[theo_luddite]

No I'm not saying that Art. You don't need to be penned in by fences to get crushed. At Heysel the fans were crushed against a wall that eventually collapsed. Leeds Road had fences but no pens. I got stuck against the barrier by the exit on a couple of occasions trying to leave the old Cowshed and it was no fun having to hang on until the crowd thinned out enough to prize myself off it.

There are plenty of instances of people being crushed in crowds at sports stadiums around the world and far more that have had nothing to do with sport but it's all pretty much caused by the same effect. Folk at the front of a crowd stuck against something that those behind them are trying to get towards and won't back off.

If that first gate hadn't been opened there could have been fatalities outside the ground. Stopping fans going through the middle tunnel, and even the fans using some common sense and going to either end of the terrace rather than straight down the middle would have helped. Unfortunately there wasn't much common sense around from either the police or some of the fans that day.