McINTOSH'S HEADERS DID THE TRICK
Matthews gave him the chances
PERFECT CENTRES
Blackpool 2, Liverpool 0
By “Spectator”
SEVEN internationals - four for Blackpool, three for Liverpool - were in the match at Bloomfield-road this afternoon. Big talking point in advance was the fielding for the first time by Blackpool in a First Division game of the England right wing.
There was another sell-out of the stands and an attendance approaching 25,000 which, at this time of the year, would have been amazing in prewar days, but it is taken for granted in the postwar boom.
It was a dull afternoon with light showers falling every few minutes before the kick-off:
Teams:
BLACKPOOL: Wallace: Shimwell, Suart, Lewis, Hayward, Johnston, Matthews, Mortensen, McIntosh, McCall, Munro.
LIVERPOOL: Minshull; Jones, Lambert, Taylor, Hughes, Paisley, Priday, Balmer, Stubbins, Carney (L.), Liddell.
Referee: Mr. E. W. Baker (Manchester).
THE GAME
Blackpool lost the toss. Liverpool decided to attack the north goal in front of a Spion Kop which seemed as packed as it has ever been.
McCall opened the first raid losing the ball once and retrieving it again before releasing a pass which ran too fast away from Mortensen with the inside-right unexpectedly appearing as an inside-left.
Liverpool pressed for a time afterwards, and Stubbins shot Wide from a speculative range.
There was not a lot in it. The first time the Matthews-Mortensen partnership went into action Matthews's long crossfield pass to an open left wing was lost in transit.
NOT TOO FIRM
Blackpool's left flank of defence was not too firm under Liverpool’s early pressure, but with five minutes gone neither goalkeeper had been tested.
Yet in the seventh minute the quicksilver McCall darted into the game again, took a ball from a hesitating full back, crossed it to Matthews, and when the
England forward returned it hurled himself low to head it fast into Minshull's arms.
I counted four passes to Matthews in the next four minutes, which was about as many as he was given all afternoon at Bolton last week.
In a Liverpool breakaway Lewis made a great headed clearance from Stubbins's centre after Liverpool’s roaming centre-forward had wandered out on to the right wing.
NEAR THE MARK
Blackpool’s policy of giving the ball to Matthews was soon promising dividends. Mortensen, in a great leap, headed one of his partner’s centres at such a pace over the bar that had it been a couple of inches lower it would have beaten Minshull and given Blackpool a lead which for minutes they had been threatening to take.
There was a new virility in Blackpool’s football everywhere for a time.
It was direct and aggressive - the sort of football which wins matches and which I have seen too seldom this season.
There was no finer forward on the field in the first 15 minutes than little McCall, who opened another raid with a long pass which Mortensen took in an offside position.
McIntosh, too, was chasing the ball with enterprise and using it with intelligence.
NOSE DIVE
A great clearance by Shimwell
Shimwell made one remarkable clearance at the feet of Carney, hurling himself forward in a nose dive to take the ball with less than a foot off the
For a time the Liverpool forwards were seldom in the game, but when they were their passes fast and direct.
One raid by Liverpool's right wing had an uncommon termination, Hayward, a great centre-half again, hooking away Priday’s centre for a corner which Wallace averted with a full-length dive along the line.
In the next minute a goal was near again, this time at the other end as Mortensen, in one of those amazing leaps in which a small man beats all the big men. headed into Minshull’s arms.
In the next minute, McIntosh shot a ball which this Liverpool goalkeeper beat out as he fell.
THE LEAD
Another minute, in the 27th of the half, Blackpool took the lead.
There was a full line raid. Backwards and forwards across the face of Liverpool's goal the ball crossed and recrossed. At last, for the second time, it reached Matthew's.
Studiously choosing his man the England forward lobbed it back again. The man was McINTOSH, who as he stood sideways to the flying ball headed it inches wide of Minshull for his first goal as a Blackpool centre forward since the war.
Five minutes later he had put No. 2 to his name.
Again, with Blackpool raiding all out. Matthews made the chance, crossed another perfect centre. This time McINTOSH was waiting for it almost on the penalty spot, headed a wonder goal from this range at such a pace that Minshull was perceptibly late in his vain leap at the rocketing ball.
BEST FOR TWO MONTHS
This, for the purposes of the records, was the first time Blackpool had scored two goals in a match since the Wolverhampton game on September 6.
Not a lot happened afterwards. Liverpool raided often but never reached shooting positions.
This had been Blackpool's best half for a couple of months, not only in goals but in the quality of the football that had produced them
Half-time: Blackpool 2 Liverpool 0.
Second Half
In the first minute Minshull made a head-high save from Munro who, acting on Blackpool's new direct-action plan, shot from the edge of the penalty area the second the ball reached him Fast passes given on the run retained the offensive for Blackpool.
Every Blackpool man was after the ball today like a terrier. There was little rest for a Liverpool defence which was seldom permitted to make a decisive clearance.
Yet in a breakaway, Blackpool’s goal had a remarkable escape Stubbins crossing a fast ball which passed two Blackpool men and then passed both Carney and Balmer as they stood almost under the bar of an empty goal. Blackpool’s goal had never been nearer downfall all the afternoon.
NEAR MISSES
Retaliation was immediate in a raid which took the ball from 20 yards on the wrong side of the halfway line to a position 10 yards out where McIntosh missed a post by a foot.
Three corners followed. In between them McIntosh’s hat-trick was near, Minshull making an amazing clearance from a couple of yards out as the centre-forward headed the ball wide of him.
HALTED
A great tackle by Shimwell halted Liddell when at last Scotland's outside left cut inside into one of those positions where he has shot dozens of goals in his time.
Immediately Blackpool won three corners in a minute by football as fast and aggressive as ever.
Repeatedly, too, Minshull made the sort of clearances which have given him the preference to Sidlow, the Welsh international, in this Liverpool team.
Twenty minutes of the half had gone and Blackpool, had a goal disallowed as Mortensen headed the ball backwards past this goalkeeper from a position palpably offside.
It was still nearly all Blackpool’s game.
The pace began to take it out of them towards the end, but the result was seldom in doubt.
Liverpool were a strangely subdued team today or were made to seem to be.
Ten minutes were left, and, with Liverpool’s defence appealing vainly for offside, Mortensen missed an almost open goal.
Another three minutes and to a chorus of disapproval McCall had a goal disallowed.
Result:
BLACKPOOL 2 (McIntosh 27, 32 mins)
LIVERPOOL 0
On another page today I asked: “What is wrong with football?”
Blackpool answered that question before ever it was in print. And there was nothing whatever wrong with the football played by Blackpool in this match or with the resolution which everywhere invested it.
For almost the entire hour and a half the Blackpool forwards played as I have not seen them play for months, shedding all those delayed passes, short passes and passes which send a man into the congested areas.
It was open, direct football which split Liverpool’s defence wide open and might have forced it to a rout.
The Matthews-Mortensen partnership was not often moving as a wing, but it was more than a coincidence that Matthews was given the ball today as he has not been given it since he came to Blackpool.
His partner was as aggressive as ever, and, in the goal area, no less menacing.
This line fielded its best left wing of the season, giving it a new balance, with McCall about the best forward in the game for 30 minutes.
McIntosh led the line as it should be led.
Seldom have I seen the Blackpool halfbacks and full backs so fast to close a gap.
SOMETHING WRONG WITH FOOTBALL
Craze tor speed is ruining the game
By “Spectator”
WHAT'S GONE WRONG WITH FOOTBALL THIS SEASON?
I AM not one of those for whom only the past has a golden glamour. But it cannot be denied that something has gone wrong. What’s caused it?
Is it the lust for speed at all costs? Is it the inevitable aftermath of six years belatedly revealing itself?
Is it the rations?
Some folk say it is rations. I knew that one would be trotted out. But as an alibi it is not too impressive.
I cannot accept the theory that footballers are not fit. The indications week by week are that they are almost too fit, that they can race about faster than ever for 90 minutes of every match. The pity is that too often they arrive nowhere in particular at the end of it.
In the privacy of their offices several managers have been unexpectedly frank about it when I have discussed the subject with them.
‘I've a team near the top of the League,” one of them said the other day. “But it’s nothing to write home about - this team It’s where it is because so many of the others are of no great class at all.
“Before the war - and there were signs even before 1939 that the game was on the down slope - it would have been nowhere near the first half-dozen in the table.”
Forward faults
MR. JOE SMITH, manager of Blackpool, is chiefly concerned about the failure of his forwards. A defence which has lost only 10 goals in 14 games has served to prove how tame and submissive other forward lines can be.
“What’s wrong?” I asked him.
“I attribute it to two reasons,” he said. “The first is that no longer can you find forwards who can take the ball forward and cross it into the centre while still on the move.
“Now they have to halt with the ball and pass it from one foot to the other before they centre it. By that time the defence has massed in the middle to repel it.”
“And the second reason is,” he said - and said it in capital letters - “THEY WON’T SHOOT.”
My view is that it is all the inevitable product of the insensate craze for speed in football and in nearly everything else in this era of grace. They are teaching men to run a greater number of furlongs per hour and a half than footballers ever ran before.
First principle
They are forgetting the first and cardinal principle of the game: “Let the ball do the work.” When it was being made to do it the game may not have seemed as fast as it is today. In everything that mattered it. was faster.
I know it’s a lot simpler to play football on the stands and in the Press box than it is out on the field, particularly in these days when the stakes are so high, when the tension on the player is at times almost unendurable, when one error can cost a small fortune and even wreck a reputation.
I am not blaming the players. They are giving everything they have to give. But the football is not as good as it was, as it will have somehow to be again if the stands are not going to begin to empty.
I am told that I shall see the season’s one great team in London next weekend. Arsenal is the name. I wonder ... I wonder.
Jottings from all parts
BY "SPECTATOR" 1 November 1947
JUST to remind you.
When Liverpool, today’s visitors to Blackpool, came to town last season they entered the game as First Division leaders and with an undefeated record for 12 successive matches. Blackpool won 3-2 with goals by Jim McIntosh Jim Blair and Stanley Mortensen.
Later in the season, during the Easter weekend, Blackpool completed a double, and again it was 3-2. In that second match Liverpool were leading 2-0 with only 20 minutes left.
***
RAY WESTWOOD, the Bolton Wanderer one of the great inside forwards of his generation, talks of finishing with football at the end of this season.
He has gone into partnership in a fish business. and is already convinced that there’s a greater future in it for him now than football can offer.
If he sells fish as once he scored goals - or presented them to other forwards - he’ll make a fortune.
He was my ideal of an inside-left at his best, fast, not afraid to go through on his own - not one of the passing the buck brigade.
THEY were still talking with regret at Bolton last weekend of the departure of Harry Hubbick to the trainer’s post at Port Vale.
This grand full-back was recruited by Manager Joe Smith for the Blackpool wartime team which after a 2-2 draw in the first match beat Sheffield Wednesday in the War Cup Final at Hillsborough in 1943.
A week later Hubbick played in the classic championship-of-Britain match when Blackpool defeated Arsenal at Stamford Bridge.
I did not see that game but if next week’s clash between the two clubs in London is half as good as I have always been told this one was - well, nobody will ask for his money. Not that he would get it in any case!
WALTER CROOK, the Bolton captain, who was Stanley Matthews’ relentless shadow at Burnden Park last weekend, decided a few months ago that a player could remain with one club too long.
When he reached that decision, he had been exactly 17 years with Blackburn Rovers.
I AM told that William Ormond, the 21-years-old outside-left, signed on a month’s trial by Blackpool, impressed nearly all the customers in the Central League match last weekend.
The only criticism I heard of him was that towards the end he tired perceptibly. That was not surprising. It was his fourth game in a week - and on Monday he was at Aldershot playing for an Army XI v. Everton.
It’s too early yet to write him up as the answer to Blackpool’s Problem No. 1. But - well, you never know.
STANLEY MORTENSEN has already missed as many games for Blackpool - four is the number - this season as during the whole of last season.
Twice he has been away playing for England. Twice he has been unfit.
That’s how it works out sometimes. And Blackpool have won only one of the four games from which he has been absent.
I hear, by the way, that at last his housing problem - and Mrs. M’s - has been solved. He has now a home near the Park.
***
THE 42,947 people who watched the Blackpool-Bolton Wanderers match at Burnden Park increased to over 300,000 the total attendances at Blackpool's first eight games on tour this season.
Except at Everton, where Liverpool have since played a match, every club visited by Blackpool this season has had its biggest audience of the year.
And there's another 60,000 or 65,000 to come at Highbury next weekend.
***
CURIOSITY of the Burnden Park match a week ago, Except for one corner in the 13th minute, soon after the Wanderers had scored the winning goal, Blackpool did not win another until 10 minutes from time.
Then, according to one of Mr. George Sheard’s statistic charts, four were won between the 80th and 90th minute, giving Blackpool a total of five against the Wanderers’ four.
There were 17 free-kicks for fouls in this game. That’s a lot too many.
IF Harry Johnston had not made his name as a wing-half and he played for England in that position, he might today be playing - at outside-left.
Yes, at outside-left. I know a few people who think he might make a class wing-forward. And I am one of them.
But you don’t, I suppose, play England wing half-backs wing forwards. Or do you?
MALCOLM BUTLER, the Accrington Stanley full-back who left Blackpool in the summer, believes that his new team will finish higher in the Third Division this season than Blackpool in the First.
I am glad that the Irishman is settling down in Northern Section football with a club still managed by the former Blackpool and England goalkeeper, Mr. Jack Hacking, and admirably managed, too, on an income which a few First Division clubs would think of as petty cash.
BEFORE he left Burnden Park a week ago Stanley Mortensen gave a promise that whenever he was required he would go back to Bolton to take one of the sessions in a football instruction course instituted for the town’s youth clubs.
They had only to ask him, and Stanley said: “Yes, it’ll be a pleasure.” Which was the answer, too, of the other Stanley - Stanley Matthews when a similar invitation was made to him.
Two obliging, unspoilt players are these two. The higher they go - in football and everything else - the nicer some folk are to know.
TWO young forwards in whom I hear Blackpool are interested are:
17 - years - old Tommy Hennegan, inside-right of the Glasgow school team. St. Mungo’s Academy, who had a trial at Blackpool last season and scored for Scotland against England in the youth international at Doncaster last weekend, and
Shooting centre-forward George Henderson, of Stirling Albion, who. after being given a free transfer by Third Lanark, has already this season scored 20 goals in league matches and nine in cup-ties.
Leeds United and Manchester United are also reported to be watching Henderson.
DAVID CRAIG, the young outside right signed by Blackpool from the famous amateur club Marine at the beginning of last season, is in a Liverpool hospital.
He is another cartilage casualty.
Present day fashion at Blackpool is for players from half a dozen clubs to train on the Blackpool ground. This promising wing forward has reversed the process.
He has always trained at Goodison Park the Everton enclosure.
Tapping goes to Chesterfield
FRED TAPPING, the Blackpool wing-half, who, playing as a wing forward, scored the goal at Maine-road against Manchester City which put Blackpool into the 1944 War Cup Final, has been transferred to Chesterfield.
He played several games as a guest for the Derbyshire club during the war years, appeared 21 times for Blackpool Reserve last season, and has had two Central League games this season.
Tapping came to Blackpool from Notts County, and has given good service to the club as a utility man.
NEXT week the Blackpool Football Supporters’ Club will open their winter programme with a Guy Fawkes dance at the Tower on Wednesday from 7-30 to 12-0 p.m.
Tickets are now on sale all over the town, and it would be appreciated if an early purchase could be made.
There will be late transport all over the town and also a bus to St Annes (charge 1s.). Will people intending to use this bus please buy their tickets from the committee room early in the evening?
Snooker festival
THIS event will be followed by the snooker festival at the Clifton Hotel from November 10 to 15. when leading billiards and snooker players will play both afternoon and evening.
Quarterly meeting
THE quarterly meeting will probably be held in the last week in November. The date, time and place will be announced in good time.
The ladies committee have fixed two events - a whist drive on November 26 and a dance on November 28 - both at the Jubilee Hall, Coronation-street. Blackpool.
Spion Kop hut
OWING to unforeseen circumstances, the Supporters’ Club hut at the Spion Kop end of Bloomfield-road was never opened, but arrangements are well in hand to open this shortly.
Membership appeal
THE membership, while increasing slowly, still leaves much to be desired, particularly when the steady growth of other clubs throughout. the country is remembered.
May I therefore make a special appeal to all followers to join us?
The membership fee is only 2s. 6d., and this will, incidentally, carry members through to the end of 1948
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