Were on top all the way
FULHAM’S PLUCKY 10
Fulham 0, Blackpool 2
QUEUES were waiting outside Craven Cottage at eight o’clock for the Fulham-Blackpool Cup tie. Hundreds of Blackpool people were in them, squatting on camp stools, served by a mobile canteen selling meat pies and cups of tea.
By noon the files were hundreds of yards in length outside every gate. At 12-45 the gates opened. An hour before the kick-off they were beginning to close them one by one until at 2-30 the last were shut with 45,000 packed on every terrace.
In the air was an excitement as tense as I have ever known before a match.
People up in the north-west, who complain that the Blackpool public take their football too seriously and never make a noise about it, would have had to revise their opinions at Craven Cottage on this memorable afternoon.
For an hour while I sat in the Press box, enlarged for the 74 newspapermen at the game, there was a constant hubbub of rattles and nine out of every 10 of them had tangerine colours flying from them.
Bugles were blowing, bells ringing. Pipers and drums paraded for an hour and a half before the teams took the field.
POLICE CLEAR PATH
Patrol cars and mounted police had to clear a path from Blackpool’s coach to the players’ entrance with thousands of people still milling outside the gates at 2-15.
There was a minor last minute sensation when Fulham announced that the Irish international goalkeeper, Ted Hinton, was not to play, that a reserve, Radcliffe, signed on a free transfer from Bury two years ago and who has seldom had a first team match, was to deputise.
Hinton was found to be suffering from influenza when he reached the ground.
Despite a temperature of 102 he stayed to watch the game.
FULHAM: Radcliffe, Freeman, Bacuzzi, Quested, Taylor, Beasley, Thomas (S.), Thomas (R.), Stevens, Ayres, Shepherd.
BLACKPOOL: Robinson, Shimwell, Suart, Johnston, Hayward, Kelly, Matthews, Mortensen, McIntosh, Dick, Rickett.
Referee: Mr. A. Meadows (Redcar).
Bedlam broke loose as the teams took the field. Blackpool made their entry beneath an archway of tangerine banners.
Harry Johnston lost the toss. It made little difference, except that the sun was moving round to glare into the goal defended by Blackpool.
Two of Blackpool’s first three passes - the third a long clearance by Suart - flew out towards Matthews, but it was on the other wing that Radcliffe was first called into action, Rickett shooting a low curving ball which the goalkeeper held.
Raids on Fulham’s goal continued, with play composed and not half as fast as I had expected.
The Fulham forwards crossed the halfway line once in the first three minutes. That raid Shimwell halted.
MATTHEWS
There was no close watch on Matthews in these early minutes.
Twice he escaped from Mortensen’s passes with a quarter of the field open in front of him, the second time racing to the line before crossing a low ball which appeared to bounce out of Radcliffe’s knees with three forwards waiting nearly under the bar for it.
Blackpool’s pressure on the right wing seldom ceased, Radcliffe punching one centre after another from this exposed flank.
Then he only half hit one, and Johnston missed the ball which came bouncing fast at him in a shooting position.
At last Fulham’s direct forwards went into action.
Bob Thomas took a pass inside the full-back, and shot wide at a great pace from 30 yards.
FIRST CORNER
Then after Hayward had halted Stevens, a loose ball went out to Shepherd, whose low raking shot Robinson reached and beat out in a dive to his left for the first corner of the match.
Both defences were being outpaced. Fulham’s full-backs were left trailing by yards as Matthews took another pass, decided to shoot himself this time, shot a ball which hit Radcliffe’s knees, and for the second time in the game cannoned out off them.
In the next minute in a raging foray on Blackpool’s left, Freeman crumpled to earth, crawled in pain towards the line, was carried off, both hands clutched to his chest.
In the next minute, in another breakaway, Fulham were close again to the first goal.
Another long forward pass, another pursuit of it by Bob Thomas, and this time Robinson had to gallop out 15 yards, dive at his feet, and snatch the ball away from him.
Another two minutes and Freeman, who had returned, crumpled up again, hobbled to the line for the second time, and was carried to the dressing room.
Fulham were inevitably being reduced to one-man raids down the centre. This man was invariably Bob Thomas, the Inside-right whose goal dismissed Everton a fortnight ago.
In these lone raids Fulham’s front line was remarkably fast, Sid Thomas escaping on the wing in one of them before crossing a centre which Robinson beat out as the offside whistle went.
Fulham, with 10 men, were never as outplayed as they had been with 11.
Often their forwards moved with precision and speed, one crisp pass after another finding Its man. forcing Blackpool’s defence back into retreat.
Pat Beasley, the Fulham captain. retired to the empty post in the full-back line.
NONSTOP
For minutes afterwards it was nearly all Blackpool with the forwards racing nonstop on the Fulham goal, but only once reaching a shooting position when a stray pass appeared to elude Rickett almost under the bar.
Blackpool had nearly dominated 15 of the first 20 minutes, and with the Matthews, Mortensen, Johnston triangle still operating in yards of freedom, or creating these open spaces by its - own craft, the pressure continued.
In the 21st minute, after he had been under attention for nearly 10 minutes, Freeman returned to the fray.
Matthews went on one of his famous corkscrew forays all on his own, swerved two men, sidestepped another, but lost the ball when at last he reached shooting position.
Once, too, as Blackpool’s attacks continued, Hayward actually advanced into an inside forward position before shooting yards wide.
Two minutes later, in the 34th of the half, Blackpool were as near a goal as they had ever been.
There was a fast attack down the centre, Mortensen took the last pass, cut fast past Bacuzzi, shot a ball which was so fast that as Radcliffe clutched at it he lost it and left Taylor to clear off an empty line.
That was an escape for Fulham who immediately had a second as Mortensen went tearing after another pass, had it hooked away from him by Taylor, retrieved it, and forced Radcliffe to race out 20 yards to beat him to the loose ball by inches.
STABBED IT WIDE
Another minute and as Matthews crossed a made-to-measure pass in the centre Mortensen was for once unprepared and stabbed it wide.
Still Blackpool raided. There Was another escape for Fulham, completely overplayed again five minutes before the interval, as Mortensen yet again shot a ball which was skidding wide of Radcliffe as Beasley hooked it over his own bar.
GOAL COMES
Mortensen waits for chance and scores
Yet a goal had to come, and there was only one man who had to score it with Fulham’s defence beginning to open here and there.
It came in the 41st minute. Johnston opened the raid. I think it was Dick who took the pass, glided it forward into an open space.
Into it MORTENSEN always ready for these chances, waited raced after the ball, reached it, steadied himself deliberately as the two full-backs closed on him, shot past Radcliffe fast and low.
About 30 out of the 41 minutes had entitled Blackpool to this lead which gave every appearance of being increased as raid after raid beat on a Fulham defence in which Taylor was magnificent and the two fullbacks as resolute but often outpaced.
Rickett made one position perfectly for himself, cut inside the full-back, shot wide where often in his Sheffield days he has scored.
A minute of the half left, and, in spite of Blackpool’s almost complete command, it would have been 1-1 if Shimwell had not made a great tackle at Stevens's feet as the centre-forward was racing through.
Half-time: Fulham 0, Blackpool 1
Second half
Thousands of boys were clustered over the barriers when the second half opened with ambulance squads working by the dozen on casualties.
Reports from the dressing-room were that Freeman had been taken to hospital by ambulance with his gall bladder hurt. Indications are that he may be seriously disabled.
In the first minute, as the thousands were shouting, “Come on the ten men,” those ten men nearly lost a second goal as Rickett’s shot hit Beasley, and off him rose high over the crossbar.
In the next minute Radcliffe had to leap a great height to snatch away Dick’s high lobbed pass as the tearaway Mortensen raced after it in the jaws of the Fulham goal.
MISSED BY INCHES
Rickett hurled himself at one long pass, missed it by inches as it bounced high over his head with Fulham’s goalkeeper yards out of position and the goal empty.
One perfect raid by Rickett, Dick and McIntosh had the Fulham goal in peril again, Bacuzzi for the second time in the match heading off the line with his goalkeeper near the other post and Mortensen tearing in again to meet the flying ball.
In the end, with Fulham’s four-men attack seldom over the halfway line, Shimwell became a forward and shot one of his old thunderbolts over the bar.
Constantly Radcliffe was in action, fielding a Matthews centre before parrying a shot by Mortensen.
INTERLUDES
Hayward had to cross to an open flank to halt Shepherd in one Fulham attack, and Suart in the next half-minute stopped Quested in his tracks with the wing half running in fast to take a short square pass into an open space.
But these were only interludes in constant Blackpool pressure, however, which was interrupted again as Sid Thomas chased a forward pass and shot a ball which Robin-son beat out as he fell, and, as it escaped him. snatched away from Stevens.
These Fulham men had plenty of courage, refused to surrender, continued to make attacks which had plenty of pace and resource in them.
Quested shot one Blackpool centre only inches wide of his own post with the game massed again in Fulham’s penalty area, and then Radcliffe fisted out Ricketts long falling centre as he fell backward into his own net.
Inevitably in this game Fulham’s defence was beginning to tire, and yet raid after raid it continued to keep Blackpool out.
In the last minute from Mortensen’s pass, McINTOSH raced 40 yards to make it 2-0 and settle it.
Result:
FULHAM 0
BLACKPOOL 2 (Mortensen 41 min, McIntosh 89 min)
It takes a bit of gilt off the gingerbread when a team wins against ten men, but Blackpool were, to be frank, winning this game by good, unexciting football, and even before Harry Freeman left the field.
The only criticism of Blackpool’s forwards today was that only two goals came from no less than 70 minutes’ pressure.
The only report which can be made of Blackpool’s defence is that it almost completely played out the depleted Fulham attack with an assurance at times almost nonchalant.
Except for an infrequent lone raid by Bob Thomas there was little in this Fulham attack which the Shimwell, Suart and Hayward triangle was not able to repel with a debonaire assurance.
Robinson in his few tests was beyond criticism, was as daring and audacious as ever he was required to be.
The front line’s football, aided again by two good wing halfbacks, had everything in it except the capacity to take a chance when it offered itself, to convert the positions it created for itself into goals.
Fulham's defence was magnificent.
Taylor, Bacuzzi and Beasley had presumably never heard of the word “surrender,” and the understudy goalkeeper had a match which he will be proud to put in his record book.
The wing raids of Matthews, who was never watched as he should have been, the fast direct forays of Rickett. on the other wing, and the assertiveness of Mortensen lit the game repeatedly, and, with the other two men always working for the ball, always chasing it, Blackpool in the end had too big armaments for an outplayed but courageous Fulham.
JUBILANT SCENES IN LONDON
A FOUR - O'CLOCK-IN-THE-MORNING SERENADE ON RATTLES AND BELLS OUTSIDE AN HOTEL IN SOUTHAMPTON ROW HERALDED BLACKPOOL’S INVASION OF LONDON TODAY, TELEPHONES “SPECTATOR”
The serenade was for Blackpool's players up for the Cup with a date at Fulham this afternoon but they were not awakened by it because they had been purposely allotted rooms on one of the higher floors.
But everybody else heard it and knew that it was Cup Day again in town.
A few minutes earlier, at Euston, the first football excursion put on the lines by British Railways, every compartment packed to the doors, had arrived.
Blackpool fans who are invariably so reserved and undemonstrative were neither today.
In a fleet of motor coaches and in the special train rattles and bells made a hullabaloo all through the night.
One man came with something new in football's madcap orchestra - a pair of bellows fitted with a brass funnel, which made the noise of a ship's siren wailing up and down the scale.
Others were dressed in siren suits of tangerine and white.
Half a dozen hawked up and down the streets with a board the size of a house door on which was written in capital letters the names of the three teams dismissed by Blackpool this season.
ROSETTES
Men, women and children - boys of six and seven among them - all came to town and everybody wore a rosette the size of a cabbage.
Up and down the West End. into all-night snack bars and out again, they prowled until dawn.
And with the dawn came a thin mist which had not cleared by noon.
It was 10 degrees milder in London than in Blackpool yesterday.
Reports from the ground were that the frost was out of the turf which was as soft as Blackpool have been praying all week it would be.
All the coaches went direct to Fulham ground. Some were outside at six o’clock, but there were no queues until two hours later which was still seven hours before the kick-off.
London soon learned last night that the Blackpool team many of the players’ wives and sweethearts travelling with them, were in the City.
At the Victoria Palace, where the players and all the club’s guests spent the evening, the Crazy Gang were calling out for Stanley Matthews every few minutes during the show, one of them parading up and down the aisles and paging him, while the England forward crouched low in his seat seeking to make himself invisible.
On the train going down there was a gift for every man. not forgetting 12th man. Alec Munro, Mr. Fred Pack, a Chapel-street tradesman, wandering unexpectedly into the club’s saloon and presenting every man with a fountain pen.
AUTOGRAPH HUNTERS
The team purposely spent a quiet morning. Until 11 o’clock they could not poke their noses out of the hotel door without the autograph hunters swooping on them, but afterwards everybody who was going to the match without a ticket had gone.
Tonight, after the game, they are nearly all going to see “Hellzapoppin' ” at the Casino. It will have been “poppin’” for an hour and a half at Craven Cottage.
Mayor's good wishes
A FEW minutes before the kick - off the Blackpool team received the following message from the Mayor of Blackpool (Coun. J. R. Furness. J.P):
“Blackpool thinking of you. Wish you every possible success.”
NEEDED A SOLOMON
The Cup ticket storm
By “Spectator”
THOSE Cuptie tickets! Three into two won’t go, and a quart cannot be poured into a pint pot. Everybody knows all about that, and is not inclined to dispute it.
But the football populace in Blackpool this week has not been persuaded - and is not yet persuaded - that 900 stand tickets and 300 or 400 for the paddocks cannot admit past the turnstiles the 4,000 or 5,000 people who wanted to go to Fulham this afternoon to watch the Cuptie.
When Fulham defeated Everton a fortnight ago in the Goodison Park replay and Blackpool’s sixth round tie was unexpectedly transferred from a ground between 45 and 50 miles out of town to a smaller enclosure 225 miles away in London there were one or two people in authority at Blackpool who considered a little prematurely that at least there would be no repetition of the Colchester ticket stampede.
Within a few days they woke up!
Rail and coach fares, which, even at reduced fares, would, make a day in London a little expensive, increased prices rising to a guinea for a centre-stand seat-all this, and, in many cases, the forfeiting of wages for lost time, too, made no difference.
Cup-mad Blackpool was going to town whatever the cost. It was determined to go, too. not in scores, as most people had expected, but in hundreds.
Fifteen hundred tickets, which was approximately Blackpool’s allotment and which, I know, included only 900 for the stands, could not meet the applications which by telephone, letter and even telegram - blank cheques by the dozen among them - deluged the club’s offices.
3,000 applications
THERE were nearly 3,000 applications in the mailbag at Blackpool days before the tickets even came from Fulham and before at Bloomfield-road they knew the exact number that would come.
Somebody inevitably had to be left out in the cold - a lot of people had to be.
After an allotment had been made to the players and directors, who. after all, were entitled to priority, if not on an inordinate scale, the board set itself the unenviable task of sorting out the 3,000 applications, granting tickets to the majority but being compelled to reject the rest.
Up in arms
AND the rest have been up in arms ever since, alleging all sorts of jiggery-pokery, asserting in dozens of letters to “The Evening Gazette" that they should have been given the preference which had been granted to other people.
It would, I think, have required the wisdom of Solomon, which no football directorate presumes to possess, to achieve a 100 per cent, equitable distribution of the tickets.
I am told that the system which operated was to select the applicants according to the services they had given the club - and it is surprising how many people have served and are still serving Blackpool among the Great Unpaid - and according to the number of years they had held season tickets.
Nothing fairer
IF that system operated strictly, all the time and in every case and I can only take the club’s word for it that it did - nothing could have been fairer.
That there were still left out, as my postbag testifies, people who have been watching Blackpool football for 30, 40, even 50 years, and, as I know from personal experience, have given time and money to the club’s interests, was, presumably, unavoidable.
What other course could have been taken when the demand for the tickets reached floodtide I do not know.
To have invited the public to queue for the tickets when there were so comparatively few for sale might have led to the reading of the Riot Act outside Bloomfield-road inside an hour.
One solution?
THE one solution - if time had A permitted - might have been to have had a ballot among the 4,000 season ticket-holders, 2,000 of them the people who go to every match on Spion Kop or on the eastern terraces, and, whatever the weather, are there every Saturday afternoon.
But even that is questionable.
The truth is that a football club, in common with a government, cannot please all the people all the time - and so few of the people at any time when the ticket allocation for a Cuptie works out at only one ticket for every 10 who might want one.
For that is what it comes to. Blackpool’s regular football public is not less than 15,000. There were 1,500 tickets. Even Euclid couldn’t have worked that one out.
Jottings from all parts
BY "SPECTATOR" 28 February 1948
MARKSMAN No. 1
STANLEY MORTENSEN, the Blackpool forward, leads all the First Division men in the race for goals. He's making no song and dance about it, for that is not his habit, but nevertheless he is number one marks-man in first - class games. He has scored 19 times for Blackpool this season - 14 in the First Division and five in the Cup-ties - and five times for England in the Sweden, Belgium and Wales matches.
That gives a total of 24 and this by a man who twice in the R.A.F. missed death by a hairsbreadth while training for an air crew, and, after the second escape was solemnly informed that he might never play football again.
***
AT Maine-road on Saturday in the trainer’s white coat: Laurie Barnett, the former Blackpoo1 fullback. He has held the trainer’s post at the City’s head- quarters for several years.
One of the last games he played at Blackpool was in the famous last-day-of-the-season match in 1930, when Albert Watson’s late goal gave Blackpool a point in a 2-2 draw and club from relegation in its first season in the First Division.
THIS is probably a record for a home team in a First Division game this season.
The Manchester City forwards played for exactly 57 minutes at Maine-road last weekend before winning their first comer of the match. Then in less than 60 seconds they won three.
And in the end - or, to be precise, half an hour before that first comer - the City won the game, and are today the only team in the First Division yet to take three points from Blackpool this season.
THEY’RE all at it.
While the public are still waiting impatiently for the second edition of Peter Doherty’s “Spotlight on Football” - the first edition went fast as prairie fire in a few days - I hear this week that Frank Swift, the Blackpool fisherman who has become England’s goalkeeper, has a book prepared which will be on sale at the end of the month.
If as many people buy it as have admired Frank both as a goalkeeper and a gentleman - and their number is legion - it will be another best seller.
Another footballer - author is Stanley Matthews, but his book’s publication has been repeatedly delayed. Latest I heard was that it would not be out for another few months.
IS THE Blackpool defence beginning to exploit the old offside game again?
A few weeks ago I wrote that there were signs that nearly all defences were discarding the Bill McCracken technique. Now I am not so sure.
The Manchester City forwards were not often over the halfway line at Maine-road last weekend, but seven times in the second half alone the Blackpool defence stood on a “Howzat?” demand which George Duckworth would not have disowned. Seven times the referee blew his whistle.
All very nice. But is it wise? I have seen too many teams commit suicide as the result of an obsession with the offside game ever to recommend it.
FEW people at Maine-road last weekend knew - or if they ever knew had forgotten - that it was on this Manchester ground in 1930 that a Blackpool team won the first game ever won by a Blackpool team in the First Division.
They won it with conviction, too. It was the second match of the 1930-31 season. Four days earlier Arsenal had won the First Division premiere at Blackpool by 4-1. Whereupon Blackpool went to the City and against all the odds won 4-2 in a midweek match.
The men in the tangerine were: Pearson; Grant, Watson (A.); McMahon, Tremelling, Tufnell, Neal, Carr, Hampson, Oxberry and Downes.
Jimmy Hampson scored two of the goals, and Jackie Carr and Dick Neal the others.
***
WATCHING his brother in the Manchester City goal at the Blackpool game at Maine-road - and cheering, I suspect, for Blackpool all the time - was Fred Swift.
It was nice to meet him again.
He has left football now.
Blackpool missed Frank but signed Fred, who, I recall, played in the first game o f the first promotion season way back in 1929.
Later he played Bolton and Swansea, and was at one time nearly his brother’s equal.
***
BLACKPOOL have played 20 men in the First Division this season. All last season 24 were fielded.
The Reserve have called on 37 already this season, only one fewer than during the whole of 1946-47.
There is not one ever-present in the second team. The two full-backs, Shimwell and Suart, and the centre-half, Hayward, are the only three who have not yet missed a game for the first team.
The two leading scorers for the Reserve are now in the first team, Jim McIntosh and George Dick who have each scored eight Central League goals.
Four men have played at outside-left for Blackpool in the First Division this season - McIntosh, Munro, McCormack, and Rickett. But that’s no record. Twelve played at outside-left during 1945-46.
ONLY 28,838 people watched the Blackpool - Manchester City match last weekend.
This is the smallest attendance at a Blackpool away game this season, the smallest by nearly 10.000, except for the evening match at Huddersfield in the season’s first week.
There were, I think, two reasons. One was the absence from the cast of Stanley Matthews. That would account for 2,000 or 3,000 alone. The other was the cold and snow and sleet.
It was the coldest Saturday afternoon in my experience since the Charlton-Blackpool game in London a few days before Christmas, 1946.
It was so cold that day that Trainer Johnny Lynas reported afterwards that a thin film of ice formed on the water in his bucket. When that happens - it is cold.
JOCK DODDS’ “hat trick” for Everton was his first since he left Blackpool. It should suffice to answer all those folk who tell you that the Scot’s days in big football are numbered.
Dodds is still one of the best centre - forwards in the game on his day. He still holds Blackpool's First Division scoring record for a match - the Middlesbrough game in 1939, when he shot four in succession.
And Dodds still wants a transfer from Everton, who have said "No” three times, and now will probably say it again with even greater emphasis.
BLACKPOOL RESERVE have won only one of their last seven games, and last weekend lost four goals in a home match for the first time since the war.
Some people profess to being surprised. I consider it inevitable. One after one the men of experience have gone. Now the club is having to field every week teams containing immature recruits.
“But,’ says Manager Joe Smith, “they’re learning a lot. learning in the one school that counts for anything - the school of experience.” It is a policy which circumstances have compelled, but it may pay dividends in the end - probably will.
All chance of the championship has gone now. Today the club can employ the Central League for its chief purpose - the training of the men whose names one day may make news in the big game.
***
Unbelievable Not 'Arf!
IN his commentary on the Queen's Park Rangers v. Derby County Cuptie, in London this afternoon, Mr. Raymond Glendenning made a break to comment that he had heard a rumour that Fulham were leading Blackpool by 5-0.
“I give you this for what it is worth” he said, “but I can hardly believe it”
***
City - the last time
ONLY two men who were w in the teams the last time Blackpool played Manchester City at Maine-road in the First Division will be playing next weekend when at last they meet again.
One is No. 1 for the City, Frank Swift, the England goalkeeper. The other wears No. 11 for Blackpool, Alec Munro, the little Scottish outside left.
When the match was played on October 9, 1937, the City held the title of League champions, and yet ended the season as one of the two relegated clubs, a record, but one which no other club covets.
Blackpool were beaten 2-1. Dick Watmough equalised Eric Brook’s first-half goal soon after half-time, but within five minutes Alec Herd put the City in front, and in front the City remained, in spite of being without Frank Swift for half an hour after he had collided with Tom Jones, the Blackpool forward, and gone off the field on a stretcher.
These were the teams in the 1937 match:
MANCHESTER CITY: Swift; Dale, Barkas, Percival, Marshall, Bray; Toseland, Herd, Clayton, Doherty and Brook.
BLACKPOOL: Wallace; Blair (D ), Witham; Hall, Cardwell, Jones (S.); Watmough, Hampson, Finan, Jones (T. W.) and Munro.
***
All the way to Pompey
THIRD successive away game for Blackpool next weekend - unless there has been a draw at Fulham this afternoon.
It will be the longest- distance game on Blackpool’s fixture list - 600 miles to Portsmouth and back.
Blackpool considered last season that it was a journey absolutely necessary, for it ended in a 1-0 defeat of Portsmouth, trained these days by Mr. James Stewart, who for a few years held the post at Blackpool between the wars.
This 1-0 game gave Blackpool a 100 per cent, record for the first four matches of the season - a record which was lost three days later at Sunderland.
George Eastham scored the goal from outside-right in a team which contained only four of the men who were in this afternoon’s Cuptie. The four survivors are Harry Johnston, Stanley Mortensen, Ronnie Suart and Jim McIntosh, and those four were playing in different positions today.
Jock Wallace, Eric Sibley, George Eastham, Willie Buchan and Jim Blair have all gone. Bill Lewis and Tom Buchan are now in the Reserve.
All this has happened in a season and a half. No security of tenure in professional football
Evening Gazette - Monday 1 March 1948
BLACKPOOL v. ’SPURS AT VILLA PARK
Cup semi-finals March 13
BLACKPOOL WILL MEET TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR AT VILLA PARK, BIRMINGHAM, ON SATURDAY, MARCH 13, IN THE SEMI-FINAL OF THE F.A. CUP COMPETITION.
The other semi-final, Queens Park Rangers or Derby County v. Manchester United, has been fixed for the Sheffield Wednesday ground and will be played on the same day.
The draw was made in London today. Both semi-finals will be all-ticket, and the kick-off in each gamp will be at 3-0.
If there is one replay it will be at Wolverhampton on March 20, kick-off 3-0.
If two replays are necessary one will be at Wolverhampton and the other at Maine-road. A replay involving Manchester United would take place at Wolverhampton.
Extra time will be played if necessary in both the semi-finals and the final tie.
Should a second replay be necessary in the Derby v. Queen’s Park Rangers match it will take place at Villa Park next Monday.
***
With whistle and flag
OFFICIALS for the semi-finals are: BLACKPOOL v. TOTTENHAM: Referee, Mr. A. E. Ellis (West Riding); linesmen, Messrs. E. R. Varney (Derbyshire) and C. W. Jessup (East Riding).
Q.P.R. or DERBY v. MANCHESTER UTD: Referee, Mr. T. Smith (Birmingham); linesmen, Messrs. B. J. Flanagan (Sheffield and Hallamshire) and H. Beacock (Lines.),
The Cup Final referee was not announced today.
***
Blackpool should get -
16,000 tickets
I ESTIMATE that Blackpool’s allotment of tickets for the Cup semi-final at Villa Park will be between 15.000 and 16.000.
No official figure has yet been given to the club, and this afternoon the times of sale had not. as a result, been decided.
Villa Park has stands which can accommodate a minimum of 10,000 or 12.000. but it is almost certain that Blackpool’s allotment of stand tickets may be insufficient for the demand.
For the rest of the ground - the paddocks and terraces, several of which are sheltered - Blackpool’s supply should be adequate.
SPECIAL TRAINS
British Railways announced this afternoon, “We can promise three special trains from Blackpool for the match. They would take 2,000 passengers. If there were a bigger demand there is little question that other specials could be commissioned.”
The railway excursion return fare to Birmingham from Blackpool is 24s. l0d.
Later I was told by a British Railways official, “If Blackpool want 10 specials they can almost certainly have them. All we require to know is how many people want to go to the match. However many there may be, we can take them.”
The trains would leave Blackpool between 8 and 9 a.m. and reach Birmingham before noon.
***
WARNING (and not from a gypsy) -
’SPURS LONDON'S BEST SIDE
BY "SPECTATOR"
SO the gypsy was wrong after all.
She said it would be Blackpool and the ’Spurs in the final at Wembley - and that the ’Spurs would win.
Now it is Blackpool and ’Spurs in the semi-final - and nobody knows who will win.
Somebody said as soon as I told him of the draw: “That means Blackpool are in the final.”
It was not Manager Joe Smith of Blackpool, who, when I gave him the news, was as non-committal as ever, but commented, “The, ’Spurs may be a Second Division team - and we’ve beaten two already this season - but they are a good team, too, as the League table and their own exploits in the Cup prove.
“In the Final already? Not until we’ve won - and we have to win yet.”
The ’Spurs are nobody’s Aunt Sallies this time. In London during the weekend I was told by one of the best judges in the game, “The ’Spurs play the best football in town - and that’s counting Arsenal. They’re my tip for the Cup.”
FASTEST ATTACK
That the Blackpool defence will face its biggest test yet in this year’s Cup series is certain, for the Spurs are reputed to field the fastest front line in football today, led by the Channel Islander Duquemin. who is the Second Division’s ace marksman of the year.
Those forwards’ 47 goals have put the ’Spurs in the promotion race.
The defence, in spite of the presence in it of “Non-stop” Burgess, the Welsh half - back, who missed the match at Southampton on Saturday, is not so completely impressive, and yet the 26 goals it has lost in the League is the second lowest total in the Second Division, two fewer than the Blackpool defence has conceded in the First.
In this defence, too, is the left back. Buckingham, who played two Cupties against Stanley Matthews in ’Spurs-Stoke City games last season and ended the two with the reputation of being one of the few left backs who had made a match of it with the “Wizard of Dribble.”
No, it can be no walk-over against such a team as this.
SECOND CLASH
Tottenham won 6-1 in 1913
It will be the second time the clubs have met in the Cup. The first was in 1913. when the ’Spurs won 6-1 at White Hart-lane in the first round.
Not since 1936-37, Blackpool’s promotion year, have the clubs ever clashed. In that year Blackpool played a goalless draw at Bloomfield-road, and won 2-1 in London.
Blackpool have already written one chapter in history by being the first team for years to reach the semi-finals without losing a goal. They can now write another by becoming the first team for even longer to" reach Wembley without meeting First Division club.
WHAT THEY'VE DONE
The two teams’ records are:
Blackpool
v. Leeds United (h) .... 4-0
v. Chester (h) ............ 4-0
v. Colchester United (h) 5-0
v. Fulham (a) ............. 2-0
Total ............ 15-0
’SPURS
v. Bolton Wanderers (a) (after extra time) 2-0
v. W.B. Albion (h) 3-1
v. Leicester City (h) 5-2
v. Southampton (a) 1-0
Total .... 11-3
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