Paul Dunderdale, a season ticket holder in Anfield’s Main Stand, watches a lot of Liverpool away games on the big screen at the Ship Hotel, New Brighton.
It was busy on Sunday evening, so he could barely hear the commentary. It was only later that he found out about developments at Kenilworth Road through a friend.
During the analysis of a 1-1 draw with Luton Town, Jamie Carragher, working for Sky Sports, highlighted how a sizeable section of home fans had chanted, “Always the victim, it’s never your fault.”
“Good on Carra for challenging it,” Dunderdale tells The Athletic. “Very few pundits do. They gloss over it and this has contributed towards the normalisation of the song. It makes tragedy seem acceptable.”
The tragedy Dunderdale is referring to is the worst stadium disaster in British history, and after grim occasions like Sunday, it is worth revisiting the facts of that horrific day to understand why those chants cut so deep with Liverpool fans.
In the 1989 FA Cup semi-final at Sheffield Wednesday’s Hillsborough stadium, 97 Liverpool supporters were crushed to death. One of the fatalities in Sheffield was Dunderdale’s friend, Graham Roberts, who was due to get married to his wife’s sister. Dunderdale’s brother, Andrew, only narrowly escaped a similar…
