It wasn't a clever thing to do there considering the situation.
Exeter 1999 Close Shave
It should have been their proudest day for seven years. Instead, Aldershot Town supporters who attended Saturday's FA Cup second round tie at Exeter have been left with bitter and frightening memories. Bitterness at being treated like second-class fans and alarm that they were only moments away from a tragedy of Hillsborough proportions at the start of the game.
As the exit gates on the away terrace bulged under the pressure of bodies and briefly gave way, men feared for their lives, while women and children were passed forward to avoid the crush. Elderly supporters wept in fright and shock as they realised how close they had come to serious injury, even death.
When the smoke from flares had dissipated into the Devon air and their side had lost what, by the, had become a meaningless game, they found the finger of guilt pointing their way. 'I believe we were a whisker away from a disaster,' said Barry Underwood, president of the Aldershot Supporters Club, who took his 11-year-old son Matthew onto the terrace. He was the club's safety representative during their Football League days.
'I was on one of the supporters club coaches which arrived outside St James' Park at 2.15pm. We joined the queue which was already about 70 yards long and four deep. There were people 10 or 20 yards further in who were pointing to stewards and waving their arms to indicate the place was full up and they shouldn't let any more fans in. At about 10 to three, the stewards saw sense and shut the turnstiles, but there was a lot of concern among the fans. When the teams ran out, people couldn't believe it because we assumed the kick-off would be delayed. Our worst fears were confirmed when the whistle went for the kick-off. That's when people outside panicked about having not gained entry. I could see from my position that the exit gate was being pushed from the outside and was buckling in. There was one person, maybe a steward, trying to hold them. The gates gave and about a dozen people burst through them. I thought it was curtains. I knew that there was a substantial queue of people still outside and if they had followed we would have been flattened. Thankfully the others didn't follow them in. The old people and children were terrified because they were being pushed. If someone had fallen they would have been trampled. Our reaction was to shout to the kids "Get on the pitch." I was concerned for my son and managed to get him onto the pitchside. Then somebody released a flare. It was obviously a stupid thing to do. It landed in the face of someone standing next to me and fell to the floor. It caused a lot of smoke which caused a lot more panic and confusion.
Once my son was on the pitch, I quickly got out and went with him. The terrace was packed. Once we got onto the pitch perimeter, we walked to the terracing at the far end, but my son didn't want to go in there. He was in tears. He'd had enough and said: "I'm not going in there." So we stood next to the seats at the end. The match was secondary by then. The first half passed in a blur. We knew in out hearts that football wasn't the main factor in the day. We had come very close to something very nasty. How were we to know when those 12 people burst through the exit gates that there weren't several hundred trying to follow them?' The supporters who spilled onto the pitchside pleaded with referee Clive Wilkes and Aldershot players to halt the game. Wilkes eventually led the players off and suspended the game. Aldershot chairman Karl Prentice had been able to see the situation developing from his seat in the grandstand and alerted home directors. Prentice said: 'The Exeter chairman said kick-off couldn't be delayed but agreed to take me down to the referee's room. The referee said he had received no report from the police or the safety officer, so he would start on time. We had told the Exter people on several occasions that we would be bringing a minimum of 1,500, so why were our supporters, who had arrived early, still queuing at 3 o'clock?'
The police reported no arrests in the ground and only three in Exeter city centre before the game.
The police say the queues outside the ground were behaved and arrived early - a different view from that of Exeter secretary Stuart Brailey, who blamed away fans for the chaos.
'A lot of Aldershot fans turned up in the last 15 minutes having been kicked out of pubs in the town. As soon as he blew the whistle, people outside decided they wanted to climb over the fences so they didn't miss anything. It was the influx of the last-minute fans that created a bottleneck behind the turnstiles and caused the problem. There was plenty of room for Aldershot supporters. The whole thing was blown out of proportion.'
If Brailey's words cause anger in Aldershot, think about the anxiety of Everton supporters - the next visitors to Exeter in the FA Cup. The football fans of Merseyside know all about tragedy.
