Mark Townsend has not been one to shout things, but he can reflect with some satisfaction that he went to West Bromwich Albion 10 days ago to watch his team play Sheffield Wednesday.
His career in the Midlands motor industry, where he started in the paint shop at the Longbridge Rover plant, took him to the position of troubleshooting foreman for BMW V8 and V12 engines for Jaguar Land Rover and Rolls-Royce. At the Hams Hall plant in Birmingham.
He drives a BMW 3 Series (metal grey) and, 41 years after starting out as a 16-year-old YTS boy, has the prospect of finally retiring to the house he and his wife Marion built in their native Donegal.
‘The windows and roof are working. “I was thinking that the move would happen in the middle of next year,” reflects his brother Steve. There were no health scares.
It was not known if Wednesday’s day would be different. He left home at 7 a.m., leaving Marion, whom he had met while stationed at the BMW plant in Steyr, Austria, to plan his day.
Mark Townsend (pictured) died after a medical emergency in the stands during the Championship match between Sheffield Wednesday and West Brom at Hillsborough.
West Brom paid tribute to Townsend by placing a shirt over his seat at Hawthorns
The match against Middlesbrough was stopped in the 57th minute in tribute to Townsend
The supporters coach left the West Brom center at 7.30am and, although Steve was not with them, his nephew Matt, Steve’s son, was. A fry up at Wetherspoon’s in Barnsley, messages exchanged on WhatsApp groups for what they call a ‘promotion party’ and for the 12.30pm kick-off at Hillsborough, chants and jokes at the end of Leppings Lane. Matt took a selfie of the two of them, which we posted here.
Selfie of Mark, Bam and Matt on that fateful day at Sheffield Wednesday
According to Matt’s guess, Mark complained of feeling hot right before Wednesday’s 23rd-minute goal to go 2-0 up and was sitting while everyone else was standing. It was a moment or two later, Matt says, that Mark leaned toward his nephew, his head “dropping,” as he described it in the handwritten note he wrote about the terrifying hours that followed.
Matt holds Mark’s head and tells the fan next to him to call a butler to help him. Other fans in the back row helped hold Mark down and “take his body weight,” as backseat driver Adrian Bates described it.
Adrian and his son spent some time (two minutes, Adrian said) trying to free up space to administer first aid, and it was an Albion fan, two rows back, a doctor, who intervened. An off-duty paramedic also came to his aid and attempted CPR. A third amateur, a young man, also cooperated with CPR.
I have seen half a dozen written testimonies from those who witnessed what happened next, and if they produce a true and accurate account, there will be questions to answer about Wednesday’s administration and the time it took to reach the goal. Wednesday, who immediately responded to my question, provided a detailed and very different account.
Adrian described having difficulty explaining himself to a flight attendant, and then encountered one who told him he needed to find a supervisor on the radio in the control room, from where medical help could be called.
Adrian’s account places the supervising butler’s arrival 10 minutes after Mark’s collapse. He said that at minute 15 “we saw the first medical aid enter the stadium.”
Another witness, an occupational health officer who said he was the city’s health and safety manager, described in his statement that he saw an acting steward radioing for help, at his request, five minutes after the first hearing with “doctor” and “aid”. now. He says a paramedic arrived nine minutes later with a defibrillator.
Townsend died on September 28 at Hillsborough after falling ill in the first half.
Steve Townsend heard his son’s panic on an open cell phone line as he tried to instruct Matt and keep him calm.
In his written testimony, Matt described failing to make himself known to one butler and then yelling at a second to move quickly as he approached a supervisor. The health officer’s witness described how he offered to remove the defibrillator from the first medical officer while he applied gauze to Mark’s chest.
He says Mark was given two “shocks,” but there wasn’t enough battery for a third, and a second defibrillator was placed in his pad. Amid the chaos, fans on Wednesday chanted “stop the game.”
A fan named Shaun is reported to be walking onto the field holding the billboard and trying to stop it. West Brom podcast The Liquidator has compiled further such evidence.
Wednesday’s response to Albion fans’ complaints about the speed of the response came in a press release published on Sunday.
The club said “advanced paramedical care was providing treatment on site” three minutes after being notified in the control room, which was just one minute after alerting the nearest steward.
Wednesday, which has outsourced the provision of medical care to the private company Lambda Medical after a bidding process since this season, told me that the number of doctors at the game (unspecified) exceeded the number recommended in the Safety Guide in sports fields, known as the Green Guide. . South Yorkshire Ambulance Service also attended.
The club told me that their investigation into Mark’s death, including studying CCTV footage and interviews with staff, told them that “just over a minute” passed between the first steward being alerted and the venue being notified. of control.
West Brom fans question speed of response to medical emergency
It then took another two minutes and 58 seconds for the first doctor to reach Mark. Medical professionals say a five-minute response time is critical.
Standard practice is for supervisors, not flight attendants, to have radios to reach the control room on, say, Wednesday.
They say stopping a match due to a medical emergency is at the discretion of the referee and doing so could alter the treatment of fans.
The EFL protocol states that the game must continue in the event of a medical emergency, unless the welfare of the fan is “significantly affected by the continuation of the match”. Hillsborough has 27 defibrillators, an above-average number, it said Wednesday.
I have written here twice in the past year about the state of Hillsborough, reporting that I believe it reflects the experience of Newcastle fans, crushed before a cup tie in scenes that subsequently reduced the capacity of the Leppings Lane stand. .
My Mail Sport colleagues and I were banned from the stadium because of that report. A freedom of information request has been made to obtain the minutes of Sheffield City Council’s Hillsborough Safety Committee. Needless to say, Wednesday doesn’t take criticism well.
I hope that the club, which has expressed its condolences, actively seeks testimony from Wednesday’s fans as part of an investigation that is not limited to its own people.
The club said “advanced paramedical care was providing treatment on site” three minutes after the control room was notified.
I hope the West Brom fans who testify are not condemned for this, as the Newcastle fans were. Ultimately, the forensic investigation will consider the facts.
Mark’s brother Steve certainly wants to know more.
At his home in the northern Birmingham suburb of Kingstanding, he sat still on Monday morning, remembering some of the great trips he and his brother had enjoyed (the Derby baseball field and the Stoke’s Victory Ground) and golden afternoons at the Hawthorns. also. End of Brummy Road. Row LL. Plazas 184, 185 and 186.
“We will never sit there together again,” he says. “It will never be the same again.”
