Front line take their chances
DRAMATIC GOALS
Blackpool 4, Leeds United 0
THERE’S something about a Cup-tie. This was no box office match, and yet because it was a Cup-tie all the old excitement was in the air, with rattles clattering and bells ringing, rosettes scattered everywhere on the terraces and embankments.
Leeds United made the unexpected announcement half an hour before the kick-off - a top secret decision which had been disclosed to few people - that Tom Holley, the centre-half, who asked for a transfer a week ago, was to lead the forward line, with Con (“play anywhere”) Martin at centre-half.
Joe Robinson had his first game in big football in Blackpool's goal after waiting a season and a half for it, in the absence of Jock Wallace, somewhere in Scotland.
Community singing prefaced the match as, in spite of the rain, they began to close a few of the gates. There were 28,000 packed in the ground when the players took the field.
BLACKPOOL: Robinson, Shimwell, Suart, Johnston, Hayward, Kelly, Matthews, Mortensen, McIntosh, Dick, Munro.
LEEDS UNITED : Twomey, Milburn, Gadsby, Bullions, Martin, Willingham, Cochrane, Powell, Holley, Wakefield, Hindle.
Referee : Mr. H Bryan, of Tipton. Staffs.
THE GAME
United won the toss and defended the south goal. Not that they had to defend it a lot in the early minutes. Robinson, the understudy, was in action in the first minute, fielding a high falling centre as Wakefield raced down the left wing after Shimwell’s clearance had hit him and given him a clear course.
In the next minute, after Holley had been given a word of remonstrance by the referee for a tackle on Suart, which left the full-back limping, Johnston shot high over the bar with the Leeds defence torn open by the Matthews-Mortensen wing.
HELTER SKELTER
It was the sort of helter skelter pace inevitable in these games. It was surprising that the football had the order it possessed.
The United had been given orders to keep the game open and the ball crossing from wing to wing. They were obeying the instructions to the letter.
In the sixth minute they won a Corner, continued to race on Blackpool’s goal in full line formation.
Yet a goal was near for Blackpool as Munro, with the United’s defence all disunited, crossed into a wide open space a ball which McIntosh lost as the pass skidded away from him in the mud.
MORTENSEN SHOOTS
Two minutes later, too, when at last Matthews was permitted to open a raid, Mortensen took the last pass, shot a ball which cannoned back off Twomey’s chest, was retrieved as the goalkeeper hurled himself forward at the feet of two forwards.
Afterwards Blackpool’s pressure was for a time relentless.
DICK’S GOAL
Matthews opened the raid
In the 15th minute Blackpool took the lead with a peach of a goal.
Matthews opened the raid, glided the ball past Willingham, raced away from the half-back, waited for Gadsby’s challenge, and eluded the full-back on the line.
Out came the ball loose. McIntosh pounced on it and crossed it high and fast. To it DICK leaped, headed a great goal near the far post.
Within a minute, in a nose dive at a low ball. Mortensen missed a post by inches with Twomey near the other post.
BREAKAWAYS.
Yet Leeds, in breakaways, packed menace in their forward line. The great little wing of Cochrane and Powell won the game’s second corner with 20 minutes gone.
It had been a great Cup-tie in these first 20 minutes.
For a time the United played nearly all the aggressive football while Blackpool held the lead, but little else. Two corners these fast Leeds forwards won and a free-kick, a yard outside the penalty area, which Bullions lofted high over the bar.
Almost everywhere the Second Division men were moving faster to the ball, tackling like terriers, shattering Blackpool’s close passing game.
Kelly had to race fast across to an exposed wing to halt Hindle, but could not avert a corner - the fourth won by the United in the first half hour.
Yet in the 35th minute Blackpool escaped and made it 2-0 with a raid that had not a close pass in it.
There was an attack on the left wing which revealed the Leeds defence scattered. Mortensen took Munro’s pass, waited for the full-back’s belated tackle, released a forward pass.
After it McINTOSH raced, reached it with no man nearer him than the goalkeeper, shot it far away from Twomey’s left hand into the bottom of the net.
But again the United came hack, playing the sort of football which is supposed to win Cup-ties if only the forwards will shoot.
These Leeds forwards, however, would do everything else but shoot.
Yet all the raids, which were tearing gaps in a defence, were still being built by Blackpool. Twomey made one amazing clearance near the foot of a post with half-a-dozen men on top of him and some others - all in tangerine jerseys - protesting that the ball had been over the line.
TOOK THEIR CHANCES
Repeatedly, as the interval approached, this gap in the Leeds defence betrayed itself. Into it Blackpool forwards were beginning to race constantly.
All the Leeds pressure in the first half-hour had been worth nothing. Blackpool had taken their chances, and in a Cup-tie that is all a team is required to do.
Half-time: Blackpool 2, Leeds United 0.
Second Half
In the third minute of the half Mortensen took a pass, raced away from the full-back and was outpacing Martin as he fell to earth in the area.
Blackpool demanded a penalty. Mr. Bryan refused one.
This Leeds defence was still inclined to lose position whenever a fast direct pass was employed.
There were ironical cheers when a pass at last reached Matthews. The cheers continued as, once in possession of the ball, he passed two men and crossed a centre which seemed to brush the face of the far post as it passed out with no forward able to reach it.
A minute later, in one of those breakaways to which Leeds had been at last reduced early in the half. Wakefield shot wide of a post from Holley’s pass when he might have shot inside it.
NO SHOTS
The United were still in this game, in it a lot at times. But there was still no shots from a centre forward manifestly out of position.
Holley and Suart took a double knock-out in a mid-air collision with Leeds still raiding and arriving nowhere in particular.
Immediately before the game could begin again Shimwell left the field and was off it for a couple of minutes.
Blackpool won a corner in the next minute, a corner surrendered by a Leeds defence still inclined to panic under sudden spurts of pressure.
HIT OR MISS
Too many hit or miss tackles were creeping in. There had been too many in the game all the time.
Everything was beginning to peter out when, in three dramatic minutes, Blackpool increased the lead to 4-0.
Both goals were as near perfection as goals can be.
Matthews was in the first, almost ambled away from his full-back before crossing a centre which missed half-a-dozen men and then reached the unmarked Munro.
The little outside-left held it, heard a call by MORTENSEN for a pass, gave him it. Before another man could move the inside-right had shot the ball at a great pace past Twomey, hitting it as it crossed his path.
FOURTH GOAL
Two minutes later another long crossfield pass discovered Munro all on his own. Into a centre, where another great gap gaped, the ball was crossed.
Waiting for it was McINTOSH who, winning a race for it with a deserted Twomey, steered it past the goalkeeper as the two men collided a few yards inside the penalty area.
Immediately the United transferred Holley back to centre-half. By then it was too late.
Matthews had a revel all on his own for a time afterwards - a revel which was ultimately ended by a tackle which caused Mr. Bryan to take the offender’s name.
It became merely a case of playing out time in the last 10 minutes. The United went out with a few guns still firing, but that was about all.
Result:
BLACKPOOL 4 (Dick 15, McIntosh 35, 67 mins, Mortensen 65)
LEEDS UNITED 0
The long pass won this game. Leeds were never completely outplayed and. with the sort of relentless football which often wins Cup-ties, were for a time often threatening to win this one.
But whereas the Leeds forwards constantly arrived at shooting range to find a protected goal in front of them, the Blackpool front line tore the Leeds halfback and full-back lines open with passes crisp and direct.
That this Leeds defence was vulnerable to such raids was soon revealed. The longer the match lasted the more palpable this became.
For Blackpool it was merely a case of exploiting it. Once Matthews was given a reasonable supply of passes it was all over or the United, in spite of all their pressure, for there was no man who could hold him.
Neither was there a man who could hold Mortensen as he took passes from his partner and from Munro on the other wing.
This Mortensen-Matthews wing gave Blackpool a passport into the next round almost on its own on a day when the defence took longer than ever to steady itself, in spite of a resolute game by Hayward and another match by Kelly which revealed this young half-back’s class.
Class tells its tale in Cup-ties, but if the United had possessed a centre-forward the Yorkshire team’s defeat would never have been as complete.
It was no great test for Robinson, but the deputy goalkeeper revealed a complete competence and self-confidence in everything.
Last minute cup-tie sensation at Blackpool
WALLACE ABSENT FROM TEAM
Today's statement
By “Spectator”
CUP-TIE SURPRISE AT BLACKPOOL THIS AFTERNOON WAS THE ANNOUNCEMENT THAT JOCK WALLACE, THE SCOTTISH GOALKEEPER, HAD NOT REPORTED FOR TRAINING AND FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE THE WAR WOULD BE OUT OF THE BLACKPOOL TEAM.
The second-team understudy, Joe Robinson, signed from Hartlepools United in the 1946 summer, who played for the club during the close- season tour of Denmark and Sweden, was given his first game in England with the first team.
I have known for weeks that Wallace has been gravely concerned about the health of his wife in their home at Musselburgh, near Edinburgh.
The club have given him permission to go home after every match, and, as an alternative, recently offered him a house in Blackpool for his family - he has three children. The offer was declined.
When last I saw him Wallace said:
“I must be coming to the end of my football career, and I have to think about the future.
“My opinion is that Fought to remain near my home in Scotland, where I worked in the pits before I became a professional. I am certain of employment there.”
Wallace returned to the Scottish coalfields during the war.
EVENTS OF WEEK
The sequence of events this week was:
(a) A telegram to Wallace from the club instructing him to report back for training on Thursday.
(b) A letter and a telegram from Wallace to the club, the first intimating that he would not be playing this weekend and wishing the team “All the best,” and the second containing a request for his insurance cards.
“We cannot understand what has persuaded Wallace to take this action,” commented Manager Joe Smith.
“ He has said repeatedly that he has no grievance with the club, and we have done everything permissible in football law to make him content.
“ He realises that and gave me an assurance about it only a week ago.”
The position will be considered by the board at a meeting on Tuesday.
BIG JOCK
14 years’ service with Blackpool
Signed from Raith Rovers in February, 1934, “Big Jock” Wallace, once on the fringe of Scotland’s team, has been longer in Blackpool’s service than any other man on the present staff.
He has played 220 games for Blackpool in the First and Second Division alone, excluding Cup-ties and wartime matches, and in Blackpool football has become almost an institution.
Once, at Plymouth in December, 1936, he was seriously hurt and taken to hospital, where it was feared at one time that his days in the game were numbered.
In five weeks he was back in a team that ultimately won promotion.
He is under contract to Blackpool until July 31.
WALLACE SAID THIS AFTERNOON -
“FINISHED WITH CLUB UNLESS - ”
AT his home at Wallyford, near Edinburgh, this afternoon, Wallace said that he did not travel to play in the Cup - tie because of a difference with the club.
He refused to divulge the nature of the disagreement but declared that if Blackpool did not settle the matter as he wanted within the next 24 hours he would be finished with the club.
He said that he had undertaken to start work as a miner in a local pit on Sunday night and if he actually began work there he would automatically come under the Ministry of Labour and not be allowed to travel to play for Blackpool.
“VERY GOOD TO ME”
Wallace added that Blackpool had been very good to him in the past, but this issue had made all the difference to their relations.
He sincerely hoped that it would not mean the end of his football career, as, apart from a few occasions when injuries had kept him out of the game, he had been Blackpool’s regular goalkeeper since he joined them in 1934.
Wallace was adamant that he would not play again for Blackpool unless the question was resolved in his favour.
He said that he talked matters over on the ’phone with Mr. Joe Smith, the Blackpool manager, on Tuesday.
“Mr. Smith,” said Wallace, “told me he world phone me on Wednesday, and I decided not to travel unless I heard from him"
Wallace stated that although he had been chosen to play today, he did not realise it was a Cup- tie.
Early today his friends made efforts to enable him to reach Blackpool by air. but Wallace would not agree to the idea.
DIRECTORS’ DENIAL
The Blackpool directors declined to comment on Wallace’s statement except to deny categorically that there was a disagreement between the player and the club.
“We know of no reason whatever why Wallace should be discontented,’ said a member of the board.
“We have given him no reason whatever.”
And now Buchan wants transfer
Another of Blackpool’s Scotsmen is in the news today.
This afternoon Willie Buchan, the inside-forward from Glasgow Celtic, the first player ever to cost Blackpool a £10,000 fee, asked for a transfer for the second time this season. His application will be considered at tomorrow’s meeting of the board.
Playing his first game in England against Preston North End at Deepdale on November 20, 1937, Buchan made his last appearance for Blackpool against Preston again on December 13 this season.
He has played 12 games for Blackpool this season and scored four goals, and his complete League record with the club is 93 games and 35 goals. He made an appearance for Scotland in one of the wartime internationals.
BLACKPOOL’S GOAL FAMINE PROBLEM
Inside marksman is needed
By “Spectator”
AT the end of 25 games Blackpool are in the seventh position in the First Division table with 28 points, trailing 11 points behind Arsenal, and unless there is a wholesale upheaval, out of the championship.
Last season, after 25 games, the team’s total of points was 30, the position in the table fifth, and the leaders, Wolverhampton Wanderers, were only seven points in front.
So at a casual glance, there has been a decline since 1946-47 - a decline revealed in these figures:-
P W D L F A Ps
1946-47 .......... 25 14 2 9 43 44 30
1947-48 ......... 25 11 6 8 35 25 28
Yet there is precious little in it when these records are compared.
What there is, in spite of that deficit of two points this time, indicates, I think, that Blackpool today are fielding a team of greater balance than was fielded a year ago.
Best ever defence
THE forwards this season have scored eight fewer goals, but the defence has conceded 19 fewer and is unquestionably the best defence ever to appear for Blackpool in First Division football.
What has gone wrong, as I am tired of repeating, is that the forwards - a line for the first time in history containing two England men - have too often made a habit of fading out in the goal area.
Time after time this season I have seen this Blackpool team monopolise a match for two thirds of the afternoon and yet finish without a goal or with only one to its name.
Lean period
T'HERE were nearly two months between September 8 and October, 25 when in nine games this line which on paper appears to be one of the best ever recruited by the club, shot only six goals - six goals in 13£ hours, or an average of less than a goal every two hours.
It was only because during this sequence the defence conceded only five goals - an unprecedented achievement by a Blackpool defence in the First Division - that Blackpool did not tumble down the table as fast and with as disastrous consequences as Humpty Dumpty fell off his wall.
Never did I think the day would come when I should be writing of a Blackpool defence retrieving the club’s fortunes and atoning for the failures of a front line. It’s been the other way about for years.
More shots at goal
YOU can call this, as a result, the topsy-turvy season, with everything upside down.
Yet there are signs that the Blackpool goal famine is ending.
The five goals against Everton week ago may have a false value and create a fictitious impression of a forward line at last beginning to shoot again.
But at Chelsea a fortnight earlier, and in a lesser degree at Stoke, even if this was another of those games in which Blackpool laboured mightily to produce one goal, these forwards began to reduce the passes and to increase the shots, which, reduced to its simplest terms, was about all that was required.
It is, nevertheless, obvious that unless George Dick can produce week after week the game he played against Everton, Blackpool will have to find somewhere a big scoring forward for one of the inside positions.
Just a rumour
THE story which went into circulation a week ago that Stanley Mortensen had been offered in exchange for Wilf Mannion, the England and Middlesbrough inside-left, can be dismissed as yet another of those rumours.
But it is a fact that Blackpool for weeks have been searching for an inside forward with a scoring reputation, and are still searching.
It was in the course of this quest, as George Farrow was being offered on the market, that unexpectedly the new outside- left was signed.
The approach of Sheffield United came out of the blue. Blackpool were casting covetous eyes on Walter Rickett a year ago, were prepared to sign a big cheque for him, would have taken him on the day that Eddie Shimwell was transferred in December, 1946.
The United were firm in their refusal to part with a wing forward who finished the season with 14 First Division goals.
Blackpool had written off this ex-steel foundry worker as one of those men no money could buy when the United dropped their little bombshell with the message: “We’ll exchange Rickett Tor Farrow.”
Partner wanted
THIS may mean the addition of another forward to the front line who can shoot goals. Find him a partner who can shoot them, too, if Blackpool do not already possess such a man, and Blackpool should have in the field the best team ever to wear the tangerine, except for the famous wartime team of all the talents.
Blackpool can afford to pay for the player they want. There is credit balance on transfers, shrewdly, negotiated by Manager Joe Smith, of not less than £10,000 during the last season and a half.
Blackpool will spend the lot for the right man - if they can find him and if (two big “ifs, I grant) his club will part
Jottings from all parts
BY "SPECTATOR" 10 January 1948
LAST week I wrote of a plan prepared by Mr. L. Hargreaves, one of the Supporters’ Club’s ardent officers, for the lengthening of the shelter on the east side of Bloomfield-road ground.
This week he submits another designed to increase the capacity of Spion Kop by 6,000 people, in this blue-print for the near future - for he thinks it can be done within a couple of years - there would be two tunnels feeding the Kop, which would be increased in height, with all the turnstiles admitting to it concentrated at the rear of the ground.
Permits for labour and materials for both projects would have to be granted. But as other clubs have been granted them - why not, asks Mr. Hargreaves, Blackpool? Only Whitehall can answer that one.
***
IN this column a week or two ago I nominated Harry Medhurst, of Chelsea, as the best goalkeeper I have seen this season.
Twenty - five thousand people at Derby now hold a similar view. He left the field after Chelsea’s defeat at the Baseball ground with the 25,000 people applauding him and every one of the Derby players joining in the demonstration.
And only last season West Ham let him go for a fee which Chelsea could multiply by four or five today.
PLAYING against Blackpool for Wolverhampton Wanderers next week may be a new pocket edition forward, Jimmy Stevenson.
It will be a little ironical if he has a big success, for he is one of the young men discovered in the Wanderers’ nursery at Wath, and O.C. of this nursery is Mark Crook, the Blackpool forward, who in the long ago followed Major Frank Buckley to the Midlands.
T. G. (“TOM”) JONES, Everton centre-half, chosen from among all the centre halfbacks of the four countries to play for Great Britain against Europe last May, will soon be thinking that Blackpool is his hoodoo team.
Last weekend he was crippled early in the game at Bloomfield- road. Last season, in the match between the clubs at Goodison Park on Good Friday, he headed the ball past his own goalkeeper to give his bogey team a point in a 1-1 draw only a few minutes from the final whistle.
“I can do nothing right against Blackpool,” complains “T G.” who now misses this afternoons Cup-tie and may be weeks before he is back in First Division football again.
THE new generation takes over. The son of Matthew Barrass, the forward who played for Blackpool in the early 20 s before going to Manchester City, scored the goal which won Bolton Wanderers a point against Burnley a week ago.
On the day he shot this precious goal, the son of Jim McClelland, another ex-Blackpool forward, scored another which won a game for Blackburn Rovers against the Wolves.
Jim McClelland is a coach for Manchester City these days. His son, still serving in the R.A.F., is one of a succession of centre- forwards fielded by the Rovers this season.
Another - he scored the goal which won a point from Blackpool at Ewood Park - is “Verdy’ Godwin, who lives in Cambridge- road, Blackpool, but, I learn, comes from Blackburn and went to Moss-street School there,
AFTER the game he played for Blackpool last weekend, Doncaster Rovers and Sheffield Wednesday must be regretting that they did not make a convincing offer a few weeks ago for George Dick,
Blackpool’s forward from the B.A.O.R., who stormed back into form against Everton.
This ex-cruiserweight champion of the occupation forces in Germany - he served in the Guards - has a curious scoring sequence. Either he finishes a match without a goal or scores a couple.
The last four times he has scored for Blackpool he has finished the match with a “2” after his name in the goal sheet - against Preston, Chelsea, and Sheffield United last season, and now against Everton,
***
THE last time a Blackpool forward line scored five goals in a First Division game - before last weekend’s defeat of Everton - was on October 8, 1938, when Chelsea were beaten 5-1 at Bloomfield- road.
Frank O’Donnell had a hat-trick and another Scot, Willie Buchan, scored the other two.
Blackpool’s highest score ever in the First Division was 7-2 against West Ham United on April 2, 1932. The marksmen: Jimmy Hampson, Albert Watson 2 (1 penalty), Tom Douglas 2, Monty Wilkinson, and a West Ham full-back, so surprised by this avalanche that he put a seventh through his own goal. Although he was not half as surprised as the Blackpool public!
***
PEOPLE have been saying, Walter Rickett won’t be too pleased about being put in the Blackpool second team last weekend.”
That shows that they don’t know this ex-steel foundry worker, who is one of those men who will go anywhere for a game of football.
When he was asked if he would make his first appearance for the Reserve at Bury, his answer was: You bet I will - all I want is a game.”
Eddie Shimwell says of him, “A grand clubman,” and the Blackpool full-back should know, for he played a season or two with him at Bramall-lane. They still think in Sheffield that Eddie Shimwell for £7.000 was one of last season’s best bargains.
HOW is it that George Farrow went to Sheffield United instead of Doncaster Rovers? The answer is simple. Blackpool wanted an exchange of players instead of a fee.
The player they wanted at Doncaster was the inside foward, P. Todd, watched several times by Manager Joe Smith, who has always been impressed by him - and by his record of 24 goals in the Northern Section last season.
The Rovers almost decided to part with him, ultimately said: We can’t afford to.”
Whereupon in came Sheffield with the offer of Walter Rickett. Blackpool agreed without a second’s hesitation - and after the games he has played against Blackpool in the last two years I am not surprised.
Ex ’Pool players
NOTICE the ex-Blackpool men among the goals last weekend?
Jim Blair for Bournemouth; Douglas Blair for Cardiff, who are still fielding this former wing-half as a wing-forward; Peter Doherty a penalty for Huddersfield; Ronnie Dix another penalty for Reading; Eddie Burbanks for Sunderland.
For once Hugh O'Donnell missed for Rochdale and Bob Finan for Crewe but it was from the pass of another ex-Blackpool forward Cyril Lawrence, that one of Rochdale's goals came.
In the Barrow goal, too, Alec Roxburgh continues to defend the only undefeated away record left in the country.
NEXT WEEK'S MATCH
'Pool to meet the wolf pack
THEY no longer call the Wolves of Wolverhampton where Blackpool play next week, by their last season’s proud title of “Mr. Vizard’s Wizards.”
For the Wanderers these days are nearly as inconsistent as Blackpool, which is saying a whole lot.
Consider recent results, A win on New Year’s Day at Middlesbrough, where Blackpool lost 4-0, was followed last weekend by a 1-0 defeat at Blackburn, where Blackpool played a 1-1 draw.
So that merely indicates that anything might happen next Saturday.
There was nearly a sensation in this game last season, for the Wanderers leading the First Division by four points at the time, were losing to a Stan Mortensen goal at the interval, and had been outplayed for 45 minutes.
Later the wolf pack bared its fangs, and Blackpool’s hour of glory ended, this one goal lead going with the wind in 12 dramatic minutes early in the second half, and the Wanderers winning the day 3-1.
It is possible that Walter Rickett will make his first appearance as a Blackpool forward in this game.
A NEW financial year has started and we hope to announce soon the date of the annual general meeting of the club.
Please watch for this announcement as we are hoping all members and prospective members will come along to this meeting - your meeting.
Membership
OLD members should renew their membership for the current year either by paying 2s 6d. at the club hut at the south-west corner of the ground or by sending it along to Mr. T. Newton, the treasurer, c/o Bloomfield-road. Please either take or send your membership card.
Club flag
THAT keen member of the ladies’ committee and enthusiastic supporter, Mrs. E. Turner, has made and presented to the Football Club on behalf of the Supporters’ Club a new flag in tangerine and white.
The next venture is to make new corner flags.
Snooker
THE semi-final and final of the - players’ snooker tournament, which will be open to the public, will take place at South Shore Hotel a week on Monday.
The semi-finalists are Jimmy McIntosh, Stanley Matthews, Harry Johnston and either Ronnie Suart or Joe Robinson.
Tower dance
THE Tower has been booked for a dance to be run by the Supporters’ Club on St. Patrick’s Night, March 17,
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