JAMES LAWTON ON HATE

‘The Liverpool fans who shouted "Munich scum" at the Manchester United supporters who were being marched into Anfield between columns of Merseyside riot police were standing just a few yards from the main gates, where an eternal flame burns on the memorial stone to those who died at Hillsborough.

They seemed oblivious to the hateful irony, and when later some United fans shouted their insults to the memory of the Hillsborough dead there were more shouts of "Munich" from Liverpool ranks.

The left-hand corner of the main stand, from where Liverpool fans traded the most sickening taunts with the United contingent facing The Kop for the 90 minutes of what should have been an absorbing Cup tie, was a place where hatred was expressed in varying degrees of intensity, but its disfiguring presence was never absent.

Liverpool fans celebrated the crash which destroyed the cream of English football who just happened to play for Manchester United. The United riposte was gloating cries over the deaths of innocent Merseysiders. At one point there was a chant from the United fans of "There's only one Michael Shields." Shields is the Liverpool fan held in Bulgaria over an assault on a local barman. He maintains his innocence.

There would, you knew, be other claims at the end of this scabrous afternoon. The principal one was that the incessant hatred is simply a fact of football life; it is out there, it is unshakeable and anyone who still cares about the game, for all its diving and grabbing and general cheating, is obliged to live with it.

We had the fusillades of grievous, grotesque insult. We had the mockery of sport. We had the need for every high-earning pro to look at his responsibilities, to his employers and those decent supporters who have not been engulfed by the tides of hate.

Hours after the game riot wagons roared down Scotland Road. Mostly preventive action, no doubt, but it still brought more poison to an afternoon that should have been memorable for much better reasons. "Do we really want to kill off passion?" Rio Ferdinand asked (in The Sun). No, not passion, but the hatred borne by malignant lemmings.’