IT was just another day at the fitba’. Until it wasn’t. My remembrance of the awful events of January 2, 1971, are forgivably slight but chillingly sombre.

I was at the match. But at the opposite end of the stadium from where 66 souls perished in what was known as the Copland Road terracing or “Rangers End” to those of us of a Celtic persuasion who assembled behind the other goal.

Two late goals – a Celtic opener and then a Rangers equaliser – provided a typically tumultuous finish. There was frustration, familiar to those who have watched their side conceded a late goal, as I accompanied my mates in a circuitous route through the south side to Victoria Road where the red 180 or 181 bus would take us back to Busby.

The walk was completed to a soundtrack of sirens with the darkness of a Glasgow January illuminated incessantly by the flashing lights of emergency vehicles. We were mildly surprised by the furore but believed that there must have been severe, violent clashes outside the stadium.

We arrived home to the news of an awful disaster. This was the time of no mobile phones, no social media, no Ceefax, no rolling news channels. The despatches from Ibrox were, at first, bad. They were to become dreadful.

I was 15. The rest of that day – and much of what came before – is lost in a fog. The significance and profound sadness of that tragedy remains with me to this day. It is a deep bruise. It still responds to the prodding finger of remembrance. It is, more grievously, a still bleeding wound to those who lost their loved ones on a stairway in Glasgow.

The events of 1971 have been the subject of an inquiry, a civil action, and have been revisited by documentaries and articles ever since. This 50th anniversary has, inevitably, prompted more comment and analysis.

However, the events of that January 2 remain deeply personal to me, though they may have a wider resonance. There are two thoughts that spring to mind when the disaster is mentioned in conversation or surfaces in the media. The first is profoundly individual, even selfish. It is: it could have been me.

The modern fan may believe this to be melodramatic. My contemporaries – whatever team they support – will surely nod in agreement. Every fan of that era has a story of how a day at the fitba’ threatened to be their last day at the fitba’.

There was a theory – dismissed by the inquiry – that the Ibrox disaster ensued after some fans turned back from the stairway to go to the terracing in the wake of Colin Stein’s equaliser. Those of us who stood in vast terraces with tens of thousand of other fans and then left down crudely paved slopes with a pushing, swaying mass of humanity knew that the explanation would be simpler.

I was spared the horror of Stairway 13. But I – and the mass of fans of that era – experienced the breath-taking fear of being crushed in a crowd that seemed to have an inexorable need to plunge downwards towards the pitch or to lurch with awful spasms towards an exit.

Less than a year before – at the European Cup semi-final between Celtic and Leeds United at Hampden on April 15, 1970 – the attendance was recorded as 135,805. Myth and legends insist it was more. There have been persistent tales of the gates being knocked down at the uncovered terracing, traditionally known as the Celtic End. I was one of the 135,805. I was one of the undefined mass. At 14, I was tall for my age but spent most of the match off my feet, a piece of floating humanity on the tide of the terrace. I was swept out the ground as if by the power of a giant hose. I was once at the top of a stairway. What seemed like mere seconds later, I was squeezed though an open gate and deposited – safe but shaken – on to a south side street.

I have other cautionary tales: the traditionally dangerous entrance to Tynecastle, the steep steps at Tannadice, the mayhem on the terraces at Celtic Park, particularly on European nights.

Much of the blame for these recurring invitations to disaster has been ascribed to fans. But this misses the point, wilfully so. Yes, the mass could react spontaneously and dangerously. Yes, there was a culture of drinking. But, more importantly, there was also a culture of general indifference to safety. This was held by the highest authorities.

IT took the Ibrox disaster to awaken the wider world to the realities of what could occur when something went awfully wrong inside stadiums. Ibrox of 1971 does not stand alone. There was the subsequent Luzhniki disaster in Moscow in 1982 when more than 300 died. There was Heysel in 1985, there was Hillsborough in 1989. There have been others.

This all leads to the second, personal impact of Ibrox 1971. Slowly but inevitably – and certainly properly – the experience of attending a match changed. I still cannot explain why I continued to go to big matches after Ibrox 1971. The recklessness of youth? The belief that I was somehow immune from danger? The daft presumption that it could not happen again? Who knows?

But I went back to big grounds on big days, including Ibrox. There was a moment of revelation in April 1984. A taxi dumped me and the mates outside the stadium after a spell when my attendance at football had been restricted by working on a Saturday.

Entrance was easy and safe. We came up the stairs to view an all-seated stadium. I ventured to the toilets where there were not only urinals but hot and cold running water. Soap. Basins. I felt like an Amazonian Indian beholding a passing airplane for the first time and shrinking before the power civilisation.

It was a tangible, irrefutable sign that football had become safer, sanitised. It was an indication, too, that I had changed utterly.

I later travelled the world as a sports writer. I now travel the world as a privileged fan. I indulge my obsession regularly, particularly in Germany. The scars of the olden days remain, however.

There has been a move to promote standing on terraces. A phalanx of experts testifies to its inherent safety.

YET I stood in February in the Weser Stadion in Bremen among a host of Borussia Dortmund fans for a Bundesliga match that accommodates a standing area. There was a chaotic push to enter before kick-off. It was more comfortable inside but I instinctively moved to the edges of the crowd.

The lesson of Ibrox and other stadiums of the 1960s and 1970s was still hard-wired into my nervous system. The legacy of disaster, though, is that it ultimately makes the world a safer place. Or it should.

Football is different, safer because of Ibrox 1971. But the price was too high. The lessons should have been learned without the desperate prompting of mass death.

There is no consolation, too, for those who died or those relatives and friends who have been condemned to suffer for the subsequent half a century.