On April 15, 1989, 96 people died and 766 were injured in a crush at the Leppings Lane end of Hillsborough stadium, Sheffield, at the beginning of an English FA Cup semi-final match between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. The dead and injured were Liverpool supporters, excited, expectant and unsuspecting; simply hoping to watch their team book its place in yet another FA Cup final.
Twenty-two years on the scars have yet to heal. What happened that day changed football and changed Liverpool FC.
On April 15, 2011, Ian Ayre, Liverpool’s managing director is in his office but the anniversary of Hillsborough is never far from his mind. It’s never far from the mind of anybody at the club but Ayre has a particular story to tell.
As a young Royal Navy communications specialist he had a ticket for the game but shore leave was cancelled and he was confined to duties in Portsmouth, a couple of hundred miles away. His mother still has the unused ticket.
But Ayre and his family shared the pain and anxiety of so many others that day. His brother was at Hillsborough and it was six agonising hours before word got through that he was unscathed.
This year’s anniversary was as poignant as any. Kenny Dalglish, who managed the team on that fateful day, is back in charge. Dalglish has always been close to the fans and the compassion he demonstrated in the aftermath of Hillsborough ever since hascreated an unshakable bond between him and the supporters.
“April 15 is a difficult day here,” reflects Ayre. “I think Hillsborough helped give Liverpool its identity in the 21st century. Even in Asia, where I lived for many years, they remember it clearly. They saw what happened and the way that it brought people together, the way fans supported one another. That sort of support is part of the DNA of our city and our club and it is also a very big part of the culture of Asia.
“On the 20th anniversary of the disaster, 37,000 people turned up at Anfield and the event made the news all over the world. It showed people how special this club is and how special the people who support it are.”
Ayre was appointed managing director earlier this year after serving as commercial director since 2007. In many respects it could be seen as a homecoming for a man who grew up within a 15-minute walk of Anfield: “I grew up in Liverpool and it was a real Liverpool family - we had four houses in the same street. That said, most of the family were Evertonians.”
So it would be easy to assume that running the club he loves is a dream job. Easy, yes. But not entirely accurate.
“Of course it really is an amazing, unbelievable job but it really isn’t a job I dreamed of,” he says. “My dream had been to live and work in Asia, a part of the world I first fell in love with when I was based in Hong Kong with the navy. Even when I got into sport this wasn’t a particular target…but I can’t express how pleased I am to be here.”
There’s little doubt that Ayre’s rather more pleased to be part of the club under its new owners. He was appointed under the previous ownership of Hicks and Gillette with a brief to build revenues and stop the club falling further behind their Premier League peers Manchester United and Arsenal.
And while Ayre was successful in this remit, the reality appears to be that the success was achieved despite, rather than because, of the owners. For a time one of the greatest names in European football became a kind of sporting soap opera. Under Hicks and Gillette the club was days away from being dragged into administration by its main creditor, the Royal Bank of Scotland.
This was the denouement of a tragedy which had been shaping up for years. The owners had fallen out, there was no money to invest in the team and highly-publicised plans for a new stadium were divisive and premature. The fans turned against the owners in much the same way Manchester United’s had revolted against the Glazers…this was not The Liverpool Way.
For the full interview see the latest edition of SportBusiness International published May 1.
