11 May 1985
Valley Parade, Bradford
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The sun was high and the air smelled of chips and cut grass when Tommy Fothergill kissed his wife Jean goodbye that morning. She was pregnant with their first and he rested a hand on her stomach before he left. “Tell the lad his dad is bringing the title home,” he joked, knotting the claret-and-amber scarf she’d bought around his neck.
He met Jim and little Eddie outside the Manningham pub at eleven. Three pints, the usual songs on the bus, then the slow river of bodies pouring down Midland Road. Tommy had stood in the same spot in Block 5 for fifteen seasons, right behind the goal, close enough to smell the liniment off the players when they warmed up. Lincoln City, nothing to play for, but Bradford needed a point. The place was humming.
Kick-off. The roar. Two-nil inside twenty minutes. Cigars were lit and grown men hugged strangers. Half-time came and went. Tommy went down for a pie and came back wiping gravy from his chin and joked that his baby would be born craving Henderson’s relish.
Then someone shouted about smoke.
At first it was just a wisp curling from beneath the seats, the sort you’d see from a dropped fag-end any other week. A copper laughed it off. Then the wisp thickened, turned orange at the edges. The wooden floorboards, dry as tinder after years of spilled beer and cigarette ash, caught in seconds. Flames raced along the roof like never seen before.
The stand filled with black. Heat slapped faces. People turned, confused, then terrified. Tommy saw a child lifted high by his father, saw an old boy in a flat cap frozen, staring at the fire as if he couldn’t believe it was real. The exit gates at the back were locked; the crush began.
Tommy grabbed the sleeve of the lad next to him who must’ve barely been sixteen and he was shaking. “This way, son.” He shoved forward using his shoulders the way he’d done in rugby scrums as a younger man. Coats caught alight, the screams rising into one long animal howl. Someone fell and the surge trampled straight over them. Tommy felt hands clawing at his back, felt his own shirt beginning to smoulder.
He reached the side wall where a panel had buckled. Fresh air hit his face like cold water. He hauled the boy through first, then Big Jim, then reached back for whoever he could. Arms, collars, hair; he dragged them out until his own skin blistered and his lungs burned raw. Eddie never appeared.
Outside, the world was sirens and stretchers. Tommy collapsed on the pitch, shirt half burned away, arms red and weeping. A paramedic wrapped him in a blanket while he stared at the stand collapsing in on itself, a black skeleton against the blue May sky. Someone said fifty-six. Someone else said more.
They kept him in St Luke’s for three weeks. Skin grafts, nightmares, the smell of melted plastic that never left his nose. When they finally let him out, he walked straight to the maternity ward with bandages still on his arms and placed the singed scarf that had survived across the cot of his newborn son.
“He’s seen fire,” Tommy whispered to the tiny, sleeping face. “Now let him see something better.”
Valley Parade, Bradford
The sun was high and the air smelled of chips and cut grass when Tommy Fothergill kissed his wife Jean goodbye that morning. She was pregnant with their first and he rested a hand on her stomach before he left. “Tell the lad his dad is bringing the title home,” he joked, knotting the claret-and-amber scarf she’d bought around his neck.
He met Jim and little Eddie outside the Manningham pub at eleven. Three pints, the usual songs on the bus, then the slow river of bodies pouring down Midland Road. Tommy had stood in the same spot in Block 5 for fifteen seasons, right behind the goal, close enough to smell the liniment off the players when they warmed up. Lincoln City, nothing to play for, but Bradford needed a point. The place was humming.
Kick-off. The roar. Two-nil inside twenty minutes. Cigars were lit and grown men hugged strangers. Half-time came and went. Tommy went down for a pie and came back wiping gravy from his chin and joked that his baby would be born craving Henderson’s relish.
Then someone shouted about smoke.
At first it was just a wisp curling from beneath the seats, the sort you’d see from a dropped fag-end any other week. A copper laughed it off. Then the wisp thickened, turned orange at the edges. The wooden floorboards, dry as tinder after years of spilled beer and cigarette ash, caught in seconds. Flames raced along the roof like never seen before.
The stand filled with black. Heat slapped faces. People turned, confused, then terrified. Tommy saw a child lifted high by his father, saw an old boy in a flat cap frozen, staring at the fire as if he couldn’t believe it was real. The exit gates at the back were locked; the crush began.
Tommy grabbed the sleeve of the lad next to him who must’ve barely been sixteen and he was shaking. “This way, son.” He shoved forward using his shoulders the way he’d done in rugby scrums as a younger man. Coats caught alight, the screams rising into one long animal howl. Someone fell and the surge trampled straight over them. Tommy felt hands clawing at his back, felt his own shirt beginning to smoulder.
He reached the side wall where a panel had buckled. Fresh air hit his face like cold water. He hauled the boy through first, then Big Jim, then reached back for whoever he could. Arms, collars, hair; he dragged them out until his own skin blistered and his lungs burned raw. Eddie never appeared.
Outside, the world was sirens and stretchers. Tommy collapsed on the pitch, shirt half burned away, arms red and weeping. A paramedic wrapped him in a blanket while he stared at the stand collapsing in on itself, a black skeleton against the blue May sky. Someone said fifty-six. Someone else said more.
They kept him in St Luke’s for three weeks. Skin grafts, nightmares, the smell of melted plastic that never left his nose. When they finally let him out, he walked straight to the maternity ward with bandages still on his arms and placed the singed scarf that had survived across the cot of his newborn son.
“He’s seen fire,” Tommy whispered to the tiny, sleeping face. “Now let him see something better.”
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