'I want to thank the man who saved me at Hillsborough'

A Liverpool fan says he wants to find and thank the man who he says saved the lives of him and his brother at the Hillsborough disaster when he was just 13.

Douglas resident Graeme Bamfield has for the first time opened up about his experience on 15 April 1989, when a crush at the stadium in Sheffield during the FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest resulted in the deaths of 97 people.

"It was the biggest game I'd ever had a ticket for, so a 13-year-old lad going to a semi-final back then was massive - we were just full of excitement" he said.

After travelling on a coach from Liverpool, it was at a buffet at Bramall Lane before the game when Graeme and his 16-year-old brother met a Sheffield United fan who also had tickets to the game and said he would look after them.

"He just took us under his wing. Thank god he did, because without him, we wouldn't have been here today."

"When we got to outside the stadium, it was a mess, we used to go to home games and it was single file, but this was chaos," he said.

"We got in the crowd [outside the stadium] and it just very quickly became panicked and crushed. I have just never experienced anything like it.

"I have asthma and I ended up beneath this police horse. There was this Liverpool supporter, he could tell I was in trouble, and people were trying to form a circle around me.

"He managed to lift me up, and then all the fans lifted me over their heads, across the crowd, and they passed me to a police officer over a wall," Graeme said.

It was about 14:40 BST when he was lifted over the wall, and was taken to a nearby portable cabin for ten minutes, when his brother and the Sheffield United fan, who he believes was in his 20s, found him.

"We then went into the stands, we were behind the goal, and the man who was with us said you're not watching it here, and I said 'what? This is where we always watch it'. He said 'trust me you're not watching it here. Come with me you'll have a better view and it won't be as crowded'.

"This guy was adamant, he was stubborn and he did my head in to be honest."

The three left the area and went up the stairs into a nearby stand.

"The gate opened at 14:52, so we missed being caught in the crush by seconds," he continued.

The game kicked off, and at 15:06 the match was stopped.

"You could see the panic, and it all just started to unfold," he said.

He said he did not talk to his brother or family about the disaster afterwards. When he went to school on the Monday he said: "I was crying my eyes out, they let me skip assembly and that was all the support I had."

Graeme, originally from Huyton, Merseyside, who has now lived on the island for 27 years, said he had not fully realised the affect that the Hillsborough disaster had on him until recently.

"My life was a mess after, I was kicked out of school, went to a foster home, and I didn't realise how much Hillsborough had impacted me," he said.

But having started therapy in recent years, he was asked if he could write his experience as a personal project.

"At first it was so hard, it was so emotional trying to write but after a while I just couldn't stop," he continued.

His book, The Boy Over The Wall, recounting his experience, was published in March, and now he is looking to buy the man who saved him a beer.

Speaking of the Sheffield United fan, he said: "We're now hoping to track this guy down to say thank you. Someone asked me what would I do if I met him, and I said I don't know. Probably just cry, give him a hug, how do you thank someone for saving your life?"

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