South Yorkshire police were considered “superb” at managing football matches at Sheffield Wednesday’s Hillsborough stadium before the 1989 FA Cup semi-final that descended into disaster, an experienced former football journalist has told a court.

David Walker, who attended the semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest and many other major matches at Hillsborough when he was working for the Daily Mail, said it was seen as a “first class” ground and safe compared with many others. He had met the police match commander, Ch Supt Brian Mole, at a media briefing on the new CCTV system, then considered state of the art, and had dealings with Mole on other policing issues. Walker said he chose Hillsborough as a safe ground to which he could take his young son for his first football match.

The jury at the manslaughter trial of David Duckenfield, the South Yorkshire police match commander at the 1989 semi-final, at which 96 people were killed, has been told that Duckenfield replaced Mole 19 days before that match. Walker confirmed that after the disaster, he gave evidence to Lord Justice Taylor’s public inquiry, at which he stated that Hillsborough was considered safe and said: “I understood South Yorkshire police at Hillsborough were superb.”

At FA Cup semi-finals and sell-out Sheffield Wednesday matches, Walker said, the police operated a line across the road to check people had tickets before allowing them on to the Leppings Lane end turnstiles. However, at the 1989 semi-final, he saw no such police “filtering” operation. Asked by Christine Agnew QC, for the Crown Prosecution Service, if it came as a surprise not to see the police operating a cordon there, Walker replied: “Yes.”

The 12-person jury has heard and seen film showing that overcrowding built up at the Leppings Lane turnstiles, leading to a decision by the police to open a wide exit gate C, and allow a large number of people through at once. The incoming Liverpool supporters were not directed to avoid a tunnel facing them, which led to the central “pens” of the terrace. The lethal crush took place in those pens.

Walker told the court that he could see at 2:40pm from his position in the south stand that the central pens were at capacity, while there was space to the sides. He believed the kick-off would be delayed, as had happened at the 1987 FA Cup semi-final between Leeds United and Coventry City, and other big matches at Hillsborough, but the jury has heard that there was no delay.

As the disaster unfolded, Walker said he went down to the pitch, where he helped some supporters use an advertising hoarding to carry an injured boy to the gymnasium for treatment.

Two survivors of the crush, Ian McDermott, 22 at the time, and Iain Crawford, 25, both of whom came through gate C, broke down in the witness box when they recalled being trapped in pen 3. McDermott said there had been a “huge volume” of people outside the turnstiles before gate C was opened. Inside pen 3, the crush “set like concrete”, he said. He was “screaming for my life, like everybody around me” and eventually passed out, then was pulled from the pen by police and taken to the gymnasium.

“Being inside that gym, at that point, was pretty hard,” McDermott said. “There were just rows and rows of people, just jeans and training shoes covered in blankets … they were just laid out in lines and I got put next to them.”

Crawford broke down when recounting that he had stood on somebody underneath him in the crush: “I do recall having to trample on somebody,” he said. “That was something I could do nothing about; my arms were pinned up against my chest, I was crushed on every side. Knowing somebody was underfoot and being unable to help them was one of the worst things.”

He said he had been pleading for help, and had himself been “used as a stepping stone” by people desperate for survival, until eventually he was pulled out and lost consciousness. He woke up to find a South Yorkshire police officer giving him first aid to bring him round. “He was saying: ‘Come on kidder, come on’, trying to revive me.”

Crawford was reunited with seven of his friends, but one member of their group, Alan Johnston, 29, remained missing. With the help of a local resident, they went to Sheffield’s Northern General hospital, then the Royal Hallamshire hospital, looking for Johnston. Eventually they returned to Hillsborough to see if he was at the gymnasium. Two men from the group went in, Crawford said. They were shown a large number of photographs and did not recognise Johnston. Then they were taken inside and shown some of the people who had died, and identified Johnston as one of them.

Duckenfield denies a criminal charge of gross negligence manslaughter relating to 95 of the people who were killed. Graham Mackrell, the former Sheffield Wednesday secretary and safety officer, has also pleaded not guilty, to two charges of breaching safety legislation.

The trial continues.