'."

He went on nonetheless, but his job was made impossible by the scale of the casualties.

The memory of bodies being piled on to his ambulance, of people pleading with him to take their friends and loved ones, of the anarchy that made his job impossible, haunts him to this day.

But what haunts him most is the knowledge that he was the only paramedic trying to help. He said: "There were 42 ambulances, including mine, waiting outside the stadium. That means 80- odd trained staff could have been inside the ground. They weren't allowed in because they were told there was fighting.

"But there was no fighting. The survivors were deciding who was the priority, who we should deal with. The police weren't. We weren't. Can you imagine a rail accident where all the ambulances wait on the embankment while survivors bring the casualties up?"

Of the 94 who died that day (14-year-old Lee Nicol died four days later and 18-year-old Tony Bland had his life support machine turned off in March 1993) only 14 made it to hospital.

Trevor Hicks was one of the few who got a loved one into Tony Edwards' ambulance. He was trying to resuscitate his 19-year-old daughter Sarah when he spotted her 15-year-old sister Victoria being placed into the ambulance.

Trevor tried to push Sarah in alongside her but the bodies were piled high and he had to lay her back on the pitch.

He said: "The ambulance started to move away. I saw the door close and I had to make a decision in that split-second. I thought 'the fella with Sarah knows what he's doing, I'll leave her with him and another ambulance will be along in a minute'."

Another one never came and both of his girls died. Trevor, now 63, added: "In the ambulance, I was sucking the vomit from Vicky's throat. I couldn't get rid of that taste for six months.

"A psychiatrist said I was either trying to hang on to the last contact with my daughters or it was guilt - I was punishing myself for not saving them.

"The hurt I suffered that day was so extreme I can't be hurt any more."

Outside the ground as we devastated fans made our way home grief turned to rage when word spread that we were being blamed for the disaster.

A hooligan mob had stormed the stadium and killed their own.

It was a lie which would travel all the way around the world before it was corrected.

A calculated slur that would never go away.

Amid the slurs and questions, Liverpool was trying to come to terms with its grief. The day after the disaster people drifted towards Anfield seeking a focal point for their mourning.

The club's chief executive Peter Robinson opened the ground and the Kop and its goalmouth, became a shrine to the dead.

Within days, a third of the pitch would be blanketed with flowers, scarves of all colours from followers of different clubs and heart-felt messages of support from around the world.

(Image: Danpics)

The players became social workers, sometimes attending half-a-dozen funerals a day. Striker John Aldridge said: "It hit me very, very hard. To the point where I couldn't cope.

"It weakened me physically, emotionally and mentally. The thought of training never entered my head. I remember trying to go jogging but I couldn't run. There was a time when I wondered if I would ever muster the strength to play. I was learning about what was relevant in life."

He did go back to playing though, and three weeks later, scored twice against Nottingham Forest to knock them out of the re-scheduled semi-final.

Liverpool went on to win the FA Cup in an emotional final against neighbours Everton. But many believe the fact that the competition wasn't abandoned that year was yet another insult to the dead.

As spring turned to summer there was little to extinguish the pain and anger among Liverpudlians. Until August 4, when the late Lord Justice Taylor published his interim report into the disaster and finally the truth was heard.

He ruled that drunkenness, late arrivals and fans turning up without tickets were red herrings. That there was no evidence of any kind of hooliganism and that fans were not to blame for the crush. He even described their role in trying to save the dying as "magnificent".

If you are a football fan you should remember the victims when you look around today's affluent, cage-free, well-stewarded, all-seater stadiums.

You should remember the agony they went through in the first Hillsborough Disaster and the suffering their families went through in the second one.

And you should never forget that for English football's bright tomorrow they gave their todays.

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RIP the 96

Jack Alfred Anderson, 62

Colin Mark Ashcroft, 19, student

James Gary Aspinall, 18

Kester Roger Marcus Ball, 16, student

Gerard Baron Snr, 67

Simon Bell, 17

Barry Sidney Bennett, 26

David John Benson, 22

David William Birtle, 22

Tony Bland, 22

Paul David Brady, 21

Andrew Mark Brookes, 26

Carl Brown, 18

Steven Brown, 25

Henry Thomas Burke, 47

Peter Andrew Burkett , 24

Paul William Carlile, 19

Raymond Thomas Chapman , 50

Gary Christopher Church, 19

Joseph Clark, 29

Paul Clark, 18

Gary Collins, 22

Stephen Paul Copoc, 20

Tracey Elizabeth Cox, 23

James Philip Delaney, 19

Christopher Barry Devonside, 18

Christopher Edwards, 29

Vincent Michael Fitzsimmons, 34

Steve Fox, 21

Jon-Paul Gilhooley, 10

Barry Glover, 27

Ian Thomas Glover, 20

Derrick George Godwin, 24

Roy Harry Hamilton, 34

Philip Hammond, 14

Eric Hankin, 33

Gary Harrison, 27

Stephen Francis Harrison, 31

Peter Andrew Harrison, 15

David Hawley, 39

James Robert Hennessy, 29

Paul Anthony Hewitson, 26

Carl Hewitt, 17

Nick Hewitt, 16

Sarah Louise Hicks, 19

Victoria Jane Hicks, 15

Gordon Rodney Horn, 20

Arthur Horrocks, 41

Thomas Howard, 39

Tommy Anthony Howard, 14

Eric George Hughes, 42

Alan Johnston, 29

Christine Anne Jones, 27

Gary Philip Jones, 18

Richard Jones, 25

Nicholas Peter Joynes, 27

Anthony Peter Kelly, 29

Michael Kelly, 38

Carl David Lewis, 18

David William Mather, 19

Brian Christopher Matthews, 38

Francis Joseph McAllister, 27

John McBrien, 18

Marian Hazel McCabe, 21

Joe McCarthy, 21

Peter McDonnell, 21

Alan McGlone, 28

Keith McGrath, 17

Paul Brian Murray, 14

Lee Nicol, 14

Stephen Francis O'Neill, 17

Jonathon Owens, 18

William Roy Pemberton, 23

Carl Rimmer, 21

Dave Rimmer, 38

Graham John Roberts, 24

Steven Joseph Robinson, 17

Henry Charles Rogers, 17

Andrew Sefton, 23

Inger Shah, 38

Paula Ann Smith, 26

Adam Edward Spearritt, 14

Philip John Steele, 15

David Leonard Thomas, 23

Pat Thompson, 35

Peter Reuben Thompson, 30

Stuart Thompson, 17

Peter Francis Tootle, 21

Christopher James Traynor, 26

Martin Kevin Traynor, 16

Kevin Tyrrell, 15

Colin Wafer, 19

Ian David Whelan, 19

Martin Kenneth Wild, 29

Kevin Daniel Williams, 15

Graham John Wright, 17