‘Hillsborough tragedy drove me on as a player’

STEVEN GERRARD maintains that the memory of his cousin who died at Hillsborough has been the driving inspiration to his football career.

The Liverpool skipper was only nine when the tragedy occurred in Sheffield, but he recalls going to bed that night praying that the death toll did not get any worse.

But Gerrard, 28, recalls how he discovered the following morning that his 10-year-old cousin Jon-Paul Gilhooley was among the 96 who died, the youngest victim claimed by the disaster.