RIP John Motson - so many tributes today, but for me, Motty will always be the first one to call it right at Hillsborough. A 🧵
2/When I first started looking into the disaster in depth, I realised that the BBC archive was key to understanding what had happened.
3/I asked the bbc tape library to send me footage from the day of the disaster. I thought I’d get a bit of archive material. A box of tapes arrived.
4/When cameraman @robwood65 and I started going through them, we realised that we were watching recordings of all the individual pitchside cameras which were there to film the 1989 FA Cup semi final action for Grandstand and Match of the Day.
5/Instead, as disaster unfolded, they kept rolling. Long after the game was abandoned they captured the awful scenes on the terraces, and the fans’ heroic attempts to help, on the pitch.
6/Back to Motty, and one of the most incredible moments on the tapes.
7/Motty was at Hillsborough to commentate for Grandstand. He was sitting up on a gantry with a view of the Leppings Lane terraces below.
8/Before the match was due to begin, Motty was rehearsing links and talking to the Grandstand team over what’s known as ‘talkback’.
9/As Rob and I watched this tape we realised we were watching a recording which hadn’t been broadcast on the day. The tape had kept running, recording Motty’s off-air response to what he could see as the crush developed.
10/At one point he asks the camera operator to focus in on the central pens and then to show the much emptier side pens where there was still plenty of room.
11/As the camera pans across you can hear Motty correctly working out what was happening, and that it wasn’t crowd disorder.
12/Right there, in the moment, he called it right.
I think John Motson was one of the very first people to work out that something was wrong, and why.
13/It still gives me shivers when I watch that footage
14/The BBC tapes which I watched were later provided to the Hillsborough Inquests in Warrington, including Motty’s talkback.
They’ve played a vital evidential role in telling the full story of what happened.
And here it is. John Motson at #Hillsborough, off-air before the match started, and then on-air. Thanks to @robwood65 for looking back through the archive to find this.
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