On saturday, March 6th, 1993, at Anfield football ground, a minute's silence was held for Tony Bland. The 22-year-old Liverpudlian had lain comatose in a vegetative state since the Hillsborough stadium disaster in April 1989. When he finally passed away, Liverpool football club wanted to pay respects.

Their old rivals, Manchester United, were visiting that day, and those commenting on the gesture were struck mostly by how depressing it was; the silence was fractured by sporadic insults issued by visiting fans and, subsequently, the game began in a spirit of nastiness and ill-will which quickly infected the crowd.

Nothing related to Hillsborough, it seemed, could ever lead to anything even remotely positive.

The Hillsborough disaster, when 95 Liverpool fans were crushed to death at the Leppings Lane end of the Sheffield stadium on April 15th, 1989, became the lightning rod for change after a century when soccer clubs and officials alike blithely ignored the seriousness of treating their football public contemptuously.

The awful events at the Heysel stadium in 1985 had coloured how football matches were policed at the time of Hillsborough. There was a perception that football crowds were essentially barbaric, which was borne out by the comments of UEFA president Jacques George, who in the weeks after Hillsborough accused the Liverpool fans of "behaving like beasts". He was later forced to apologise for the remarks, contending that they had been published out of context.

Hillsborough struck a chord with people in a way previous disasters hadn't, chiefly because the crush and distress of the fans was broadcast live on television. The most jarring, unfathomable aspect of that scene (the game was broadcast in both England and Ireland) was that, from a suffered for the sins of previous English football followers, the rioters who stormed Europe for most of a decade, those who behaved savagely and were treated accordingly. Hence, when it came to making decisions on crowd control in Sheffield, it is unlikely that Chief Superintendent David Duckenfield saw those present as anything other than heaving, primal masses.

This was the common Thatcherite view of the time. Undoubtedly, some police officials behaved appallingly after Hillsborough and, unforgivably, tried to shift the responsibility for their wilful errors onto the fans. Others, though, did everything they could. That 14 police officers received £1.2 million in compensation still rankles with Liverpool citizens, who remain disillusioned by the post-Hillsborough inquires and who have maintained trenchant campaigns to bring about suitable justice for their loved ones.

The bottom line about Hillsborough is that the deaths were needless and preventable. And it wasn't exactly unprecedented. The football fans of Britain, in particular, bear the scars of the negligence rife in the grounds at which they gathered. In 1946, 33 people were crushed to death at Burnden Park in Bolton when two barriers collapsed as 20,000 fans stuck outside the stadium were caught up in a stampede.

In Ibrox, Glasgow, in 1971, 64 people died in a similar crush at the end of the Old Firm derby on New Year's Day, the second time this century that tragedy befell the ground. In the 1901-02 season, 25 people died in Ibrox when a wooden stand partially collapsed.

In 1985, 52 people were burnt to death in the Valley Parade ground in Bradford when a 79-year-old wooden stand became a fireball.

That year, 1985, was the darkest year for stadia disasters. While the victims of Bradford and Hillsborough died because of arrogant mismanagement and an appalling lack of fundamental human concern, there was something more premeditated about what happened on the crumbling steps of the Heysel stadium, when 39 Juventus fans died after Liverpool fans charged and a wall toppled. Officials somehow saw fit to play the European Cup final even as they ferried bodies out of the ground.

The Taylor Report into Hillsborough led to sweeping changes in Britain's soccer grounds. Terraces became a thing of the past and the high metal fences which kept the fans caged were removed. In the decade since, football stadia have become safer and more pleasant.

The downside is that, when English football re-invented itself with the advent of the Premiership, working class values were swept away in the flood of new money and, with no cheap terrace space left, many traditional fans simply can no longer afford to see their local club. Thousands of lives were ruined by what happened at Hillsborough and other venues, and it would be comforting to think that the scale of the deaths would have, at the very least, led to fail-safe systems to ensure there could be no more needless carnage. Not so.

In May 1992, 15 fans died at a French cup semi-final when a stand collapsed. The same year, 40 people perished in a crush sparked by a bad refereeing decision at a soccer game in South Africa.

Soccer stadia have even featured in politically motivated killings: 35 people were massacred at an ANC meeting in the township of Sebokong, South Africa, in 1992, while in July of that year Serb forces shelled a soccer ground in Slavonski Brod where 3,000 unarmed Bosnian soldiers had taken refuge. Twelve were killed.

In years to come, it will be those dark moments which could have been avoided - Hillsborough, Heysel, Ibrox, even the shooting dead of Colombian soccer player Andres Escobar - which will make the future generations wonder how we could have got it so wrong so often.

1902: Ibrox

Rangers, having constructed a new stand at the cost of £20,000, were rewarded by being chosen to host the lucrative Scotland-England tie. Ibrox at the time held 80,000, but it is estimated that around 100,000 were inside the ground. Late-comers, seeing the eastern terrace full, made a dash for the new construction when the game started.

Six minutes later, seven rows of planking collapsed, creating a gap 30 yards wide. The game was stopped, but the extent of the disaster was unclear then and it restarted, finishing as a draw. It was later declared void and the game was re-fixed, with the proceeds going to the families of the bereaved.

1946: Bolton

March 6th in Bolton was a big football night; a sixth round FA Cup game between the Wanderers and Stoke, who trailed 2-0 going into the return leg. When the gates closed 65,000 punters had paid in, but some 20,000 were still milling about outside and a few managed to force their way in. Then two crash barriers collapsed as a crush began and three died in the stampede. The game was stopped and then restarted to avoid a panic.

1958: Munich air crash

On February 6th, a plane carrying the Manchester United team crashed while taking off from a snowbound Munich airport. Twenty-three people died, including eight of the players, essentially wiping out the famous Busby Babes.

1971: Ibrox

New Year's day at Ibrox and Celtic were up 1-0 with the last minutes ticking down. Convinced that there would be no change, thousands began to leave the ground and were filing down the staircases when a huge roar signalled a dramatic equaliser by Colin Stein. Hundreds tried to get back onto the terraces and were met with others still pouring out of the ground. As they met, the steel barriers buckled and literally hundreds of people began to fall. Most of the 66 victims died through suffocation.

1985: Bradford fire

Bradford were playing host to Lincoln City in an end-of-season game. About 4,000 people were in the main stand, celebrating the club's promotion to Division Two when the wooden structure was suddenly engulfed in flames, forcing fans to stream out onto the field, many of whom could be seen with clothes and hair alight. But for the fact that Bradford had no anti-hooligan fencing, the death toll might well have been higher.

It was thought a discarded cigarette ignited the years of litter which had gathered underneath the stand, creating an inferno. The blaze destroyed the stand in minutes and led to reviews of all wooden structures across Europe.

That same afternoon, Birmingham and Leeds fans clashed and a 12 ft high wall collapsed, killing a teenage fan.

1985: Heysel

A section of Liverpool fans arrived in Brussels for the European Cup final against Juventus intent on leaving their mark. Fans managed to get fireworks, bottles and cans into the ground and before the game Liverpool fans started to fire missiles at the Italian crowd. They were separated only by a wire fence.

Some Liverpool fans then charged the Italian section and caused a dividing wall to topple onto the Juve crowd. Thirty-nine were crushed to death. On May 31st, the FA withdrew all clubs from Europe for a year and on June 2nd, UEFA placed an indefinite ban on all English clubs.

1989: Hillsborough

Minutes before the FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest began, the Sheffield police took the decision to open the gates to the Leppings Lane end of the ground to try to ease the crowd congestion as people gathered outside at the turnstiles. Thousands surged in and a crush began from the back of the terrace, suffocating those towards the front of the pen.

Some people managed to climb over the fencing, some were lifted onto the upper stanchion by other fans. A dark tunnel leads onto the Lepping Lane terrace, and, unaware of what was happening at the front, more kept tumbling onto the central pens, increasing the pressure to fatal levels. There was enough room on both side pens to cater for the crowd. Ninety-five died, and fans used advertising boards to ferry away the casualties.

The response of the emergency services and access to the ground was severely criticised in later investigations. Just days after the tragedy, 14 Liverpool fans were sentenced to three-and-a-half years imprisonment for their part in the Heysel disaster.