LIFELONG Bradford City fans John Dewhirst and Andy Tyne don’t want to see the 30th anniversary of the fire become a display of emotional exhibitionism.

Though they hope for something simple, low-key and dignified, though they accept that younger fans may view the anniversary as a chance to demonstrate their feelings to the rest of the country.

Former City Gent editor and author John Dewhirst went to his first match at Valley Parade at the age of nine in 1972. He said: “A generation of older fans have been happy to see this as a low-key commemoration. Younger fans want something more demonstrative.

“Our generation represents a significant minority of fans; ten years from now it will be a smaller minority; but the legacy has to be passed on.”

Andy Tyne, born in 1961, was first taken to Valley Parade when he was five or six years old. He said: “Younger fans are used to seeing the kind of thing that has gone on after Hillsborough. My view is that Bradford is very different to Liverpool. We just remember the fire once a year and keep it to ourselves.

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“I would like to see the anniversary happen as it has every other year: no different to the 29th or any other year.”

Both of them were in different places on the Kop on the afternoon of the fire 30 years ago. Andy was nearest to the main stand and says he saw terrible things once the fire caught hold. I won’t recount what he told me.

John Dewhirst, attracted to the social history of football as much as to the experience of watching Bradford City, said back in 1985 most lower division Football League clubs had stadiums that would be unimaginable these days.

Of all the grounds he visited while following Bradford City away from home, he estimated that Valley Parade was in the bottom five for amenities.

"The older generation understand what the old stadium was like. Younger fans cannot comprehend what Valley Parade was like in 1985. The ground itself was as derelict as the urban environment. The concrete on the Kop broke up if you stamped on it

“The stand was erected in 1907 as a temporary measure. There were no dressing rooms or offices underneath. A plan to build a new cantilever stand was looked at in 1912/13 but didn’t happen.

“The only ground improvements at Valley Parade ten years before the fire were, fences were put on the Kop, one women’s toilet was installed, the pitch was widened and the Executive Club was built,” he added.

New floodlights had to be installed after high winds blew one set down and various walls were repaired before 1985, but the run-down general state of Valley Parade was commonplace round the country.

John said: “You didn’t put your best clothes on to go to a football match. None of the clubs in the lower divisions invested in ground facilities. That was the culture.

“Football as a whole had the chance to re-invent itself with club lotteries in the 1970s, but the lottery money went on players. At City it all went on wages. Income from the turnstiles was falling but wages were rising. That’s why the club collapsed in the summer of 1983.

Andy said: “The toilets on the Midland Road, which in those days was a shed with standing room only, were terrible. People used to urinate round the back of the stand. It was just accepted.

“Valley Parade was full of old guys with pipes smoking at the back of the stand. It never crossed my mind that there was the possibility of a disaster. That fire changed the whole outlook of risk at football matches.

“My father knew the main stand was derelict. City’s was one of the bottom five grounds I went to. Schools and railway stations were also like that. Thirty or more years ago there was an acceptance of public squalor and private affluence.”

In the 1970s gangs of football-following youths took to arranging fights inside and outside grounds. They wrecked trains too. The police resorted to more authoritarian policing methods. John Dewhirst remembers one trip to Walsall where City’s fans were obliged by West Midlands police to remove the laces from their footwear.

“In the 1980s the concern of police was crowd control, not crowd safety, because of football fans’ violence of the 1970s,” he added.

On August 27, 1980, for example, lowly City were due to play mighty Liverpool in the League Cup at Valley Parade. City won the game 1-0, but before the match rampaging Liverpool supporters ran through the city centre. Four of them snatched £1,000 from a branch of the Yorkshire Bank on North Parade; another 25 invaded the Ivegate branch of Freeman, Hardy and Willis.

The T&A reported the following day: "Police had been expecting trouble and were out in force. More officers were brought in as soon as the first hooligans struck and task force officers were quickly on the scene after the bank raid."

Crowd safety at football matches was a lesser priority because the authorities were “paranoid” about the possibility of crowd violence, John Dewhirst said. Nobody gave much thought to the possibility of a football stand burning down – especially not in the middle of a match watched by 11,000 spectators.

Both Andy Tyne and John Dewhirst fear that the anniversary of the fire could be sullied by Martin Fletcher’s assertion in his recently-published book, 56: The Story of the Bradford Fire, that Bradford City’s chairman Stafford Heginbotham deliberately caused the fire. Neither of them believe that.

Andy said: “This thing about Stafford soils the whole atmosphere. If it had been that much of an issue 30 years ago why wasn’t an accusation made then?

“I do voluntary work at Undercliffe Cemetery. There’s one part that overlooks Valley Parade. After Stafford died in 1995 his family got special dispensation to have him buried in that part. If he had been responsible for that fire would he have asked to be buried there?”