It was expected that before the gates were closed there would be a 50,000 crowd.
Mounted police had to clear a path for the Blackpool coach again, with every entrance massed with a swarm of thousands. It rained all night in Stoke leaving the pitch soaked.
Hugh Kelly was included in Blackpool’s team, playing at left-half, Harry Johnston crossing to the right flank.
George Farrow, who is in and out of this team like a jack in the box. was, as a result, out of it again.
Stanley Matthews was able to appear only after he had been given an injection for the thigh injury which slowed him down to half speed on Christmas Day.
It is the new fashion in football. They call it “freezing.” Tom Finney, the England forward, was similarly treated before he played at Deepdale yesterday.
The City announced the men who won at Blackpool two days ago.
STOKE CITY: Herod: Mould, Meakin, Mountford (F). Franklin, Kirton, Sellars, Kiernan, Steele, McAlinden, Ormston.
BLACKPOOL: Wallace, Shimwell, Suart, Johnston, Hayward, Kelly, Matthews, Mortensen, McIntosh, McCall, Munro.
Referee: Mr. E. Plinston (Warrington).
THE GAME
As it was definitely his day Blackpool made Matthews captain.
When the game started it was estimated that at least 10,000 people were locked outside.
In the first minute Johnston gave Mortensen one of those forward passes the inside-right loves to chase.
He chased this one, outpaced two men, and fell in the end to Franklin's tackle.
In the mud and raging pace men fell like skittles in an alley in the opening skirmishes.
Stoke’s first raid was summarily repelled by Kelly, who halted Sellars.
Every time Matthews was near the ball there was a roar they could probably hear a mile away. He had not a lot of the ball in the early minutes, and every time he was given it a raid matured.
LIKE CUP-TIE
The game so far was a cup-tie in its speed and intensity.
What little ordered football Was being played, Blackpool were playing, Munro ending one perfect raid with a shot that passed out by the far post with Herod out of position.
Munro was a grand little raider for Blackpool. Twice he outpaced his full back. Twice force of numbers repelled him.
Not until the 12th minute were the City near a goal. Then, as the ball was crossed from the right, Hayward and Steele leaped at it, collided' in mid-air and sprawled in a heap as the ball flew off the centre half’s head for a corner.
This was immediately followed by another.
Those two corners prefaced all out pressure by the City who, as at Blackpool on Christmas Day, were bringing the long pass into the game every time they advanced.
In the 20th minute the City took the lead.
The goal came almost direct from a free kick 30 yards out on the right wing. . .
Mountford crossed it into a goalmouth resembling a congested area. KIERNAN, the City’s inside-right from Scotland, appeared to be unmarked.
If he was, it was a fatal error for as the ball flew across he leaped at it, headed it low past Wallace to a thunderous cheer.
It was nearly all Blackpool for minutes afterwards - a Blackpool in whose front line Matthews, dogged sometimes by four men, was shown no mercy whatever.
Centre after centre crossed Herod’s goal during this pressure, and he was kept busy beating them out.
At the end of half an hour it had been about 20 minutes Blackpool against the City's 10.
BIG ESCAPE
Herod loses skidding ball under bar
In the 31st minute the City goal had its first big escape.
Johnston opened the raid with another of those long crossfield passes in which he had been specialising. Munro took it far away on the other side of the field, crossed to McIntosh a low pass which the centre-forward hooked fast and still low across goal.
Herod fell to the Skidding ball, lost it and was at full length under the bar as Mortensen, racing up at a great pace, missed the ball less than a yard from the open line.
Another minute and Mortensen, chasing McIntosh’s long forward pass, raced away from Franklin and shot a ball which came out off the advancing Herod’s knees without the goalkeeper knowing a lot about it.
McIntosh and Mortensen were building two-men raids constantly into a scattering Stoke defence which was being raced repeatedly out of position.
Another goal for Stoke, however, was near in the last two minutes of the half when, in a massed offensive, their entire forward division stormed into the attack.
Twice, at close quarters, Hayward shattered the all out raid.
Wallace had taken only three goal kicks during this half.
Half-time: Stoke City 1, Blackpool 0.
Second Half
Before the City knew what had happened Blackpool made it 1-1.
For the first time in the match not a man was within 20 yards of Matthews as a long pass was crossed to him. This time he crossed the ball before the defence could mass.
Mortensen leaped at it, headed it down to the feet of McINTOSH who, beating Herod in the race for the skidding ball, hooked it over the line as he somersaulted over the diving goalkeeper.
I have never seen a goal scored in such a short time from a kickoff.
IN RETREAT
For minutes afterwards the City were in a bewildered retreat, forfeited a corner and gave every sign of panic.
Yet when Sellers escaped on the right it was the Blackpool goal which nearly fell, Wallace beating out brilliantly the right wing forward’s centre as Kieman hurled himself at it, missed the ball and catapulted into a post.
Attack after attack raged round the Blackpool goal afterwards.
Wallace made a superb clearance as Kiernan raced away from his man, shot low and wide of the deserted goalkeeper’s right hand.
In the next minute Mortensen, after Matthews had crossed centre from a narrow angle, hit the bar with Herod out of goal.
There was not a lot in it afterwards with the football as fast as ever and each goal in peril from forwards still playing at an incredible pace in the thick slime.
McCall was playing at outside-left in a Blackpool front line still as menacing in the open as ever.
PACE TELLS
With 15 minutes left the pace was beginning to tell. Both defences were presenting a solid front to the tiring forwards.
Yet when Matthews cut into the centre and shot unexpectedly, Herod had to leap high to reach the flying ball.
In the next minute, too, Ormston raced half the length of the field before crossing a centre which Steele and Kiernan missed in the jaws of a gaping goal.
A minute later Mortensen kicked completely over a bouncing ball from a position where he might have scored.
It was still either team’s game with nine minutes to go.
Three minutes from time Mortensen leaped at a flying ball, grazed the bar with Herod yards outside the ball’s flight.
Result:
STOKE CITY 1 (Kiernan 20 min)
BLACKPOOL 1 (McIntosh 46 min)
People who watched Blackpool lose to Stoke City on Christmas Day would scarcely have recognised the team today.
A City defence which two days ago seemed impassable was constantly being scattered or made to run the wrong way.
A greater strength in the halfback line accounted chiefly for it. Johnston had a game and a half in his new position, was repeatedly taking the ball in the open space and crossing long passes out to the other wing.
Kelly, too, played with a complete assurance in his proper position. In the centre of the line Hayward was fit to be compared with Neil Franklin, which is no mean compliment.
The forwards had nearly another Chelsea match in the open. That, I think, was because they used the long pass in five out of six raids.
There was admittedly a lot of pressure - too much pressure - for only one goal, but the quality of the line’s football could not be disputed.
Matthews should have no new tricks for a Stoke defence, but he was able to produce a few this afternoon in a line which for an hour was stronger on the wings than I have seen a Blackpool attack for a long time.
The line required only one marksman in the inside position to have won this game, valiantly as Mortensen played all the afternoon. Missed chances alone cost Blackpool a point.
MATTHEWS’ LIMP
MUCH to the crowd’s disappointment - and what a reception they gave him when he entered the field - Matthews developed a limp after 19 minutes and was seldom in the picture until the second half when he was much more dangerous.
MORTENSEN STAYS WITH BLACKPOOL
Everything smoothed out
By “Spectator”
TO all those people who in the season’s record Christmas mail have asked, “Are Blackpool going to lose Stanley Mortensen?” I can give the answer in one word today. The answer is “No.”
Clutching a telephone islanded in a sea of letters, all devoted to this one subject, I rang Stan Mortensen this week and asked him to put the public out of its misery once and for all.
His answer should serve that purpose.
“I asked for a transfer and it was refused,” he said. “I asked for it because I was unsettled, not, as a few people seem to think, because I was seeking a bit of cheap publicity.
“Now everything has been amicably discussed. Everything has been smoothed out. I'm content again at Blackpool now, and don’t want to leave. It’s all over.”
"Finis” can be written to this little episode. It was a storm while it lasted in something a little bigger than a teacup, but all is peace and contentment now.
Happier now
IT’S a little late to write “Happy Christmas,” but at least after this statement by the principal in the case, I can write that there should be a Happier New Year at Blackpool now that Mortensen is still to wear a tangerine jersey every Saturday afternoon.
Never have I admired this young forward as I admired him at Chelsea a week ago. A few days earlier he had been the storm centre of a front-page' story. The storm had subsided, but there might have been an aftermath.
Everybody was watching him at Stamford Bridge. Few people knew that he went on the field with a chill which had left him limp and tired. Nobody in the next 90 minutes could ever have suspected it.
Still all-out
FOR Stanley Mortensen at Stamford Bridge a week ago was so fast, so aggressive, so elusive, that I have not seen him equal the game he played.
The London Press went lyrical about him. “Mortensen the Magnificent” they called him.
“I was nearly down on my knees when I’d finished,” he said, “but I think I’d shown them that I was still all out for Blackpool.”
No club can afford to lose a player with such a lion-heart. Blackpool are not to lose him now.
Peter's book
ANOTHER player in the Christmas week news is Peter Doherty, whose admirable book, “Spotlight on football” (Art and Educational Publishers Ltd., 7s. 6d.) is causing a lot of controversy in the game.
I predicted that it would, when I reviewed it a fortnight ago, and wrote, too, that it would soon be a best-seller. It's that also, as it deserves to be.
A few of the critics seem to think that this 33-years-old footballer is the inveterate Irish rebel, always tilting against the windmills, always against the government, simply because he is an Irishman.
They cannot know him, as I know him, as one of the least self assertive of all the stars in this game.
If he is provocative and controversial, as undoubtedly he is this book, it is because he is less concerned with his own future, which should be assured, than with the future of the hundreds of his contemporaries for whom obscurity, and too often near penury, wait.
It is, I know, chiefly on their behalf that he has written those chapters, which, apart entirely from the fascinating autobiography he has to relate, lift the book high out of the common ruck.
Peter has an eight-years-old son called Paul, who is nearly as fond of football as his father. But if Paul follows Peter into professional football I shall be surprised. unless the reforms which his father advocates are adopted sooner than they probably will be.
Blind alley unless -
FOR Peter Doherty has realised already that for 85 to 90 per cent, of the men in the game today professional football is blind alley unless the young players are equipped for a trade or a profession during their apprenticeship days in football.
The four Divisions of the Football League require only 88 managers and 88 trainers from among the men whose playing days are over - and every Saturday afternoon in those four divisions 978 players are fielded, not counting all the extra reserves.
Few, therefore, can remain in the game, even behind those scenes in front of which once they heard the plaudits of the masses.
Forgotten men
AND as there is even a limit to the number of those, licensed houses which prefer ex-footballers as their managers, scores are left season by season telling each other, “There was no future in it.”
Peter Doherty has come out into the open and stated the case of this humble inarticulate minority - the forgotten men.
That in the process he has written a book which will sell in its thousands is merely incidental.
In writing it he has done s service to the game he adorns.
Jottings from all parts
BY "SPECTATOR" 27 December 1947
MISSION TO MILLWALL
MANAGER JOE SMITH was in London last weekend, went down with his team, returned with his team, but was not present at Stamford Bridge to watch his team give their best display of the season.
He was instead in the Lion’s Den at Millwall, watching the London club play Sheffield Wednesday. His mission was not disclosed, but it was not, l understand, for any other purpose than to cast an eye over a team whose directors had expressed an interest in a Blackpool player.
Blackpool’s first reaction now, when a club asks, “Will you part with So-and-So?” is not to ask for a cheque but for a player in exchange. It’s the new fashion in the transfer market.
BOX OFFICE
WHAT good box-office “The Two Stanleys” of Blackpool are.
When the loudspeakers announced two late changes in the Chelsea team for the Blackpool match a week ago nearly 50,000 people scarcely made a murmur.
But when “No change” was reported by Blackpool, which meant that both Stanley Mortensen and Stanley Matthews were playing, there was -a cheer such as is invariably reserved for a goal or other similar major occasions.
As long as they were in the cast, nobody, apparently, wanted his money back.
***
WATCHING Blackpool play Chelsea last weekend - a guest in the coach on the way back to the city from Stamford Bridge was Ivor Powell, the Welsh international half-back of Queen’s Park
Rangers, Third Division (Southern Section) leaders, who were without a fixture.
Ivor was one of Blackpool’s guests in war-time, and would not, I think, have required a lot of persuasion to remain in these parts.
In the end, as he could not play football in Blackpool, he married a girl he met in Blackpool, a charming girl, one of the daughters of Tommy Browell, the Manchester City and Blackpool forward who is driving a Lytham St. Annes bus these days.
Now they’re happily settled near London - and Tommy is a proud grandfather.
EDDIE SHIMWELL must be thinking that everything happens to him during the weekend before Christmas.
Last year he signed for Blackpool on Friday took a train the following morning from Matlock, where he has his country inn, and on a day when the lines were under snowdrifts, reached London only in time to telephone at half-time the Charlton ground, where Blackpool were playing - and where he should have been playing his first game, too.
Now on this ill-starred day in the calendar he has been hurt for the first time since he came to Blackpool, finished the Chelsea match as a hobbling outside-left, but still so game that he was calling for passes out there all the time.
A big heart has this young man from Yorkshire, who during the war was in the first “D" Day wave in Normandy and ended his service on the Elbe.
YOUNG unknown - unknown to the London public - who impressed the Press box at Stamford Bridge a week ago was Andy McCall, the inside forward on the Alec James model, who cost Blackpool £250, which, in these inflationary days, ranks as a little less than the dust in the transfer mart.
I may be wrong, but this forward may yet be Blackpool’s best bargain for years. McCall is not yet the complete footballer, but he has the qualities which may make him one.
Blackpool signed him from Blantyre Celtic shortly before his demobilisation while half a dozen other clubs Were asking, “Shall we? . . . Shan’t we?”
NOTHING in London’s pantomimes equals the quick - change act at Stamford Bridge after the football match each week-end.
Exactly 10 minutes after the teams had left the field in the Chelsea-Blackpool game the arc lamps over the greyhound track circling the football pitch were in position and being tested, bookmakers’ stands were being erected in the main stand paddocks, and a couple of dogs were out at walking exercise on the sanded track.
The traps were all set before the Blackpool coach departed in the twilight.
BEST goalkeeper I have seen this season: Harry Medhurst, of Chelsea. West Ham United let him go to Stamford Bridge. They must still be wondering why. He had one of those afternoons against Blackpool which are the subject of sagas in - the boys’ papers.
He was leaping about, agile as a kangaroo, all the afternoon, reaching shots which were apparently yards out of reach, and yet never playing to the gallery, making it all seem so simple.
Another few games of this quality, and the London Press boys, who require little encouragement on these subjects, will be calling him Frank Swift’s successor.
***
GEORGE (“I’m For Ever Counting Corners”) Sheard, the Blackpool Press steward, counted 15, high above the average, in the Blackpool-Chelsea match last weekend - eight for Blackpool and seven for Chelsea.
His statistical chart revealed, too, that
(1) Jock Wallace took only two goal kicks for Blackpool in the first half.
(2) The Blackpool forwards were not once off-side all the afternoon.
(3) Each team had 33 throws-in.
A draw seems to be a fair result of all this.
***
“WHAT a fine player this inside forward is!” commented one of the critics, writing of the Gillingham-Rochdale Cup replay.
Who was he writing about Dick Withington, the forward who went to Rochdale from Blackpool during the summer, and went as an outside - right, too.
This is the player who was signed with Stanley Mortensen as the South Shields schoolboys right wing before the war and was considered in those days the bigger capture of the two.
His former partner will still tell you, “He’s a fine footballer.” But somebody else seems to think so.
IT was a wartime reunion for Eric Hayward when he went to Stamford Bridge last weekend.
Three of the Chelsea team toured with the Blackpool centre-half in India late in the war - a tour during which it was a commonplace to travel the equivalent of Land’s End to John o’Groats from one match to the next.
The three who were waiting to ask, “How are you, Eric?” were Len Goulden, who, by the way, has been converted at Chelsea into a first-class wing-half, and the two wing forwards, Benny Jones and Bob Campbell.
I HEAR news this week of Frank O’Donnell, the £10,000 centre-forward who left Preston for Blackpool in the days shortly before the war spent only a few months in these parts before going to the Villa, and last season was down in the Forest at Nottingham.
He’s not one of those men who remain in the game until they have to be nearly wheeled out in bath-chairs. The glory has gone for him. So he retired, is living now in Scotland.
There were rumours at one time when he was in Blackpool that he had aspirations to the Roman Catholic priesthood.
ONE comment on the Chelsea-Blackpool match with which Alec Munro was not in agreement. And it praised him, too.
It was the opinion expressed in one of the Sunday newspapers that when he retired to the fullback line for the last 25 minutes of the match he showed what a great defender he might become.
Alec has no ambitions to become a great defender. He realises, I suppose, that they simply don’t produce full-backs at 5ft. 4in - not when the ball’s in the air, as often as it is today.
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