Kevin Mahon - Liverpool V Leicester 2003

I just had to put on record my feelings following my visit to Anfield on Saturday.

I went with my two sons and the wife but we could only get two tickets for the game. I insisted the boys used them with the self-sacrifice only a father would understand. They are, after all, the future heartbeat of the club. We saw the boys to the turnstiles and bade them a goodbye and wished them a good game and then my wife and I spent some time walking slowly around the ground. (I was soaking up the atmosphere while she wondered just when her shopping trip would start)

We visited the Hillsborough Memorial and, as usual it was bedecked with scarves and mementos of fans paying their respects. There were several bunches of flowers and accompanying cards. We read them as we paused in front of the red marbled edifice for a time. One was particularly moving.

It commemorated the birthday of one of the boys who had died that awful day in Sheffield. It was a birthday card from his mother. It simply read:"You would have been 32 this week. How I love and miss you still.Happy Birthday, my beautiful Son." Beside the card were two laminated photographs clipped together defiantly keeping out the autumnal drizzle. One was of a baby and the other of a fresh faced young man of approximately eighteen summers. They were of the same man and boy who had lost his life following his passion in the support of Liverpool Football Club.

We had just said goodbye to our beautiful sons (one aged 18 and the other 14) and saw them off into a football match. They were excited and full of anticipation. We were left behind, happy for them, pleased that they had had an opportunity to attend the game and looked forward to seeing them again soon after the match when we would be regaled with their accounts of the experience. In that moment of reading the card written by a grieving mother, of listening to the roar of an excited crowd inside the ground and of waving goodbye to the flowers of our youth, we both felt the same leaden heartbeat of the mother who had lost her son.

We were deeply moved and clung to each other in a reassuring embrace. While we took some deep breaths and stepped back from the shrine, I looked with fresh eyes at the activity around the monument. Many Leicester fans paused respectfully and read the array of names. They were joined by Liverpool supporters and a hushed conversation sprang up between them, made comrades by the terrible event etched into the marble. Other fans wearing red who had obviously paid homage on numerous occasions rushed past but not without a revered nod of appreciation. Several made a point of touching the cold marble slab in passing rather like the players used to do so religiously of the "This is Anfield" sign in the tunnel.

We had drunk deeply at the well of human emotion. A well whose waters encompassed so many conflicting emotions of fear, love, tenderness, grief, compassion, respect and the surge of feeling part of something important in the lives of so many. It is a bitter-sweet concoction. How sweet it is to have had so many loved ones in our midst; we must always value what we have, and how bitter to have lost them so wantonly at the capricious decision to open those doors at the Leppings Lane end.

As far as we can accompany those left behind and grieving, I hope that they do feel that they will never walk alone. It's the only assurance we can give to that mother left with the warmth of her memories of her beautiful son. God bless you.