THE senior police officer in charge at Sheffield’s Hillsborough football stadium when 96 Liverpool fans were killed in 1989 yesterday told an inquests hearing that he was “not the best man for the job.”

Former chief superintendent David Duckenfield, the match commander, admitted his experience of the planning and policing of football matches was limited.

And he agreed it was a “serious mistake” not to seek the assistance of his predecessor after being appointed to the job with just 15 days to familiarise himself with the role before the match, he said.

Mr Duckenfield, 70, gave evidence from the witness box as about 200 relatives of those who died at the match listened in silence in rows of seats behind him in the courtroom in Warrington, Cheshire.

Ninety-six Liverpool fans died during and after a crush on Hillsborough’s Leppings Lane terrace as the FA Cup semi-final against Nottingham Forest kicked off on April 15 1989.

Mr Duckenfield gave the order to open the gates, allowing 2,000 fans massing outside to enter the ground in the minutes before the fatal crush.

He later told FA officials wrongly that a gate had been forced open in comments repeated by the press.

The tragedy was followed by a police cover-up. Newspapers were fed information that the fans themselves were to blame for the tragedy.

Coverage by Rupert Murdoch’s Sun newspaper was so appalling that the people of Liverpool launched a boycott of the paper which continues today.

For 20 years families of the victims campaigned for a public inquiry into what really happened, culminating more than two years ago in an independent inquiry which damningly identified the police’s role in the tragedy, prompting the overturning of the victims’ “accidental death” verdicts and the reopening of inquest hearings.

The determination and success of the Hillsborough families inspired another action — the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign, which is demanding an inquiry into the organised police attack on pickets at a South Yorkshire coke plant during the miners’ strike against pit closures of 1984-5.

The Hillsborough inquests continue today.