Ian Herbert
Mail Sport
The first of these four reports aimed to get to the bottom of the violence and hooliganism which rocked British football when European competition started last season. Reporting from the scenes of violence in the cold light of day and drawing on top level British football police contacts, the investigation was an attempt to get to the bottom of increasing levels of violence which had taken the game back to the 1970s. The second piece, published as Ian’s weekly column in the Daily Mail, exclusively revealed how, five years after his death, Cardiff City FC were taking their legal fight for reimbursement of the money they paid for young footballer Emiliano Sala to a commercial court in Nantes, the town from whose club they bought him. Ian often uses his column in the paper as a way of projecting new information, rather than offer general sports opinion. Most people had no idea that Cardiff were still looking for cash so long after the death of Sala in a plane crash and the column earned strong cut-through and new readership. The piece was picked up by other media and was one of Mail Online’s best performing articles in January. The third piece, written on the 35th anniversary of the Hillsborough Disaster, revealed that the Sheffield Wednesday football stadium – where 97 fans Liverpool died in April 1989 - was still not fit for purpose with poor stewarding, inadequate turnstiles and a problem tunnel. An earlier piece Ian had written on away fans being squashed and scared at the ground resulted in the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday being banned from attending games by the club’s owners and press team. This heightened his resolve to get to the bottom of the stadium’s failings. His report drew on safety documents he had obtained under Freedom of Information, which had taken months to arrive. By attending an away game in the notorious Leppings Lane away end, where Liverpool fans died, he was able to bring meaning to those FoI documents and expose the shocking state of Hillsborough. The finished submission was a 1,700 written piece, opening descriptively as a way of bringing readers into the heavier detail. There was strong reader engagement with this article.
The death of a West Bromwich Albion supporter at Hillsborough in late September highlighted the importance of having held Sheffield Wednesday to account. Based on interviews with the brother of the fan who died, and other witnesses to the incident, it was the first investigative piece on the death and had much follow-up. Ian has subsequently provided the supporter’s family with testimonies he obtained, which they will submit to the coroner presiding over the inquest into the supporter’s death. This is the fourth piece in our submission of Ian’s work.