THEY were just fans at a football match. Spectators at a game, a banal everyday occurrence. They were there to support their team, Rangers, but they never came home. Instead on Stairway 13 at Ibrox Park, they met with crushing death and injury. Even 50 years later the sheer unfairness of it makes you weep – no one should die for being a football spectator, no one should die in such a manner.

Remember the 66. For the sake of our common humanity, remember the 66.

I told last week of how the disaster unfolded, and now I will deal with the aftermath.

It was the sight of the bodies laid out in lines on the turf of Ibrox Park that broke hearts all over Scotland and beyond. Only some grainy newspaper pictures survive to tell the tale, as there was no filming of what happened – a mercy, given what unfolded that cold, foggy evening in Glasgow.

Here in rows of corpses was the stark evidence of the Hell that had been Stairway 13 in the minutes after the end of the Old Firm match on January 2, 1971, 50 years ago.

No-one knew at first just how awful the events on Stairway 13 had been. The sheer scale of the disaster was not realised until late into the night.

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The backroom staff of Rangers and Celtic joined police and ambulance officers trying to resuscitate the victims of the infernal crush. All rivalries were set aside as Rangers manager Willie Waddell and his Celtic counterpart Jock Stein joined in the attempts to save the dying and the injured, Waddell saying he would never forget the sight of Celtic physio Bob Rooney giving the kiss of life to dead and dying fans. The tough former soldier and Rangers coach Jock Wallace acted as a stretcher bearer. Celtic’s assistant manager Sean Fallon, a former lifeguard, managed to revive one teenage boy. A few more were saved, but for 66 individuals nothing could be done.

Waddell recalled years later: “My God, it was hellish. There were bodies in the dressing rooms, in the gymnasium, and even in the laundry room. My own training staff and the Celtic training staff were working at the job of resuscitation, and we were all trying everything possible to bring breath back to those crushed limbs.”

Both sets of players were aware that something was going on, but Rangers were moved from the dressing room quickly while the Celtic squad only found out on the bus back to Parkhead about the deaths and injuries. Sports reporters became news reporters and were soon joined by other journalists from every newspaper around Scotland.

The Glasgow Herald’s Andrew Young was one of the first to go to the scene: “Eventually at the top of the terrace the true horror became apparent. Half a dozen lifeless forms were lying on the ground. Rescuers were tripping over the dead and injured as they struggled back with more victims.

“A wedge of emptiness had been created part of the way down the long steep flight of steps leading to the Copeland Road exit. In it were the twisted remains of the heavy steel division barriers. They had been mangled out of shape and pressed to the ground by the weight of the bodies.

“Lying all over the steps were scores of shoes that had been ripped off in the crush. Beyond, the steps were still dense with groaning people. There was almost complete shocked silence at this stage. Occasionally we would hear the sounds of coins falling from the victims’ pockets as they were lifted away.”

The journalist John Hodgman was doubly unlucky – he had been injured in the 1961 incident and nearly ten years later found himself at the top of Stairway 13 again, though this time he was forewarned and managed to secure himself to struts to the side of the exit.

He gave his all too close account in the Daily Express: “I clung frantically to a fence and as the seething mass crushed past me, I saw the first of the white handkerchiefs waved in terror.

“Further down some fans had fallen and the crowd was piling on top of them, but it was impossible to slow the crowd up; to let them know they were singing and dancing their way towards a horrible death.

“It was 10 minutes before the crush subsided. Ten minutes before the fans realised something was wrong and headed for other exits.

“I did what I could. With brave, weeping policemen and heroic ambulancemen I pounded the chests of those who showed small stirrings of life, in an effort to get their hearts moving.

“I pulled youngsters from the jumbled pile of bodies. We laid the dead aside and covered their faces. It was a frantic fight to save the living.

“Twice I leaned over a body and applied the kiss-of-life. Twice I failed. I think now if I’d only paid a bit more attention to first aid pamphlets and advertisements.

“I saw two policemen carry a small covered bundle to the top of the stairs and one of them wept openly as he repeated over and over: ‘It’s only a wee boy.

REFEREE Bill Anderson was summoned from his dressing room as it was thought he knew first aid. Years later he remembered what happened: “I said ‘Why? Has someone collapsed?’ and they said ‘No, there’s some kids out here that might be dead.’

“I rushed out and they took me into this room and to this day I wished I’d never gone in there.

READ MORE: I went down stairway 13 on the day of the Ibrox disaster

“See, when I saw these kids with broken arms, broken legs … holes in their bellies … they’d been crushed … I just felt sick, really sick.

“I thought I could have helped but I couldn’t help. They were gone. They were all dead … there was nothing that could be done for them.”

Ambulances raced to Ibrox from all over the west of Scotland. There was no “major incident” plan to deal with deaths on such a scale at a football match, but somehow Glasgow’s hospitals coped, with all sectors of the NHS stepping up to the mark as they always do.

All through that night, anxious relatives waited on their loved ones coming home. There were no mobile phones in those days, and the only news was broadcast on BBC radio and television and ITV.

By 8pm there were news bulletins, emphasising the growing death toll. The newspapers brought out special editions – the Sunday Mail’s banner headline was “66 KILLED IN IBROX DISASTER” and that was how everyone thought of the event. It had been a terrible disaster and as in all such events the human stories soon began to be told – and they were heartbreaking.

There had been one woman killed, Margaret Ferguson from Falkirk. She was just 18 and had made a doll for Rangers’ striker Colin Stein’s new baby which she gave to the player before Christmas. A fortnight later he was attending her funeral.

The youngest to die was nine-year-old Nigel Patrick Pickup from Liverpool. He had been spending New Year with relatives.

Teenager Matthew Reid lost his father, also Matthew. He told Tom English about it on the 40th anniversary: “My father was walking behind me with his hand on my shoulder because he was always very protective of me.

“The closer we got to the stairway, the crushing became more severe. Then we were swept off our feet and were carried along and around the corner to the top of the stair next to the side fence. A sudden surge took us down part of the stair. It was like being catapulted out of a door. I grabbed on to a handrail and held on for dear life. Then I heard this awful grinding noise like metal scaffolding going down and that was the handrails giving way.

“There was another surge and dad was swept away. As he went he cried, ‘Christ, my boy’. His last thought was for me. I never saw him again but I have heard him call out many times over the years.”

THE deaths which made the most impact nationally at the time were those of five boys from the Fife village of Markinch. The friends all attended Auchmuty High School in Glenrothes. The eldest Douglas Morrison was just 15. Three 14-year-olds – Ronald Paton, Mason Philip and Bryan Todd – also died. The youngest was 13-year-old Peter Easton. The village was devastated.

The days afterwards were a blur of funerals and church services, with both sides of the religious divide uniting in grief. Catholic Archbishop James Donald Scanlan presided over a Requiem Mass in St Andrew’s Cathedral in Glasgow which was attended by staff and players

from both clubs. Glasgow’s Lord Provost Donald Liddle set up a fund to help the relatives and it was inundated with donations from across the world.

Prime Minister Ted Heath ordered an inquiry which would eventually result in the Safety of Sports Grounds Act 1975. A fatal accident inquiry in Glasgow just a few weeks after the disaster heard that nearly all the 66 had died of compression asphyxia. The findings also confirmed that it was simply an accident, a crush caused by someone falling, and that no fans had been trying to get back inside after Colin Stein’s late equaliser – Stein himself was long tortured by the thought that he “caused” the disaster but that was in no way the case.

Rangers were eventually sued by Margaret Dougan, the widow of Charles from Clydebank. Sheriff J Irvine Smith awarded her £26,000 and he castigated the club for its failure to make Stairway 13 safe.

READ MORE: The Ibrox disaster: Stairway 13 and the changing face of football

Willie Waddell was determined to ensure nothing similar would ever happen to Rangers again. From 1978, Ibrox was entirely rebuilt and on completion in 1981 at a reported cost of £10 million, the new stadium was rated the best in Britain. Sadly other clubs did not copy Rangers and crowd crushing – exacerbated by police errors – caused the Hillsborough Disaster of 1989 in which 96 Liverpool fans died. Ibrox 1971 was no longer Briatin’s worst footballing disaster.

Here in no particular order is the list of the 66 names in full: Bryan Todd, Robert McAdam, Peter Wright, John Gardiner, Richard Bark, William Thomson Summerhill, George Adams, John Neill, James Trainer.

Richard Douglas Morrison, James Whyte Rae, David Douglas McGee, Robert Colquhoun Mulholland, David Ronald Paton, George McFarlane Irwin, Ian Frew, John Crawford, Brian Hutchison.

Duncan McIsaac McBrearty, Charles John Griffiths Livingstone, Adam Henderson, Richard McLeay, David Cummings Duff, David Fraser McPherson, Robert Lockerbie Rae, Robert Campbell Grant, John McNeil McLeay.

David Anderson, John Buchanan, John McInnes Semple, John Jeffrey, Robert Maxwell, Matthew Reid, Alexander McIntyre, Peter Gilchrist Farries, Thomas Melville.

John James McGovern, George Wilson, Robert Charles Cairns, Hugh McGregor Addie, James Yuille Mair, Margaret Oliver Ferguson, Robert Turner Carrigan, George Alexander Smith, Walter Robert Raeburn.

Andrew Jackson Lindsay, Charles Dougan, William Mason Philip, Russell Morgan, Peter Gordon Easton, George Crockett Findlay, Charles Stirling, Thomas Dickson, James Graham Gray.

Thomas McRobbie, Ian Scott Hunter, Nigel Patrick Pickup, Russell Malcolm, Alexander Paterson Orr, Thomas Walker Stirling, James William Sibbald, Frankie Dover, Walter Shields, Thomas Grant, William Duncan Shaw, Donald Robert Sutherland.

Their families still mourn them, and so should we all. Remember the 66, now and forever.