Luton Town Supporters’ Trust has delivered a strong message to anyone who was involved in tragedy chanting during the 1-1 Premier League with Liverpool.
In the match, Town were three injury-time minutes away from a famous victory against the Reds, in arguably their finest performance of the campaign.
However, with the Sky Sports television cameras inside Kenilworth Road, a section of the home crowd were recorded singing “Always the victims, it’s never your fault”, a song understood to be a jibe at the Hillsborough and Heysel tragedies in the 1980s where Liverpool and Juventus supporters lost their lives.
The Hatters have since launched an investigation into the incident, but in their Liverpool post-match podcast, Kevin Harper, the host of the Luton Town Supporters’ Trust Podcast, delivered an address at anyone involved, saying, “Our club doesn’t need you. Indeed football doesn’t need you.”
Before discussing the rest of the Liverpool draw, Harper said: “Before we come onto the positives, of which there were many, we must address the one negative on the evening. That is of course the chanting.
“With the eyes and ears of the world on us it was unfortunately heard coming from the Luton end a chant of ‘always the victim it’s never your fault’. I sit in the Kenilworth End and I heard it and it was picked up on by Jamie Carragher as part of the TV coverage.
“I’m not here to second guess who sung it or even why whoever sung it did sing it, but what I will say is that if you sung it in relation to Heysel and us subsequently not being able to compete in Europe or in relation to Hillsborough you are pretty sick and our club doesn’t need you. Indeed football doesn’t need you. We’re going to speak a lot about perspective in this episode and you seriously need to get some. Innocent people died in those incidents.
“Mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters went to a football match like the three of us on this podcast did yesterday. We returned home to our families. Those who died were not afforded the same privilege and to make fun of that in any form is completely and utterly wrong and unacceptable. I’ve been to Hillsborough many times since that fateful day and always feel uneasy about the place even though safety has improved a lot since then.
“Thankfully, many supporters that were there that day did return home to their loved ones but they still had to witness the horrific incidents first-hand. Neither they nor the relatives of those who lost their lives in those tragedies need to be reminded of them more than 30 years on.
“If you didn’t sing it with either tragedy in mind may I respectfully suggest that you look into the historical nature and context of anything that you do sing, not just because of who could be offended by what you sing, but also because tragedy chanting of any kind now brings with it a stadium ban and potential criminal charges and quite rightly so.
“It might have been the 20th century the last time the Town were playing many of these teams in the top flight but it is the 21st century now. Let’s leave the unsavoury chants firmly in the past.
“That sentiment is also extended to the ‘feed the scousers’ one. Again you might sing it as some warped banter but in the real world we live in a country where people, including those in our own town, rely on foodbanks every day. To ridicule poverty is unnecessary and wrong.
“We have so many great chants about our manager, our players and our club. We can make Kenilworth Road intimidating without the need to resort to such appalling chants.
“These are fantastic times to be following Luton. Don’t get yourself banned from doing it.”
1 Trackback / Pingback
Comments are closed.