I am an English teacher by trade, words are my everyday tools, they are meant to come easy to me. At times they don’t.
Now is one of those times.
I wanted to write about the 15th anniversary of that tragic night in Istanbul in 2000. I wanted to look at the 15th anniversary of those sad, tragic events when two Leeds United fans paid with their lives doing the one thing that they loved, watching football. Watching Leeds United.
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t write about it. The words weren’t there. It’s strange, I didn’t know how to approach it, what direction to take, what words to use. Writing memorial pieces is always difficult, you just know that whatever words that you use are not, ever, going to be enough. Whatever direction or focus that you choose, it is never going to be direct enough or it will be too direct. I knew what I didn’t want to do; I did not, ever, want to go over the events of that night.
Two normal, family men, Christopher Loftus and Kevin Speight went to watch a game of football. The events of what happened that night are documented elsewhere, I’ll not mention them here. What I chose to focus on was the reaction as the ‘Leeds United Family’ came together to pay their respects to two of their own. As the saying goes between Leeds fans, like a uniting mantra, no matter what city we hail from, whatever town we were born in…”All Leeds aren’t we?”
It is at times like this, anniversaries of tragic events that rivalry, hell even football loses its significance. It’s remembering that is important, that collective thought where all become one. Two boys who died in the Bradford City fire went to the same middle school that I did, twins, two years younger than I was at the time. I watched the events of Heysel and Hillsbrough unfold before my eyes on television. Football just has a special way of bringing people together in times of hurt. Only a few months ago, Sheffield United ‘super-fan’ David ‘Shred’ Spencer sadly lost his life and the support and recognition of this one special man through football was awe inspiring. I didn’t know Christopher Loftus or Kevin Speight but that’s not important. What was important was how people gelled together and remembered, commemorated, preserved the memory of each of them.
The 15th anniversary of their passing was commemorated at Elland Road during the recent Blackburn game played on Saturday 4th April 2015. Fans around Elland Road were handed out placards, organised by a Leeds United fan, with the pictures of both men displayed and the achingly poignant message ‘Never forgotten, always in our hearts’. Fans were asked to hold them up during the minute’s silence, en masse they duly did so; a moment of collective remembrance and solidarity.
As with all poignant moments, moments of deep sadness, moments of pure reflection, there is an almighty quite and profound depth of feeling. The thoughts of the many focused on one event, that one significant thing that has you held in its moment. That’s what makes anniversaries and events such as this all the more powerful and moving. It is a whole group of people coming together with one sombre moment of quiet reflection, a common purpose to remember and an emotional link that joins them. You don’t have to have known the two in question to feel their loss, it’s that deep and common consciousness that you share. And that’s the thing, it wasn’t just Leeds fans commemorating this event, it drew support from elsewhere in the football family. From far and wide, near and far messages from other teams flooded in in support, adding to that act of collective remembrance. Messages from eternal rivals, from Manchester United fans, expressed sorrow and feelings of solidarity. Hull, Wolverhampton, Bradford City, others; the messages were consistent- they expressed sorrow, they emphasised sympathy, they stressed a feeling of togetherness. None more so and more vividly displayed by fans of Ajax of Amsterdam.
This banner was displayed before the game with Utrecht and was later draped over the barrier dividing the lower and upper tiers in the stands. This one banner, yet resonating the very same sentiment being commemorated those 100s of miles away in Leeds, at Elland Road and felt by thousands both at the game and in the wider football community. The Ajax fans furthered hammered home the message with a second set of banners unfurled in the ground itself.
It’s at times like this, sad and emotional times, times of profound emotionand collective recollection that such coming together of fans represents what is the very best of football coming together to defeat all that is wrong about football. It is actions such as what happened throughout the football community, football family if you will, in commemorating Chris Loftus and Kevin Speight that turns football that little bit more into the ‘Beauriful Game’ that Chris and Kev fell in love with.
I’d like to add my personal condolences to those already expressed.
