21/08/2026
When John Barnes walked off the pitch at Hillsborough on the 15th of April 1989, he still did not understand what had happened behind the goal.
Liverpool’s FA Cup semi-final against Nottingham Forest had been stopped after six minutes.
Barnes had seen supporters coming onto the pitch and initially thought people had just been injured.
It was only when he reached the players’ lounge and saw the television that the scale of it became clear.
“There’s been a tragedy at Hillsborough.”
“There are many dead.”
The room went silent.
Barnes travelled back to Liverpool on the team coach with his wife beside him.
"People wept all the way home."
"All the wives were crying. I was crying. Kenny was crying."
Barnes could not stop thinking about the supporters who had travelled to watch Liverpool that afternoon.
"Those Liverpool fans went to Hillsborough to watch us."
"And there we were, stepping on to a luxury coach to go home, and they were being laid out in a temporary morgue."
Two days later, the Liverpool players travelled back to Sheffield.
They went into the hospitals and found rows of supporters still lying unconscious.
At first, none of the players really knew what to say.
One father approached Barnes.
“You are my son’s favourite player.”
“Please come and talk to him.”
So Barnes sat beside the bed and started speaking.
“It’s John Barnes here.”
“I’m sorry it happened.”
“Keep fighting. I know you can pull through.”
He held supporters’ hands and talked about Liverpool, football and anything else he could think of.
For Barnes, those few hours changed the way he looked at everything that came afterwards.
The families of those who had died started arriving at Anfield.
Some would sit with the players and talk about the person they had lost.
“This is the only place we are happy.”
And soon the funerals began.
Barnes had never been to one before Hillsborough.
Liverpool tried to make sure at least two players attended every funeral, and families could ask for particular players if they wanted them there.
Barnes was requested regularly.
He attended eight.
He drove to Waterloo, Bromsgrove, London and wherever else Liverpool asked him to go.
The first one was for Gary Church.
Barnes went with Kenny Dalglish, Gary Ablett, John Aldridge and Ray Houghton.
It did not get any easier after that.
“The last funeral I went to was as harrowing as the first.”
“I didn’t get used to the grieving.”
At each one, Barnes found himself sitting amongst families he barely knew, listening to parents crying as they buried someone who had gone to Sheffield simply to watch Liverpool play.
And one thought kept coming back to him.
“The child in that coffin had come to watch me.”
England were due to play Albania at Wembley on the 26th of April.
The match fell on the same day as another funeral.
Barnes was physically fit to play and felt mentally capable of playing as well.
But he withdrew from the England team.
“People wrote that I was not in a fit-state emotionally to focus on an international.”
“That was rubbish.”
“If there hadn’t been a funeral on that day, I would have played.”
“The funeral was far more important than an England match.”
For months afterwards, every funeral affected him in the same way.
He would go home, climb into bed beside his eldest son Jamie and hold him just to hear him breathing.
“For months after Hillsborough, I couldn’t bear to be apart from my two sons.”
Football had always mattered to John Barnes.
After Hillsborough, he knew exactly where it belonged.
“Football is a game.”
“How can it be more important than life itself?”
Years later, Barnes was often praised for everything he had done after Hillsborough.
"People are not paying me a compliment when they say, 'Weren't you nice during Hillsborough.'"
To Barnes, there was never another option.
"It was just what you did."
