The conviction of Graham Mackrell, the Sheffield Wednesday club secretary and safety officer for its Hillsborough ground on 15 April 1989, is the first criminal or disciplinary finding against anybody in relation to the deaths of 96 people at the FA Cup semi-final that day between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest.

Mackrell, a qualified accountant who began his rise in football as the administrative secretary of his local club Bournemouth in 1974, appears never to have suffered a career problem over the 30 years since he was the safety officer of Hillsborough.

Interviewed in 2004, Mackrell said of the bereaved families’ ongoing campaign for justice: “What do people want? … It’s easy to say they want a head on a stick but they weren’t ever going to get it, so where does it go?”

Now, 15 years later, almost exactly 30 years since the sunny spring day in Sheffield when 54,000 people arrived for a grand football occasion, Mackrell has been found guilty of failing in his duty to keep supporters safe. The charge – one of three before the Crown Prosecution Service dropped two others – accused Mackrell of not taking reasonable care for the safety of 10,100 people with tickets to support Liverpool on the standing Leppings Lane terrace, due to allocating only seven turnstiles to them. Just 23 turnstiles were available for all 24,000 Liverpool supporters, and as the jury saw repeatedly played on the screens in the Preston courtroom, a dreadful “compacted crush” built up as the turnstiles were insufficient to allow people entry.

Play Video 4:31 'No comment': Graham Mackrell questioned over Hillsborough disaster in 2017 – video

Mackrell did not give evidence at the trial, and replied: “No comment,” to all questions from the new police investigation, Operation Resolve, whose officers interviewed him on 19 April 2017. In his defence, led by Jason Beer QC, Mackrell argued that he was not even responsible for the turnstile arrangements – despite having responsibility for all the club’s business and administrative affairs according to his contract of employment, which was shown to the jury in the trial.

Beer argued that although the position of a football ground safety officer was new – it was introduced after the 1985 Bradford City fire disaster, which killed 56 people – Mackrell did not lack diligence when he took on those duties as part of his secretary role. Testimonies were presented from a roll call of senior administrative football men who praised Mackrell’s professionalism, including Howard Wilkinson, the chair of the League Managers Association, where Mackrell has worked since 2009. Currently, the LMA says, his role involves handling its relationship with stakeholders, and its “integrity programme” for members, covering anti-doping, diversity and betting issues.

Mackrell joined Sheffield Wednesday in 1986, after a seven-year stint at Bournemouth followed by a move to Luton Town. The club was then in the old First Division, the forerunner of the Premier League. Its ambitions for football status led it to reapply for FA Cup semi-finals to be played at Hillsborough from 1987; the ground had not been chosen since a crush on the Leppings Lane terrace led to 200 Tottenham Hotspur supporters suffering injuries at the 1981 semi-final against Wolverhampton Wanderers.

Hillsborough was selected for the 1987 semi-final between Leeds United and Coventry City, then in 1988 for Liverpool against Nottingham Forest, the same two clubs that played in the 1989 match that led to disaster. After the 96 people were killed in the lethal crush on the terrace’s central “pens”, Mackrell did not resign, and said he had never considered doing so. He stayed at Sheffield Wednesday until 1999, through a major venture capital investment in 1997, then left to become the chief executive of West Ham United.

Six months later he resigned, after West Ham fielded a substitute for eight minutes in a League Cup tie who was ineligible to play. The club had been assured the player was eligible, Mackrell said at the time, but he acknowledged in a public statement that he was ultimately responsible for football administration.



“I thought the best thing was to tender my resignation to the board,” he said.

In 1996, the Football Association used Hillsborough as one of the grounds for the “Euro 96” European Championship tournament and appointed Mackrell as a venue director. He also worked for European football’s governing body, Uefa. After Mackrell was charged in June 2017, the LMA told the Guardian that he had stepped down as a director but was retained as an employee of the organisation, which represents professional football managers and coaches in the England team setup, Premier League and EFL.

The CPS accepted that Mackrell was not responsible in 1989 for Hillsborough’s Leppings Lane terrace being a deathtrap, in multiple breaches of the Home Office “green guide” to safety. Mackrell was entitled to rely on the club’s contracted engineers, Eastwood and partners, which made these errors, the trial heard. Operation Resolve explained in June 2017 that the 1989 firm no longer existed, so no charges could be brought against it. Beer said the senior partner, Dr Wilfred Eastwood, might have been charged if he were still alive; but Eastwood was never charged at the time, nor was anybody else.



When it charged Mackrell in June 2017, the CPS said it believed there was sufficient evidence to charge Sheffield Wednesday, but the 1989 company no longer existed. This explanation – that Sheffield Wednesday, which has been playing professional football at its Hillsborough home continuously for 120 years, cannot be held accountable due to corporate restructurings – has baffled bereaved families.

The CPS dropped two of three original charges against Mackrell, leaving just one: that the number of Leppings Lane turnstiles was too few. Richard Matthews QC, for the CPS, showed the jury the “green guide” provision that a working maximum for a turnstile was 750 people per hour; the seven turnstiles needed to admit 1,443 each for 10,100 people to get through. Beer argued they could do that over a two- or three-hour period, but Matthews argued most supporters would arrive in the hour before a kick-off.

Mackrell is due to be sentenced on 13 May; the offence is punishable by a fine with no statutory limit.



As part of the defence case, Beer took several FA and other witnesses through how prestigious, safe and modern Hillsborough was considered in 1989. The contrast was glaringly apparent with the reality, shown repeatedly in photographs: the squalid Leppings Lane end, the vile pens. Nobody testifying to the ground’s prestige was asked if they had actually watched a match from the pens.



Some who had supported Liverpool there at the 1988 semi-final knew different. Barry Devonside, whose 18-year-old son Christopher was killed in 1989, told the trial he had been in the pens the previous year and experienced a terrible crush. When bereaved families gave personal statements at the 2014-16 inquests, the family of the brothers Christopher and Kevin Traynor, 26 and 16 respectively when they were killed in the crush, recalled Kevin’s reaction when Hillsborough was announced as the venue in 1989.



“Oh no,” he had said, “not that ground again.”



