A disaster waiting to happen

Stairway 13 where the tragedy took place

Football historian Bob Crampsey recalls the day an avoidable tragedy took the lives of 66 football supporters.

My recollections of the day of the Ibrox disaster are like many other people's I suppose - rather jumbled.

I had been at another game that day - I think at Firhill although I can't quite remember.

I got out to Crosshill on the south side of the city about six-ish and went down to the newsagent to get the sports papers - the Green Citizen and the Pink Times.

It was while standing in the shop that the possible scope of the disaster began to emerge.

The wonder is that it didn't happen more often and with an even greater casualty rating

  Bob Crampsey

People were coming in saying that three had died, then five had died.

We thought that this would be a relatively minor incident, but it quickly became clear that this was not the case.

There had been another incident on the same stairway - passage 13 - in 1961.

The two grounds that had the tremendously steep descent from the top of the terracing down to the ground were Hampden and Ibrox.

A similar type of thing was also liable to happen at Hampden because pre-war Hampden was the place you got the really massive crowds.

I remember having been at Hampden on several occasions where there were crowds of over 140,000.

Numb horror

If you imagine that that is at least 50,000 coming off the terraces at each end, and you see how steep the staircases were, the wonder is that it didn't happen more often and with an even greater casualty rating than you had.

The immediate impact was a kind of shock and numb horror, especially in Glasgow and the west of Scotland since the bulk of the victims came from there.

In the immediate aftermath, I think it concentrated minds and I think in the short term, relations between the two sets of fans were better.

I would like to be able to say that it brought about a great and obvious improvement in crowds at matches, but in fact that's not the case.

It made it absolutely imperative that the stadium was rebuilt

  Bob Crampsey

The disaster came about two-thirds of the way through Celtic's run of nine league titles in a row.

Leaving the disaster aside, had it not occurred, I think the normal passage of time was due to bring Rangers into a period of pre-eminence anyway.

As far as the club was concerned, it made it absolutely imperative that the stadium was rebuilt, and rebuilt quickly, almost from the foundations.

It was a dreadful period for the Rangers players, many of whom were heavily involved in going to funerals and visiting relatives and such like.

That would have been an enormous burden for anyone to sustain, even more so for what were basically young players and over the piece I think they did it very well.