Everton remembers the Hillsborough 96

IT was a new week and the dust of last week's Hillsborough bombshell had landed softly in the nooks and crannies of an old wound that time and testimony had refused to heal.

Yet across Stanley Park from Anfield, Everton fans were keen to show that in Liverpool, sometimes there is no "other side".

Last week's mood of smarting, widespread indignity was replaced, for the moment, by thousands of warm, embracing hands raised in applause.

Yet all eyes were on those of just two of those individuals: a girl in blue and a boy in the red of the Anfield strip, palms entwined as they led the Everton and Newcastle sides out onto the pitch last night. On the backs of their shirts, two numbers: a nine and a six.

Officials had chosen the Hollies' track, He Ain't Heavy, to wash across the players, the staff, the officials and the fans inside Goodison, among them Trevor Hicks, Margaret Aspinall and even Man Utd's Sir Alex Ferguson, accompanied by a photo collage of the 96 victims of the disaster.

And so the clapping continued, its energy, in many ways, more powerful than silence. 

It said support, it said comfort, it said defiance, and it showed that often it's the simplest of tributes that have the most class.