"We need it changed" - James Bord urged to make big Hillsborough call once Sheffield Wednesday takeover is completed | OneFootball

James Bord is being urged to get on with removing the Leppings Lane stand at Hillsborough, almost 37 years after the disaster that claimed 97 lives.

This article is part of Football League World's 'Terrace Talk' series, which provides personal opinions from our FLW Fan Pundits regarding the latest breaking news, teams, players, managers, potential signings and more...

The prospective new Sheffield Wednesday owner James Bord is being urged to finally replace the Leppings Lane stand at Hillsborough.

It's being anticipated that the takeover of Sheffield Wednesday by a consortium led by the former professional poker player James Bord will soon be completed.

Bord was named as the preferred bidder for the troubled Championship club on the 24th December, but getting the necessary regulatory approval for such a takeover takes time, and the latest statement from the club's joint-administrator Kris Wigfield, which was issued on the 9th January, confirmed that things are proceeding as might have been expected.

When Bord's group are finally handed the keys to the club, there will be a lot of work to do. Sheffield Wednesday's squad is threadbare, and it will require substantial spending to get them competitive for next season, even presuming - and already seems almost certain - that they'll be starting it in League One.

But this isn't the only work that needs to be done at the club. Hillsborough stadium itself has suffered from a lack of investment for decades, and one particular ghost from the past which remains very visible is the Leppings Lane stand, in which 97 supporters were killed on the 15th April 1989 during an FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest.

"The priority has to be a new Leppings Lane end" - James Bord urged to demolish stand as part of Hillsborough redevelopment

Football League World have spoken to our resident Sheffield Wednesday fan pundit Patrick KcKenna about the issue of the Leppings Lane stand at Hillsborough, and Patrick is very firmly of the opinion that the stand needs to go: "If James Bord does take over the club, I would like to think that redeveloping the ground is something that he will be looking into. For any ground development plan the priority has to bringing in a new Leppings Lane end."

Patrick fully understands the symbolic history of the stand, and explained that successive owners of the club have overlooked it since the disaster: "The fact is that, in this stand in 1989, 97 football fans came to watch a game of football and never made it home, and the legacy of this remains the issue of bringing in a new stand. The can has been kicked down the road of various ownerships of the club and we need it removed."

This context is important, as the stand has barely changed since the disaster: "We need something new there. Nothing can change what happened on that horrible day, but the structure of the stand is the same. The layout and the concourses haven't changed and the capacity of the stand is consistently reduced by the safety advisory group."

And Patrick feels that to finally get on and get this stand demolished should be done, as much as anything else, for the families of those who died that day: "Something needs to be done, and I think it would be a very good thing if this stand is removed and something new comes in. I'd like to think that it's something that could do something for the victims' families to see some movement on that, it would be great."

He understands that James Bord will have a lot of work to do when he is finally confirmed as the club's new owner, but he hopes that this work will finally be carried out: "As a fan of Sheffield Wednesday, this is something that happened at our ground, tragically, and we need it changed as soon as possible. I'm aware of the realities of the situation, and it may not be the first thing James Bord will be able to do , but I certainly hope it's something he would look to address."

The Leppings Lane stand remains an all-too visual legacy of the 1989 Hillsborough stadium disaster

The continuing presence of the stand in which so many fans were killed in 1989 has continued to be a controversial one at Hillsborough, especially considering the amount of work that was undertaken to renovate stadiums in England as a result of The Taylor Report, the investigation into what happened on the 15th April 1989, which recommended the introduction of all-seater stadia.

Subsequent law changes required all grounds in the top two divisions to become all-seater by 1994, and the upshot of this was the first two years of the Premier League were played against a backdrop of building sites across the division.

But Hillsborough itself largely remained unchanged. The Leppings Lane stand had seats bolted onto the bottom section of terracing, upon which fans had been killed, but little else has changed about that end of the stadium since.

As Patrick pointed out, the stand is now completely outdated, even without its historical baggage. Worse, there have even been near misses in the same stand since. In January 2023, a crush on the concourse during an FA Cup Third Round match against Newcastle United revived calls for it to be demolished altogether and replaced.

If rebirth is to be one of the themes of this new ownership of Sheffield Wednesday, then finally demolishing this stand should be near the top of the priority list for the new owner of the club. It makes neither practical nor emotional sense for it to still be standing, almost 37 years after it was the scene of a disaster which changed so many lives forever.