fascinatinghorror

The Burnden Park Disaster

Added 2023-03-14 11:15:01 +0000 UTC

Whenever a disaster takes place at a sporting or music event, there are always a lot of side stories and tangents to follow up on. Here are two of them from this story…

Football during the war

It was extremely interesting reading about how football changed during the years of World War II. In the UK football is a big part of the culture, and so even during a global conflict it didn’t go away altogether… although it certainly was impacted.

Many professional players joined up to fight abroad, and so weren’t available for matches. Some clubs were able to maintain enough players to continue, but official competitions were cancelled, so they mainly participated in friendly games with other local teams (there were also travel restrictions, which meant that nobody could travel very far in order to play).

Many spectators stayed away from games, fearing the consequences of a packed stadium being hit by a German bomb. All the same, the games that did take place weren’t short of spectators – with some attended by as many as 40,000 people. It was controversial, of course, but the government decided to allow it, as it was good for morale.

Luckily, as far as I can tell, a packed football stadium never was hit by a bomb… but let me know if you know different!

The story of Phyllis Robb

While I was researching this story, I came across this photograph several times:

A little digging revealed that this is, in fact, a woman named Phyllis Robb, who survived the disaster after being passed to safety over the heads of the crowd. In an interview before her passing in 2017, she recalled being lifted onto the shoulders of those around her as the crowd fell forward. She was relieved to get out of the crush in this way, but was left quite worried about her father, who remained stuck in the crowd.

Mrs Robb remained a Bolton Wanderers fan all her life. When she did pass away in 2017, her ashes were scattered at their new grounds, and her death was reported by the club as well as many local news outlets. The club chaplain referred to her as, “part and parcel of the history of Bolton Wanderers.”