Garrett off: Munro at back
HALF-SPEED DISPLAY
Blackpool 1, Middlesbrough 0
MIDDLESBROUGH came to Bloomfield-road this afternoon for the last Saturday game in the First Division at Blackpool this season. Blackpool fielded only a skeleton of the team which will be at Wembley in a fortnight.
The reduced attendance of 20.000 reflected the big gaps in the cast.
Teams:
BLACKPOOL: Robinson; Garrett, Suart, Buchan, Hayward, Kelly, Munro, McKnight, McIntosh, Dick, Rickett.
MIDDLESBROUGH: Good fellow, Robinson, Rickaby, Bell, Whitaker, Hepple, Spuhler, Dicks, Fenton, Mannion, Walker.
Referee: Mr. J. J. Russell, of Leeds.
Two deputy captains tossed the coin - Eric Hayward for Blackpool and Micky Fenton, one of Blackpool’s wartime guests, for Middlesbrough. Blackpool won and defended the south goal.
Whitaker had to make an any-port-in-a-storm clearance in the first half minute, after Buchan had beaten Mannion to the ball and opened a Blackpool raid down the centre. In the next half minute Munro took the ball almost impudently off Rickaby before crossing a square pass which Goodfellow caught.
DIRECT PLAN
There was plenty of pace and a direct plan in Blackpool’s football. The forwards began by shooting too, even if it was a long way off the target.
Whenever Middlesbrough advanced, which was not often,
Garrett cleared everything on the left flank of a Blackpool defence which was given no sort of test in the first 10 minutes.
Yet when Dicks and Fenton escaped, Hayward had to hook the ball high over his head perilously close to his own goal as the whistle went for an undetected infringement.
A minute later, with Blackpool still raiding almost continuously, a Blackpool forward shot again where Blackpool’s forwards have too seldom been shooting recently and Goodfellow had to fall full length to reach and beat out for the game’s first comer a ball hit low and wide of him at a great pace by Dick.
NOT COMPACT
This Middlesbrough defence of the first quarter of an hour was no compact force, was constantly being raced out of position by a line of spry, shooting forwards.
These Middlesbrough forwards could shoot, too. When the first position offered itself to one of them, Walker took Fenton’s forward pass and shot so fast that Robinson was glad to parry the ball as it rose at him.
Buchan was playing the game Of a First Division half-back, opened another raid which produced a second corner for Blackpool, and yet another which ended when, for the first time, the understudy full-back Rickaby halted Munro.
STEADIER
Defence give forwards fewer chances
There was not a lot in it. Blackpool were still raiding six times to every four raids by Middlesbrough, but there were signs with 25 minutes gone that this Middlesbrough defence was steadying. Shooting chances were becoming fewer.
In the 26th minute a Blackpool goal should have come. Kelly’s super pass put Dick in position, left the inside-left to. lob a forward pass which left McKnight all on his own in front of Goodfellow. But he lost a bouncing ball with the goalkeeper at his mercy. McKnight almost redeemed himself with a shot, then McIntosh shot yards wide from Munro’s pass.
Seven minutes before the interval a goal came, a goal in slow motion.
Into a pack of men Dick lobbed a high forward pass. McKNIGHT took possession of it and almost leisurely, with the entire Middlesbrough defence watching him, waiting apparently for an offside whistle, shot -past Goodfellow.
Some people seemed surprised when Mr. Russell gave a goal, among them 11 men from Middlesbrough, whose protestations eventually persuaded the referee to consult a linesman.
This linesman must have confirmed the decision, for to the centre Mr. Russell pointed again.
WONDER CLEARANCE
If ever a goal was deserved it was this one. Yet within five minutes it would have been cancelled out if Robinson had not made a wonder clearance as Dicks, left all on his own, shot at a great pace.
In the next minute Blackpool had two goals disallowed. Dick headed the first in a dive to a Rickett centre, offered no protests when, silencing the cheering, Mr. Russell said “No goal.” Another half-minute and as the ball crawled over the line, forced over it, I think out of Goodfellow’s arms by McIntosh, a goal was refused again.
Half-time: Blackpool 1, Middlesbrough 0.
Second half
The do-or-die Spuhler won a corner for Middlesbrough early in the half. Otherwise it was still nearly all Blackpool and nearly 2-0 in the third minute when at the end of another raid opened by Buchan. McKnight took McIntosh’s pass and shot barely wide.
Blackpool continued to attack, too, in suite of Garrett developing a limp and hobbling at outside-right for a couple of minutes and ultimately to the dressing room with Munro in the position of a full-back.
That left Blackpool with 10 men and 40 minutes to so. and offered a chance for a Middlesbrough forward line which still seemed curiously reluctant to take it.
SHOTS REPELLED
McIntosh shot wide from a scoring position a minute before Hayward, on the line of a goal almost wide open, twice repelled shots by Walker.
Afterwards Middlesbrough’s five forwards were all out for a goal for the first time in the match.
Robinson parried out for a corner a fast rising shot by Spuhler after the wing forward had escaped Suart for almost the first time in the afternoon.
There were ominous signs at this time that Blackpool’s 10 men might not be able to hold a Middlesbrough front line coming into the game at last.
Raid after raid was repelled afterwards by both defences. Neither forward line could make a shooting position for minutes on end.
HALF SPEED
Middlesbrough were no longer outplayed, but you could write no more than that about football which had reduced itself almost everywhere to half speed.
There was, in fact, no incident of importance anywhere until Munro won a cheer for himself by halting Middlesbrough’s left wing as if he had been a full-back all his days.
With 15 minutes left the only question appeared to be “Could Middlesbrough make a draw of it against Blackpool’s depleted team?”
The answer was “No.” But it might have been “Yes” if Hayward had not made another on-the-line clearance two minutes from time.
Result:
BLACKPOOL 1 (McKnight 38 min)
MIDDLESBROUGH 0.
When a team fielding five reserves and with only 10 men for half a match wins a game, criticism is disarmed. Chief criticism of Blackpool today was that instead of 1-0 it should have been 3-0 or 4-0.
The forward line both before and after that grand full-back Garrett had been disabled made chances against a strange unimpressive Middlesbrough defence. but once it had this defence wide-open it either shot wide or did not shoot at all.
Otherwise, in the open its football in the first hour should have won this game by a distance, and would so have won it if there had been a greater decision at close quarters.
The men who qualified for honourable mention in a game which in the end declined to a patchwork of straying passes were Buchan, whose football was a revelation in its composure and constructive qualities, Hayward, who was always there when at last the defence had to face pressure, and little Munro, even as a full-back for the last 40 minutes.
Inevitably, too, Kelly had a good game. Then he seldom has anything else these days. It was a game to give nobody blood pressure, but that Blackpool won it at all in the circumstances was remarkable. It was indicative, too, of the decline and fall of this Middlesbrough team.
I hear Garrett is due for X-ray on account of possible fracture of the tibia, but it may only be a tom ligament.
CUTTING OUT THE BLACK MARKET BOYS
That’s the ticket, Blackpool!
By “Spectator”
IN a Blackpool cafe one day this week a man was offered a 7s 6d. Cup Final ticket for a guinea. He paid the 21s.
“It was cheap at the price," he writes. “They'll be charging three or four guineas for them before April 24”
Who are this species called they? You ought to know.
You see plenty of them in Blackpool. They are the “wide boys,” the “smart Alecs,” the “ wise guys.
One of them went up and down the country buying 120 tickets for the Blackpool - ’Spurs Cup semi-final a month ago and was left with the lot.
Who’s weeping about that? Not this chronicler.
There is a black market in Wembley tickets operating in Blackpool already. It is not on the big scale. Such are the precautions taken by the F.A. that it cannot be this year. But there are still a few loose tickets about - at a price.
None of them has been acquired in Blackpool.
From other towns
WHEN the Blackpool cafe transaction was being conducted - and from all I hear there was nothing remotely conspiratorial about it - the Blackpool F.C.’s 12,000 tickets were under lock and key at the police station.
This ticket came from another town. Others will come from other towns now that the Fylde coast promises a richer harvest for the black marketeer than any other territory - with the obvious exception of Manchester - in the country.
But if the black market drones make a little fortune out of Wembley again they will not make it out of Blackpool’s ticket quota. Blackpool this time have beaten the black market.
Yet, in outwitting it, inevitable grievances have been created. That has to be admitted. Even the present system of allotment must neglect a few folk who have a reasonable case for inclusion in the lists and yet are not in them.
No qualification, but—
CHIEF among them are the hundreds of people who cannot attend every match but watch the Blackpool team whenever the chance offers itself.
They are not season ticket-holders. They are not members of a club. They have no qualification for a ticket. Yet their interest in Blackpool, and often their service to the game outside the major leagues, would, I know, be recognised as a qualification by the club if circumstances only permitted it.
Blackpool could have offered the tickets on public sale, with the inevitable all-night queues and the rest of the familiar turmoil, after meeting the requirements of the directors and players, who are entitled to rank among the priority groups, the season ticketholders and the shareholders.
The lesser evil
WHAT would have happened?
People would have swarmed from all parts of the country to be in the queues. Hundreds of tickets would have gone out of the area. Dozens of them would have filtered into the black market.
That, I know, has been one of the chief sources of the black market’s supply in recent years. The Blackpool board preferred - a case of choosing the lesser of two evils-to allocate the tickets to recognised clubs and similar institutions in the town.
The bona-fides of all these applications have been strictly scrutinised. When the applications have been unreasonable - and it is unreasonable for one organisation to ask for over 1,000 tickets! - they have been reduced.
When delivered—
IT has been left to the organisers - to ensure that when the tickets are delivered there are no duplications, that they are not issued to members who already hold season tickets or have access to other recognised sources.
Similarly, in the case of the Supporters’ Club, the allocation of tickets should ensure, after the elimination of season ticket-holders and shareholders, that about the first 1,000 members of the club are allotted a ticket each.
The extra 700 or 800 who have enlisted during the last few weeks will probably be left down the field, but as their motives in entering the club were in the majority of cases a little suspect, nobody, I suppose, will be shedding tears over them, either.
The ideal
THE ideal is one ticket per person. It will not work out that way, for in this imperfect world theory is so seldom translated 100 per cent, into practice.
But, at least, this system should cut out the black market boys entirely and should ensure that few of the tickets go out of the Fylde. If that is accomplished it will be a major achievement. Eve/i to seek its accomplishment is at any rate an evidence of the board’s good faith.
It is Blackpool’s misfortune - and in an even greater degree the misfortune of Manchester United, too- that the first time the club has ever sent a team to Wembley the allotment of tickets to the two finalists should have been smaller than ever before in Wembley’s quarter-century of Cup Finals.
Before the war, according to my information, the two clubs who made the match were allocated about 50 per cent, of the tickets, or about 25,000 each.
Last year—
LAST year - and this news is for the benefit of several correspondents who have written on the subject - Burnley and Charlton Athletic had to be content with between 19,500 and 20,000 each.
That gave both clubs a big headache. What a mere 12,000 have given Blackpool and Manchester United is probably beyond medical diagnosis.
Yet both clubs have at least been as fair to their publics as they could be - that, I think, everybody admits - and have persuaded a few of the “smart Alecs” that probably they are not quite as smart as they thought they were.
Which is something that even Mr. Isaacs has not been able to do yet.
Jottings from all parts
BY "SPECTATOR" 10 April 1948
Half-century by Eric
AN ANNIVERSARY which passed unnoticed: Eric Hayward played his 50th successive First Division game for Blackpool at Derby on Easter Monday.
Nobody knew anything about it. It is questionable, if even the centre-half knew that he had become the m first Blackpool player since the war to make a half - century of successive appearances.
Week after week, without expecting the big drums to beat for him, he plays efficient and resolute football.
There are seldom headlines for Hayward - but there ought to be. Eleven of him in one team - and that team would take a lot of beating.
***
PLAYING for Blackpool’s guests at the Mayfair Hotel banquet which will follow the Cup Final will be Geraldo and his Orchestra.
Everybody will be glad about that - including Geraldo who, since he played 20 years ago in the orchestra at the Hotel Majestic, St. Annes, has always had an affection for this part of the world, and, when engagements permit, never misses a Blackpool match in London.
He was one of the famous dance band leaders who sent messages to Harry Johnston on the eve of the recent Cup semi-final in Birmingham.
Charming as ever, unspoiled by fame, is “Gerry," as he still prefers to be called. He will be at Wembley - and not cheering for Manchester United, either.
A FEW memories were awakened for Mr. Joe Smith, the Blackpool manager, when he went to a music-hall in Sheffield last weekend and found Ella Shields was on the bill.
In 1926 this grand artist - and she still is an artist with personality plus - was playing Bolton during the week the Wanderers went to Wembley to win the Cup' for the second time.
Mr. Smith, the Wanderers’ captain, was introduced to her a few days before the match, promised that he would send her a telegram if the Wanderers won. The telegram came, was read on the stage by Miss Shields, who still treasures it among her souvenirs.
It is an interesting fact, by the way, that Joe Smith, the first winning captain at Wembley, will be the first Blackpool manager to take a team to Wembley exactly 25 years later. You can call this a silver jubilee.
***
HOW DO THEY KNOW?
THESE young autograph hunters in football must be experts in mental telepathy over record distances. Or else they employ a new version of the bush telegraph.
At the last minute last weekend Mr. Joe Smith decided that the team should leave Sheffield immediately after the match, and, instead of having dinner at a Sheffield hotel, go to the hotel in Manchester, where Mr. Sam Gaskin, formerly of Blackpool’s Clifton, and still a Blackpool zealot, is manager.
Not half a dozen people outside the team knew of this decision. Yet when the team’s coach halted outside the Manchester hotel dozens of little boys were waiting with their books, their pencils, and their “Sign, please” petitions.
How do they do it? Nobody seems to know.
PRESENTS for Cup Finalists have always been the fashion. But they are not on the grand scale of the pre-war years.
Men in one of the Final teams in the late ’30’s were given a bicycle each before going to Wembley - and a raincoat, too.
Then the public were told in the advertisement columns that ‘All the So-and-So players ride So-and-So bicycles” - or “wear such-and-such raincoats.” Blackpool’s gifts from commercial sources are not yet, and will not be, as generous as this.
But there was a fountain pen for each man waiting at Sheffield and a safety razor set. and for autographing a special make of football two or three of these balls were promised the team.
They make a little hay while the Wembley sun shines, but not such a harvest as they used to make.
T'HERE have, I hear, been moves behind the scenes at Old Trafford to persuade the Manchester United players to revoke their decision to charge fees to all photographers before the Final.
It is common knowledge that Manager Matt Busby never approved of it, and Jack Carey, the United’s captain - and, incidentally, one of the finest players I have seen this season - was not too unashamedly proud of it when he made the announcement.
But the majority in the team still say, “No fee - no photograph.”
Now the majority are a little resentful because of Blackpool’s refusal to act in concert with them. The Blackpool men are adamant in their refusal. It is not the happiest sort of prelude to the match of the season.
IN few games I have seen this season have so few free-kicks been given as in the Blackpool-Sheffield United match last weekend.
It is nice to report it after the rough-house which the first match between the teams at Blackpool in November now and again became.
According to one of Mr. George Sheard’s minute-by-minute charts Blackpool were penalised for illegal tackles only three times in the match and the United only six times.
And not one of those tackles had even a shade of malice or deliberate intent in it. All, after the November hurly-burly, had been forgiven and forgotten. Which is just as it should be.
BRAMALL-LANE was the sixth ground this season where the visit of Blackpool has attracted the biggest attendance of 1947-48.
There were 48,214 people at the Sheffield United match last weekend. For the first time I saw thousands of people massed on the cricket pavilion steps and the entire vast amphitheatre encircled by spectators.
Nearly all the stands hit in the air raids have been repaired. The grass still grows in vivid emerald patches here and there where a few of the bombs fell and the craters were filled and grass seeds planted over them.
Photographs in the boardroom show the pitch after one of the raids, one goal tilted at a crazy angle above the tom and ravaged earth.
***
EIGHT First Division games Blackpool will have played in 17 days when they leave the field at Sunderland on Monday evening.
That’s the biggest marathon in Blackpool’s history. Yet a few of the old brigade would think nothing of it.
Manager Joe Smith of Blackpool will tell you how once during the first world war he played in an inter-Services representative match at Portsmouth one afternoon, and within an hour of the match ending took the field again as a guest star in the regional championship final.
“Tired?” he says. “Not particularly. Often in the Easter matches in the League in the 20’s I’d feel as fresh at the end of the Easter Monday game as at the beginning of the Good Friday match.”
They made them tough in those days, and - if it made any difference - they weren’t on rations.
A FINE sportsman is Harry Johnston, the Blackpool captain.
He had been almost persuaded by the Press notices that he was certain, to be in the England team for the Scottish match this weekend.
Yet when the news came that his reinstatement in international football had again been deferred - and as he is playing now it can only have been deferred - all he said when I talked to him was “Well here’s all the best to Harry Cockburn and Bill Wright, the two wing half-backs they have chosen. They’re both grand chaps and grand players.
“Am I sorry I’m out? You bet I’m sorry. But. there it is. I can do nothing about it.”
Not every player could take it on the chin without a complaint.
***
Blackpool meet danger-zone sides
TWO matches next week for Blackpool’s nonstop team - and then Wembley.
The first game is on Monday at Sunderland, where Blackpool lost last season in a see-saw game which began with a goal by George Eastham - a major event in itself - continued with a couple for Sunderland, and had apparently ended when Eastham, "the man who could not score,” as they called him, got another to make it 2-2.
On time Sunderland shot No. 3 to win 3-2. This was the last big League game Sam Jones ever played for Blackpool.
On to Charlton on Saturday for a match with another team in the relegation belt and disposed to pull no punches. This game last season was one of the most remarkable of the year for Blackpool.
It was played on the coldest day of the winter - and it was a cold winter. It was played on a field which was less a field than a rutted skating rink.
Eddie Shimwell, who had been signed less than 24 hours earlier, was in a train from Sheffield which reached London at about halftime, was told when he telephoned the Valley, “We’re winning; take the next train back home.”
One goal sufficed to give Blackpool the points - a week after Middlesbrough had won 5-0 at Blackpool.
It was a penalty goal, the first converted by Willie Buchan with one of his slow-motion shots. Sam Bartram fell one way - and the ball the other.
Several other goalkeepers tumbled into that little trap afterwards.
Incomparable Stanley
No one will begrudge Stanley Matthews the honour of becoming the first player to be voted “The Footballer of the Year” by the newly organised Football Writers’ Association.
The incomparable Stanley is one of the finest wingers the game has ever produced, and his uncanny control of a ball has baffled the best backs the world over.
He joined Stoke City straight from school, and stayed with them for 17 years before joining Blackpool at the end of last season.
Today he made his 53rd international appearance when playing for England against Scotland at Hampden Park. In January, 1946, he set up an English record of 44 international games, and the Football Association and sportsmen in North Staffordshire made him presentations.
His latest award will take the form of a bronze statuette, which will be presented at an eve-of-the-Cup-Final dinner in London on April 23.
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