7 April 1947 Blackpool 0 Everton 3

Blackpool down to earth with bump

IT WAS JUST “ONE THOSE DAYS”

Blackpool 0, Everton 3

DOWN TO EARTH CAME BLACKPOOL IN THIS MATCH AFTER THE LIVERPOOL TRIUMPH IT WAS AN ANTICLIMAX, WRITES “ SPECTATOR.”

Short passes - back passes - every sort of pass which can reduce a team's pace to ‘half-speed - and passes without number which went to a blue instead of a tangerine jersey - played Blackpool out of this game without the assistance of Everton.

Yet Everton won on their own stark, unadorned virtues.

They possessed a centre-forward, Jock Dodds, who, I think, silenced his critics.

In this match he was no bull- at-a-gate raider, revealed shrewd intelligence nearly every time he moved, supplied his wings with long forward passes which scatter a defence, and not only shot two goals, but made a present of the other to Alec Stevenson.

There were a few disillusioned folk in Blackpool yesterday afternoon. Mr. Dodds was not one of them.

GAPS IN DEFENCE

All the time, from the fifth minute, when the first Everton goal exposed a Blackpool defence leaving gaps which all the afternoon were never completely closed.

Everton seemed to be moving faster to the ball, to require that half-second less time than Blackpool to discipline it and to release it.

From the general criticism only two or three Blackpool men can be exempted.

One was Stan Mortensen, who, until he was given a knock-out which took yards off his speed for the rest of the day, was the one forward moving direct on Everton’s packed, remorseless defence.

NOT MUCH PUNCH

The left wing of his attack went completely into the decline which has been threatening it in recent games, and on the other, stern and dogged as the Munro-McKnight partnership may be, neither man ever mastered a light, elusive, bouncing ball.

Little punch in the attack - no great stability in defence - not even for once in the half-back line - so it continues.

Long-kicking, uncompromising Shimwell played a do-or-die game all on his own with the other flank being turned repeatedly by the Mcllhatten-Wainwright wing in the second half. And nobody could blame Wallace for all that happened.

Explain it? It is beyond explanation. Somebody said afterwards, “It was just one of those days!’'

To those folk who had seen this team at Anfield two days earlier it seemed incredible

Result:

BLACKPOOL 0 

EVERTON 3 (Dodds 2, Stevenson)

***

HURT AT GROUND

After the Blackpool v. Everton match at Bloomfield-road yesterday afternoon, Edward Roach, aged 60, of Recent-road, Blackpool, was taken by ambulance to the Victoria Hospital with hand injuries.

It is stated that he received his injuries on a fencing at the ground.

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