Book Review: From Where I Was Standing by Chris Rowland

No one more than Liverpool fans knows that the grief over losing someone you love at a football match never goes away. It might appear that it has quietened down but then all it takes is one image or word and all the emotions start flooding back.

It is for that reason why no one really likes to talk about what happened at Heysel. There seems to be a fear to mention it, an ingrained reluctance to re-open that chapter for fear that what is said might be seen as hurtful to those who lost family and friends in that tagedy.

It is that responsability that Chris Rowland has decided to shoulder in his book 'From Where I Was Standing: A Liverpool Supporter's View of the Heysel Stadium Tragedy'.

Inevitably, it isn't an easy book to read, just as it must have been a difficult one to write. The early chapters, those which are lighter and describe the fun of planning for a trip to a European Cup final are hard to take in because of the reader's knowledge of what lies ahead, something that the author was oblivious to at the time. But, they are just as necessary as the ones that describe what actually happened in the stadium because they help push home the fact that on that night, whatever innocence Liverpool fans had before was lost.

Rowland accepts that much of what happened in Heysel was due to the Liverpool fans and does not pull back from saying so. But at the same time he also mentions the shortcomings over which Liverpool couldn't do anything, the oversights and lack of preparation which UEFA and the authorities conveniently swept aside.

Given its subject it is unlikely that 'From Where I Was Standing' will be a best seller. Indeed, it had been due to be serialised by the Liverpool Echo but then Hillsborough came along and the project was shelved.

This makes the decision by Paul Tomkins to go ahead and publish it all the more courageous. The truth is that, for the library of Liverpool books to be complete there has to books even about dark chapters such as this one. Certainly deserves to be a must read book for all Liverpool fans, up there along with Hillsborough: The Truth.