Missing The Target

Some disgusting shit has done what disgusting shits do. That is, something quite disgusting.

A national sports retail chain has apologised for selling a Manchester United shirt bearing a Hillsborough insult.

The fan paid £55 for the shirt and the slur to be printed about the 1989 disaster which killed 96 Liverpool FC fans.

On it, he chose the number 96 and under it the words "Not Enough". Above the number were the letters YSB - which stands for You Scouse B*****ds. The man's Facebook page was shut down.

Quite right too. I hope someone rips his balls off with a rusty pair of pliers for being such an evil waste of DNA.

As someone who spent many a Saturday, as a youngster, helplessly hemmed in by fencing at high-profile football matches. And having been at an FA Cup semi-final just twelve months prior to the Hillsborough disaster, it often crosses my mind that, in hindsight, all of us who attended football were in a fair amount of danger back then.

Anyone who makes a team rivalry point on the back of people who died in such a tragedy is a sick cunt, pure and simple (no apology for terminology).

However, after Boris Johnson's piece in 2004 about Liverpudlians wallowing in 'victim status', comments like this really aren't helping to dispel the sentiment.

Sports Direct said the employee who marked up the shirt did not know what the message meant. But Margaret Aspinall, whose son James, 18, was killed at Hillsborough, said she did not believe that.

Mrs Aspinall, chairman of the Hillsborough Family Support Group, said: "I think Sports Direct are worse than the guy who wanted it put on the back of his shirt. Printing that message is like inciting trouble, it is an absolute disgrace and Sports Direct should be ashamed.

Sorry? A sports clothing firm with 470 shops making thousands of transactions per day, who instantly apologised and contacted Facebook to close this guy's account once they realised what had happened, are worse than him?

And is it really so unbelievable that an employee would have not understood what YSB stands for? The Hillsborough disaster was in 1989, a full 20 years ago. The average age of a Sports Direct shop worker may only be a tad higher than that, surely. When I was 20, I was completely unaware of what Aberfan signified. Just a thought.

I can't even begin to imagine the pain that Margaret and Jimmy Aspinall went through on that day in April 1989, and the weeks, months and years that followed. I have read extensively about Hillsborough and the disgraceful denial of justice that followed. As a parent myself, I have been moist-eyed reading books like this on the subject, just as I was rapt and sombre during the memorial coverage earlier this year. I sympathise entirely, I really do.

However, Sports Direct have acted swiftly, responsibly and with compassion. They certainly don't deserve to be ranked lower than a rancid sicko who thinks it a bit of a jolly to piss on the memory of 96 innocent Liverpool fans. Mrs Aspinall's response to Sports Direct and their employee (who may well be very cut up about their inadvertent mistake) is quite wrong.

And what's more, the low-life shit who caused the fuss in the first place, has now ensured that non-offensive personalisation of football shirts is denied to responsible Sports Direct customers everywhere. For good.

"As a result, Sports Direct has taken immediate action and changed the administration policy for printing football shirts across its store network. With immediate effect, it will only allow printing of current football players names and numbers on football shirts."

Such does life deteriorate and pander to the whims of the sickest in society (see Huntley and CRB hysteria). Can we not stop allowing these people to win, and singling out the wrong targets for attack?