‘A guy hijacked my wheelchair to try to get into Wembley’

“A guy in a fluorescent jacket took charge and shouted very authoritatively, ‘Right, come on! Let’s get the disabled in. They’ve been waiting here for half-an-hour, we need to get them in now’. The door opened and he started pushing Joe’s wheelchair towards it.

“Suddenly, I realised he wasn’t a steward at all. He was a fan in a fluorescent jacket hijacking a wheelchair to try to use it as a way to get in. I tried saying Joe was with me but the guy said, ‘No, I’m trying to get the disabled in. Let’s get him in’. I pushed him out of the way and the actual steward said, ‘If you hadn’t done that, I would have just let him in’. They tried to hijack a disabled person in a wheelchair!”

For Graham Hiley, a lecturer in sports journalism at Solent University in Southampton, last Sunday was supposed to be a reward for following England for more than 40 years. Watching England in a major final, as he put it, was something he’d been “waiting his whole life for”.

He was there with sons Martin, 34, and Tim, 29, as well as Tim’s best friend Joe McIndoe, also 29. Both Tim and Joe are disabled and wheelchair users.

 

Graham and son Tim once they were in the ground

But amid the chaos, carnage, cocaine and alcohol consumption that engulfed Wembley Way before the Euro 2020 final against Italy, a man had dressed up as a steward and taken McIndoe out of the university lecturer’s hands to try to blag his way inside.

Many of the accounts from Sunday’s mayhem are shocking, and this one is just as harrowing.

“It was inevitable… you could see it coming from when we were all outside,” says Tim. “Once the ticketless people breached the outer perimeter, the battle was lost.

“They (Graham and Martin) were trying to get me and Joe into the ground, and they (the stewards) weren’t opening the door for us. Whenever the door did open, it was normally them chucking someone out.”

The disabled entrances dotted around Wembley are situated alongside turnstiles and operate an airlock-type system. Once their outer door opens, you go forward inside to a small room, wait for them to close the outer door and then an inner door opens, allowing you onto the concourse.

And the man purporting to be a steward saw hijacking a wheelchair as his gateway to seeing the final despite not having a ticket.

“As he was pushing Joe towards the door, my first thought was, ‘Thank God. Someone is finally helping us’, but then you think, ‘No. He’s with me and you aren’t taking him in’,” Graham adds. “Joe was a bit shaken, especially when he realised what had gone on and that someone had tried to hijack him and take him through.

“He was probably more shaken than I was. I’ve been following England for 40 years. I’ve been in the riots in Turin, I was at the game in Dublin that was abandoned, so I’m used to seeing crowd trouble, but it was scary.”

Graham, 61, waited until Tim and Joe were safe before explaining to them what had happened. In an atmosphere that was already daunting and hostile, there was no need to add to their worry.

“You could tell he was unnerved by it, but he tried to laugh it off by saying you could almost admire the creativeness of it,” Tim says of his best pal.

Once Graham and Martin had escorted Tim and Joe into the ground, they patiently waited for their tickets to be activated. But then the chaos they had just escaped outside the stadium followed them inside.

“At that point, they were still chucking ticketless fans out. But the outer and inner doors of the airlock system were both open, so people just burst into this closed area. There were probably five stewards trying to hold them all back,” explains Graham.

“There was a real crush and it looked horrific.”

Among the casualties of the rush was a man on crutches.

“You feel very, very vulnerable because you are in a more vulnerable position,” Tim points out, referring to the fact he is in a wheelchair. “But you are also worried someone may fall on you.”

“We managed to get Joe and Tim away from the doors just before they broke through and got in,” continues Graham. “They knocked about five or six stewards flying and trampled all over them. We saw them afterwards getting treatment and the lad on crutches with a cast on his leg was being trampled on.”

Even though their tickets hadn’t been activated, they were told to make their way up to their seats.

But as the lift door opened, Graham’s heart sank. Wembley’s upper concourse was packed to the rafters and he, along with Martin, had to navigate the two wheelchairs through a raucous, alcohol-filled crowd.

 

Wembley was an intimidating place on Sunday (Photo: Dave J Hogan/Dave J Hogan/Getty Images)

“There was absolutely no social distancing,” the university lecturer adds. “Everyone was stood on the concourse drinking, chanting, pushing and shouting.

“They were all pissed up, but some would create a passage for you to get through. It was hard work. I was trying to stay calm, but it was still scary.”

And due to that lack of social distancing, coupled with no enforcement of the pandemic health guidelines whatsoever, Graham and Tim have both tested positive for coronavirus after attending the final.

Despite everything that happened, neither Graham nor Tim have been put off attending big events.

They also praised the Wembley stewards for doing the best they could in the most difficult circumstance, while lamenting the lack of a more prominent police presence.

“I haven’t ever experienced anything remotely close to that,” Tim explained. “I said to Joe that it was the first time I have felt unsafe at an event. It’s not necessarily English matches, but England matches. It might put me off going to other England games at Wembley and it does make me question the security at Wembley. It doesn’t happen at an FA Cup final or a League Cup final.

“This is a real underlying thing about the security there: any one of those people could have had a bomb. Luckily for Wembley, they were all enthusiastic amateurs as opposed to a calculated terrorist.”

Graham hopes lessons will be learned from Sunday’s madness and points out he will be a lot more “wary” at the next big event he goes to.

And given the Hileys are season ticket holders at Southampton, that won’t be a long wait with the Premier League kicking off again in a month’s time.

Although, as he says, “It’s normally not a problem we have at St Mary’s!”