Udec Corporation

UDEC: LIGHTING THE WAY TO SAFETY
Historical Moment: The 1971 Ibrox Football Stadium Disaster

THe 1971 Ibrox disaster is listed as one of the blackest days in Scottish football history attended by a crowd of 80,000 football fans. The tragedy resulted in the loss of 66 lives with another 145 other fans injured. Among the dead were 31 teenagers, and four schoolboy pals from the small town of Markinch in Fife, who never returned from the game alive.

The disaster occurred when crush barriers collapsed on the stairway adjacent to passageway 13 as thousands of fans were leaving the Ibrox Park stadium in Glasgow on Jan 2, 1977. The collapse created a smothering chain-reaction pile-up of the crowd. Bodies were found stacked as deep as six feet in the area.

It was at the end of a Rangers versus Celtic game and after 89 minutes of scoreless football, Celtic took a 1-0 lead and many Rangers supporters left the stadium. However, in the last seconds of stoppage time, Colin Stein scored an equalizer for Rangers.

An untrue report circulated for years that fan who were leaving the grounds, came back and met a wave of jubilant fans coming in the opposite direction, but that has been proven untrue. All were heading in the same direction when the crush took place halfway down Stairway 13.

The Ibrox disaster led to a huge redevelopment of Ibrox Park and is a testament to those who died. A plaque and a statue of the Rangers captain at the time of the disaster commemorates the scene where the tragedy occurred.

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