The turnstiles were scheduled to open at midday ahead of the 3pm kick-off. Officers on duty at or around the stadium attended a 10am briefing in the North Stand, led by Ch Supt Duckenfield. He used exactly the same briefing notes as he had for his briefing of senior officers the previous day.
The evidence of officers present suggests there was nothing particularly remarkable about Ch Supt Duckenfield’s briefing. Following it, there was a series of sector and serial briefings, with more detailed instructions about the duties of individual officers. The majority of these were as officers expected, but a small number of discussions appear to have been significant.
Supt Greenwood, as ground commander inside the stadium, briefed officers on duty at the Spion Kop (the terrace allocated to Nottingham Forest supporters) about how they should deal with any Liverpool supporters that had bought tickets for that area. He instructed officers that any Liverpool supporters there should remain in a segregated area on the Spion Kop and not be transferred to the Leppings Lane end of the ground. This instruction was different from what was set out in the F Division Operational Order, in which officers were told to transfer Liverpool supporters found in the wrong area to their own designated area. Supt Greenwood did not want to do this, because he was concerned that it could result in overcrowding on the West Terrace, as had occurred at the 1981 Semi-Final.
Despite this concern and other instances of overcrowding on the West Terrace, no officer appears to have given, or received, a direct instruction during a briefing to monitor capacity in the pens there. As no instructions to this effect were included in the F Division Operational Order either, no officers anywhere in the stadium were told that they had a responsibility for monitoring the pens. Ch Supt Duckenfield and other senior officers have all stated in evidence that they understood officers in certain areas of the ground had that responsibility.
There were separate briefings for D Division, who had commenced duty earlier in the city centre, and for the Dog and Mounted Sections, both of which were briefed at the Niagara Sports and Social Club, where they were based, a short distance from the stadium.
Ch Supt Duckenfield arrived at the Niagara Club before the Mounted Section had left, at around 11.30am. He spoke briefly to the mounted officers to wish them well.
This is one of few clear details about how Ch Supt Duckenfield spent the time between the end of the 10am briefing and his arrival in the PCB at around 1.50pm. Ch Supt Duckenfield’s own accounts are vague on what he did in this period. Operation Resolve has used multiple sources of information to re-examine this issue, drawing together the accounts of different officers, witnesses at different venues and locations, and some AV material.
Some evidence indicates that Ch Supt Duckenfield toured the area in a police car with Insp Sewell and then went around the stadium—though there are few witnesses to this latter part. It appears they then went for lunch in the gymnasium at around 1.30pm.
Partly because his accounts are so vague, questions have been asked about what Ch Supt Duckenfield did during this period, and it has been alleged that he could have drunk alcohol during this time. Operation Resolve has found no evidence to indicate he (or any other officer on duty at the match) did so.
Nonetheless, the evidence gathered by Operation Resolve demonstrates that Ch Supt Duckenfield’s activities and movements in this period lacked the focus and purpose that would be expected of a match commander. He did not use the time after the pre-match briefing to familiarise himself with the important areas of the stadium, to talk to officers on duty in different areas about their knowledge of previous issues and risks, or to gather their observations on the arrival of supporters.
Ch Supt Duckenfield subsequently acknowledged that he was not sufficiently aware of the structures of the stadium or the facilities available to him to be able to understand how to manage any foreseeable events.
