It’s been more than six months since Steve Townsend lost his brother, Mark, but the pain lingers. It was etched across his face when I saw him at a coroner’s court in Sheffield last week.
He was awaiting the start of a preparatory hearing for an inquest he’d not remotely imagined would stem from Mark, a West Bromwich Albion fan, setting out at 7am one Saturday last September for a match against Sheffield Wednesday at Hillsborough. Mark suffered a medical emergency there and never made it home.
Retracing that fateful final journey from the family home in Birmingham last Thursday would have brought myriad sorrows for Steve.