by the great one » Mon Nov 01, 2004 12:13 am
Rewriting of events past and present hard to take Oct 29 2004
By Sam Johnstone Liverpool supporter, Daily Post
I'VE always known that football is full of hypocrisy, but the events on Tuesday night have taken it to new levels.
I'm not condoning the episode, but the blinkered views of the Millwall chairman and some of their supporters are pathetic.
According to Theo Paphitis (left) no Hillsborough chants came from the home supporters, but it was quite clear that they did chant some incredibly repugnant stuff.
Paphitis then went on to say that it was all Liverpool fans' fault, and that it was similar to Reds chanting about Munich to United supporters.
Can you believe it? On one hand he says that Millwall's reputation is all in the past and that it's unfair for the media to portray them as thugs, and yet on the other he's comparing the Hillsborough chants (which have now been confirmed by the obviously slightly hard of hearing chairman) to something no Liverpool supporter has done for at least 15 years.
So if he's going to drag up the past, why don't we? Mill-wall quite rightly had a bad reputation - there's no denying that. Similarly there's no denying the huge strides made by the club, its supporter organisations and the ordinary fan in changing their thuggish image. They've had the odd skirmish, but generally the club has made sure that the focus is on the football rather than the minority of idiots that gave them a bad name in the '80s.
A mate of mine is a Millwall supporter, and he was genuinely relishing the Reds' first visit to the New Den. When all hell broke loose, he sent me a shocked text. The message didn't say anything about the Liverpool supporters; the thrust was about how upset he was that a section of the crowd were goading the Reds' support with Hillsborough chants. He felt ashamed of his own fellow Lions. So how does Theo Paphitis justify that?
The reaction to the taunts was wrong, but the way Paphitis has tried to shift all the blame for the incident is just as wrong. We've put up with all sorts since 1985, with Hillsborough being the pinnacle. The most disgraceful thing about this whole incident is the rewriting of history in Tuesday's aftermath.
The new revisionism on Hillsborough has been breathtaking in it's audacity and sickness.
I'm very saddened by the whole episode, as I thought this kind of nonsense was gone forever. There are still morons out there with no idea of what it was like on the April 15 1989.
Oh, and by the way, we won and played quite well in parts.
''I know Mourinho likes to tell people that he is the European champion manager but he's not now. That belongs to Benitez. '' Jamie Carragher