Roy Hodgson intends to visit Bradford City this weekend after informing the Football Association he wants a Saturday off watching Premier League football so he can pay tribute to the 56 people who died in the fire at Valley Parade in 1985.
Greg Dyke, the FA’s chairman, was already booked in to watch the League One club and plans are now being made for the England manager to join him.
Bradford’s game against Barnsley will be their last home match of the season and that is why the FA has designated this weekend as the appropriate time to mark the 30th anniversary of the fire. Every match in England, down to county FA level, will be preceded by a minute’s silence.
The FA is also helping Bradford to raise money for the city’s burns unit and invited a delegation from the club, including survivors from the fire and some of the heroes who were commended for their bravery, to be its guests at the FA Cup semi-final between Aston Villa and Liverpool at Wembley. There were also representatives from Lincoln City, Bradford’s opponents on the final day of the 1984-85 season when a timber stand, already identified as a potential deathtrap, went up in flames.
Dyke will also attend the memorial service on the actual anniversary, 11 May, along with other FA officials and has been following the story about the disaster. Dyke intends to read Martin Fletcher’s book ‘56: The Story of the Bradford Fire’ in full and then it is possible he will meet the author, whose brother, father, uncle and grandfather all died.
Fletcher, then 12, managed to escape and has spent the past 15 years investigating the blaze. He revealed there had been at least eight previous fires, with huge payouts, at business premises owned by, or connected to, the then chairman, Stafford Heginbotham, and asked why the “mountain of coincidence” was never part of the inquiry.
