#7; A day of many emotions

Tomorrow is an important day. April 15th, to many, may stand out as an unexceptional day, just another day to pass us through Spring. April 15th is however one of the most important days in the world of English football. Sadly, this correlates with one of the saddest days in the history of English football; the Hillsborough Disaster. Lowering the scale of things, tomorrow also is the day Formula 1 in 2009 could be shaken once more when we find out whether the diffuser argument will 'decide the season', or so a certain Mr Fernando Alonso says. But hey, what does he know eh?! Last but not least, tomorrow is the big Sidepodcast meetup that I've really been looking forward to for the past few weeks! It would definitely be fair to say that April 15th, personally, well... it's a day of many emotions.

Going back to the Hillsborough Disaster, for those not in the know, let me do my best to explain. 15th April 1989, Liverpool vs Nottingham Forest in the FA Cup Semi Final at the Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield; over 700 people were inured and 96 individuals killed in a horrific crush involving 3,000 supporters in a stand that was purposely made to hold 1,600 at the most, and even then, safety issues meant that this amount was too much as it was. Whilst the match was playing, supporters struggled to breath, move, do anything but fight for their life until 5 minutes into this match police forced the referee to blow up and serious help was obviously needed. Any kind of footage, whether it be through photos or video footage, shows just how terrifying the situation was.

At the time I was merely less than a year old; I don't have any connections to the event at all and as you can imagine I was far too young to know then just what this disaster was. But as a football fan you learn about these events and how much they change the landscape of the sport you love; as previously stated it horrifies me to hear just how bad the conditions were. It horrifies me to hear that after the disaster the police blamed the fans and pathetic excuses such as 'drunken behavior' for the cause of this. It horrifies me just to hear of the stories from various sources watching the events unfold in front of their eyes, and seeing bodies laid out stricken across the pitch at Hillsborough. Whether you're a supporter of Liverpool or not, there is absolutely no denying that as a football fan, it is your duty to provide respect and rememberance for those souls that were stolen due to horrific safety procedures and a chain of bad decisions and bad events leading to what we have 20 years on.

I almost feel slightly guilty of myself explaining this to you as it's not something I'm related to or witnessed at the time but as I have said, I am a football fan, I love the sport, and as it will be to football fans all across the country this week, this was a horrible moment that we all have to remember and thankfully have learned from concerning safety within football stadiums in modern day football. Noone will forget the 96.

I do want to lift the mood however within this blog entry. Tomorrow itself is a big day for Formula 1 as the diffuser argument looming over the sport finally comes to a head as the FIA finally decide what is legal and not. As a Brawn fan, do I think what they, Toyota and Williams have created and designed as a legal car component? Absolutely! I've tried my hardest to keep up with this story and a lot of it has gone over my head at times with technical-side of things, but I honestly feel that any illegality of the rules is void. Brawn himself stated his intentions with the diffuser to the teams over a year ago with no real complaints, he went ahead and worked on this fantastic Brawn car as did Toyota and Williams respectively, and now that other teams see how their interpretation of the rules is different to theirs, the argument has grown. Even now as I speak these appealing teams are making their own version of the diffuser similar to the big three that they're taking to the FIA - a sign of panic in case the diffusers are actually legal, or a sign of defeat to the point they know what the outcome is going to be? I'll let you decide but all comments are totally welcome with your opinions.

Finally, the Sidepodcast meetup is finally here! I'll definitely be checking back in on here in a few days to let you know how it went but I am very excited - seeing London for the first time in years, meeting people I really do want to meet and generally just having an excellent day out away from where i live should be fantastic! So yeah, bring it on!