BLACKPOOL HAD NO MARKSMEN IN THE TEAM
Wolves, lesson in how to shoot
SMYTH A STAR
Blackpool 1, Wolverhampton Wanderers 3
By “Spectator”
PLAYING their fourth game in a week, Blackpool's two young “A” team apprentices, Jack Wright and Ian Fenton, had to be brought into service again for this visit by Wolverhampton Wanderers.
It was, I learn, only at noon that Stanley Matthews, who was not as fit as he prefers to be, was definitely passed for the match. Every day Blackpool’s dressing room seems to bear a closer resemblance to an out-patients’ ward at a small hospital. The Wanderers played the men who defeated Manchester United in midweek, including Billy Wright, the England half-back.
There were signs half an hour before the kick-off that it was to be another full house, and 15 minutes later all the gates admitting to the terrace at the south end were closed to avert congestion in the corners.
For the first time that I can recall on this ground, a couple of cheer leaders were in commission - one for the visitors beneath a yellow and black umbrella, and another for Blackpool in front of Spion Kop, but the Blackpool leader soon went out of business.
It was the sort of day that cricketers have been praying for and have so seldom been granted all the summer.
BLACKPOOL: Robinson: Suart, Wright (J), Fenton, Hayward, Kelly, Matthews, Mortensen, McIntosh, McCall, Rickett.
WOLVERHAMPTON WANDERERS: Williams; McLean, Springthorpe, Crook (W), Shorthouse, Wright (W), Hancocks, Dunn, Pye, Smyth, Mullen.
Referee: Mr. J. Briggs, of Cheadle.
THE GAME
Eric Hayward lost the toss for Blackpool who had to defend a north goal in such a glare of sunshine that Joe Robinson at once put his cap on.
There was an uncommon incident which might have cost Blackpool a goal in the first minute. Hayward moved to a ball crossing from the right, was impeded by the referee, lost his man, and with it the ball which, in the end, flew high in front of Blackpool’s goal with no Wolverhampton forward near it.
Twice Fenton opened raids on Blackpool’s right flank. The second ended in Matthews walking past Springthorpe before centring a ball which Williams held in mid-air in a swarm of men on his goal line.
Kelly atoned for one error by halting Jackie Hancocks the first time this menacing raider was given an open position.
MATTHEWS’ HEADER
A minute later, in the sixth of the half, Blackpool might have gone in front. A loose ball reached Matthews. Up to it he leaped, actually headed it over Springthorpe’s head, left two of his forwards almost on their own in front of Williams.
On to the ball McIntosh raced, shot it when he could have steadied himself, sliced it wide with Mortensen standing a couple of yards from him and in a position where he could scarcely have missed that elusive 100th goal.
Blackpool’s goal was as near downfall in the Wolves’ next raid, Mullen cutting through fast on the Wanderers’ left before presenting Pye with a position where the big leader should have scored, but from which he shot so excitedly that Suart, racing back to close the gap, appeared to clear the ball almost off the line.
OPEN SPACES
Wolves find shooting positions
These Wolverhampton wing forwards were finding a lot of open spaces out on the flanks.
From one of them Hancocks shot a low fast ball which Robinson punched out with both fists.
With the Wanderers pressure continuing, it was only two minutes later that the Irishman Smyth hooked a right wing centre inches wide and at a pace which would have beaten any goalkeeper.
Another couple of minutes after that, Mullen raced inside from another unguarded position, shot a ball which hit the face of the far post and cannoned out again.
Mortensen missed on£ possible chance given him by Matthews, and in another Blackpool raid McCall half hit from McIntosh’s centre a ball to which Williams fell full length before parrying it on the line
TOO ELUSIVE
Afterwards Blackpool were of tin moving fast on the Wanderer's defence. Nearly all these raids were built on the right wing where Matthews was too fast and too elusive for every man sent out to watch him.
Then came an unusual episode. The ball was crossed from the right, Williams, leaped to it, and there followed for Blackpool an indirect free kick less than a couple of yards from the Wanderers’ goal line.
It was nearly a minute before it could be taken with the men lining up and scattering and lining up again. In the end, after one of the Wanderers had been given a lecture by the referee, Matthews crossed the ball low into a swarming scrum almost under the bar and watched it cannon out into an open space.
Blackpool were not outplayed but every time the Wolves’ forwards advanced there was menace in every pass and a punch in every shot.
Robinson brilliantly punched out one of Hancocks’s thunderbolts.
WOLVES SCORE
In the 28th minute one of these fast direct swoops by the Wanderers produced a goal.
It opened with a forward pass which SMYTH, brushing past two men, took and raced away with before shooting into the roof of the net.
Afterwards Blackpool’s goalkeeper was under almost constant fire from a line of forwards playing some of the fastest and most direct football I have seen this season.
Why a second goal was disallowed seven minutes before half-time I could not understand. The ball was crossed from the left. Hancocks, who had wandered into the inside-right position, shot it as it fell, shot it so fast and low that it was in the net with Robinson still falling to it.
All the Wanderers’ jubilations were abruptly silenced by Mr. Briggs, who, for no reason discernible from the Press box, refused a goal.
Half-time: Blackpool 0, Wolverhampton 1.
SECOND HALF
This was a game of uncommon incidents. There was another in the first two minutes of the second half when one of the Wanderers’ half-backs was rebuked by the referee for kicking the ball away in order that he could retire to his position before a free kick was taken.
From the kick. McCall shot over the bar.
Another two minutes and something again distinctly uncommon happened - a goal for STANLEY MATTHEWS, only the second he has ever scored for Blackpool in the First Division.
It was a freak goal but it counted. On to a pass the outside-right went, raced down the wing, halted in a yard as only he can. to let his full-back gallop past him
FALLING CENTRE
From the open position created he crossed a high falling centre. Williams leaped and with the sun glaring into his eyes lost it. juggled with it under the bar. and at last it escaped his grip and fell over the line.
TOO SOON!
Another three minutes and they were cheering Mortensen’s 100th goal, but cheering it too soon for Mr. Briggs properly disallowed it as the inside-right shot from a position palpably offside.
There had been an almost complete fade out of the Wanderers’ dominant attack during these passages and in the moves which succeeded them.
For the first time the Wanderers were retreating everywhere.
Wright was as composed and decisive in the tackle as a fullback who had been in the First Division for a season instead of Jess than a week.
Twice in rapid succession he repelled raids on his wing.
BLACKPOOL ON TOP
With 15 minutes of the half gone Blackpool were dictating the half as the Wolves had dictated the match before the interval.
Mortensen shot a free kick fast at Williams from. 30 yards out. and in Blackpool’s next move hurled himself in a flying leap at a Fenton centre which Williams held brilliantly under the bar.
The Blackpool forwards were moving almost without interruption on the Wanderers goal. Yet there was still no marksman to complete the raids. McIntosh shot slowly wide of a post after Mortensen’s pass had given him position.
For minutes Robinson was in action only in snatching away haphazard centres
HIS OLD SPEED
Fifteen minutes were left and that 100th goal was near again. This time Mortensen revealed all his old speed, outpaced two men in a solo spurt from the halfway line, lost the ball, got it again, and, in the end, with two men at his heels, hooked it -over the bar.
All against the course of events in this half, the Wanderers went in front for the second time with 15 minutes left.
This was a goal which should never have been scored. McLean, the full-back, opened it when he went down the wing like a wing forward and crossed a lobbed pass inside.
On to it SMYTH pounced. All that happened afterwards was confusion. Out came Robinson. For a split second the ball was lost in a maze of men in front of an open goal. Into this goal the ball fell in a slow arc with half the Blackpool defence chasing it as it fell over the line a couple of yards in front of its massed pursuers.
THIS SETTLED IT
Four minutes later the Wolves made it 3-1 and won the game.
This was a grand goal. Smyth was in it again, zig-zagged past two men before putting a pass inside which left DUNN to shoot from a couple of yards inside the area.
Result:
BLACKPOOL 1 (Matthews 49 min)
WOLVES 3 (Smyth 28, 75 mins, Dunn 79 min)
The Wanderers deserved the points in this match for the fast, assertive football which their forwards played in the first half.
Yet it was a game which the Wanderers might have lost and probably would have lost in the first half hour of the second half if Blackpool had possessed one marksman, one forward who could shoot as three of the five Wolves’ forwards were shooting ail the time before the interval.
During that half hour Blackpool had a forward such as McCall who was playing neat, elusive football all the time, if inclined to make one move too many, and another forward called Stanley Matthews out on the right wing from whom scoring chances came perfectly.
But there was no forward who could shoot goals.
For six hours now Mortensen has been seeking that 100th goal.
It simply will not come. The presence of the two young recruits was scarcely perceptible. Young Fenton was a competent defensive half-back, and it was not on Wright’s wing that the chief menace to Blackpool’s goal was offered in the Wanderers’ storming first half. This young full-back had a triumph.
Greater punch in front of goal would have won Blackpool this match.
Yet, taking it from beginning to end, nobody could reasonably dispute the Wanderers’ title to the game.
TEAM-BUILDING WITHOUT
CHEQUE-WAVING
By “Spectator”
IT IS NOT ALWAYS THE CHEQUE BOOK WHICH CREATES THE GOOD TEAM, EVEN IN THESE COMMERCIALISED DAYS IN FOOTBALL.
The Blackpool team that nearly ended Derby County’s undefeated record this week contained only two men who had cost transfer fees.
And one of those fees, the £1,000 paid to Port Vale for Eric Hayward before the war, ranks merely as petty cash in the present inflation.
At Blackpool they prefer the youth movement
NINE free men in a First Division team. It's not a is a record, but it is a cause for pride.
Two days earlier, in the Central League, Blackpool had in the field a team which cost nothing whatever. It lost, but surrendered only in the last few minutes, and, according to all reports, nearly won.
At last, it seems, Blackpool are reaping the harvest of those nursery teams which, unhonoured and unsung, have been playing outside the limelight of the big leagues since the war.
Three of these sides are in action this season.
One of them, the “A” team in the West Lancashire League, has already supplied the Central League eleven with half its present players, and when two of them were called at short notice into the First Division this week neither Ian Fenton nor Jack Wright appeared too manifestly out of his class.
The full-back Wright promises, in fact, to be a second Tom Garrett, another “A” product who one of these days, unless I am wrong, is going to be recognised as one of the best fullbacks in England.
Nor should it be forgotten that already the new “B” team in the Manchester League has given the club a promising young goalkeeper, the acrobatic Frank Jump, at a time when goalkeepers at Blackpool have become nearly as precious as rubies.
Not depressed
IT was not, therefore all that surprising to find Mr Joe Smith, the Blackpool manager and chief architect of this youth movement, still cheerful after the loss of a point to Derby County.
“You can always buy a team - at a price,” he told me, probably reflecting on the extortionate figures he has had quoted to him in the last two seasons for players of no particular reputation.
“But it’s always preferable to build your own team if you can, It’s a long-term policy, but in the end it pays.”
The Blackpool chief on this occasion had another reason for thinking that even a football manager has his little consolations.
Those cheers
IT IS only a few weeks ago that Mr. Smith, invited to address the annual meeting of shareholders, asked, “Give the lads cheers, instead of jeers,” and told this meeting that there were times when in home games his team had often complained that they might have been playing away, so little encouragement were they given by the Blackpool spectators.
I know that this is - or is supposed - to be a free country.
Blackpool, top, is such a cosmopolitan community that the almost fanatical devotion to the home team which expresses itself at so many other grounds can never in these parts be expected.
As a personal opinion, I prefer the comparatively unexcitable and even critical Blackpool fan to his rabid counterpart elsewhere, for the latter sometimes loses all sense of fair play.
Happy medium
YET there is a happy medium.
And, at last, there are signs that the Blackpool public are finding it.
I noticed at the Derby County match that there were cheers for a battling Blackpool team, even when it was in retreat, and cheers when it was attacking. Obviously, the entire team reacted.
I am not so sure, in fact, that not only 11 men on the field but about 30,000 others watching them did not win an unexpected point for Blackpool out of this match.
The circumstances, I know, were exceptional. Blackpool were playing against the odds with a couple of recruits in the defence. To play one of the undefeated leaders of the Division nearly at times to a standstill in such circumstances was something to excite even the strictly impartial.
Appreciated
"YET," said Mr. Smith, “I know this - that those cheers made a lot of difference, made nearly every man in the team give that little extra ounce, make that little extra inch. I appreciate it a lot.”
And so. I know, did the 11 players. There is no reason to ration cheers. There are plenty of other things rationed already.
Derby - then a Derby game at Bolton
By “Spectator”
THE two - games - a - week serial ends for Blackpool next week. One match a week will seem almost a holiday after this marathon.
First game is the return at Derby on Wednesday evening. The goal in a 1-0, game in which Blackpool were defeated at the Baseball Ground last Easter was almost historic, for it was the last ever scored for the County by Raich Carter before he left for Hull.
The fact that it was a disputed goal made no difference. It won the game.
On to Bolton on Saturday. The Wanderers have never lost at Blackpool for over 30 years in a league match, but have lost several times at Burnden Park. There were times when they nearly lost last year’s game, but a goal by Nat Lofthouse, the centre- forward Blackpool were seeking all summer, was sufficient to settle the match, which, by a coincidence, was another 1-0 game.
It is less than a year ago that this match was played at Bolton. Yet three of the Blackpool men in it, Wallace, Willie Buchan and McCormack, have since been transferred, and, except for the fullbacks, not a line in the present-day team has retained its entire personnel.
This was the 1947 team:
Wallace; Shimwell, Suart, Lewis, Hayward, Johnston, Matthews, Munro, McIntosh, Buchan (W.) and McCormack.
They come... and they go.
Jottings from all parts
BY "SPECTATOR" 11 September 1948
For Stanley - SUNDERLAND NO WONDERLAND
THERE’S something in this horse-for-course theory in football.
The Villa can never win at Blackpool nowadays. Bolton Wanderers have never lost at Blackpool since the first of the two world wars. There's something, too, in a players-for-grounds theory.
Stanley Mortensen never thinks he will have a good game at Roker Park, where, being so near to his home town of South Shields, he would probably sooner play a good game than nearly anywhere else.
It is a fact that this Blackpool forward has never in three visits scored a goal at Roker.
Sunderland are one of the only two teams in the present First Division - excluding the two promoted clubs - against whom he has not scored. The other is Burnley.
Bird of play
I HAVE seen all sort of strange things happen on football fields. But not until I went to Roker Park last weekend had I ever seen a parrot in a First Division match.
It came to earth close to one of the touch-lines as the entire Park went mad about Len Shackleton’s equalising goal. How it came there I shall never know. Few other people know either.
General theory is that one of the fans in the paddock beneath the main stand took the parrot to watch the match, and, in his excitement when the goal was scored, flung the bird in the air.
Reports that as it hit the grass, it croaked, “Good old Shack!” are entirely without foundation.
NEWS of Alan Fletcher, of St. Annes, a prewar reserve halfback at Blackpool. He is still playing for Mossley in the Cheshire League, where last season another St. Annes footballer, Ray Goodwin, was also on the staff.
Ray has transferred to Great Harwood, appeared against Lytham last weekend, and told a colleague that his brother, Phil Goodwin, the boxer, who was put out of action months ago after breaking both thumbs, hopes soon to be fit and in the ring again.
A STUPID rumour is on the rounds in Blackpool that it was because of the Blackpool players' objections that the guest footballers who trained at the ground during the last two seasons have had the ban put up against them.
There is not a word of truth in it. The prohibition was a decision by the board who, however reluctantly, came to the conclusion that in the interests of club discipline, it was unwise to offer indefinitely training facilities to other clubs players.
No reflection was intended on those players, who, in fact, were offered the freedom of the ground outside the Blackpool training hours.
But the Blackpool playing staff had nothing whatever to do with it. As one of them said who I met this week: “I’ve a home in Blackpool, and, if I ever left the club, I’d still want to train here. This ban means that I couldn’t."
WHO is the fastest man on Blackpool’s books? They should have a race sometime to decide it.
One of the first three, I think - and a good long-price bet for first place - would be Rex Adams, the new outside-left from Oxford City.
He impressed a lot of people, I am told, in a Central League game last week-end in which one of the goals for the Wolverhampton Wanderers’ cubs was scored by Dunn.
The name is familiar? Of course it is. He is the son of Jimmy Dunn, the Hibernian and Everton man who played for Scotland.
HERE is the ultimate commentary on the crazy transfer racket. They were talking about it when I was in the northeast last weekend.
No club has spent as many thousands on stars as Newcastle United. Yet in the Newcastle team that won at Burnley after winning at Chelsea three days earlier were seven products of north-eastern football, men taken almost off the doorstep at Newcastle, and nearly all of them costing either a petty-cash fee or no fee at all.
What a cradle of football the north-east is.
Blackpool signed scores of players from it between the wars. Three, Robinson, Wardle and Mortensen, were playing in last weekend’s team at Sunderland - and nearly all their relatives, even to third and fourth cousins, were there to watch them.
***
ONE or two of the Wolves who are at Blackpool today and several of the second team who were here last weekend were trained in a nursery in Yorkshire, at which the O.C. is a former Blackpool player.
Remember Mark Crook, the little four-square, forward who followed Major Frank Buckley to Wolverhampton when the manager left Blackpool?
He has been on the Wanderers’ staff for years, behind the scenes for nearly all of them. Several men who have made a name in Wolverhampton football graduated in his school in Yorkshire.
THERE was a time when people used to call Blackpool the “Blackpool Scottish.”
In those days six or seven Scots in a Blackpool team were a commonplace. Four were often fielded in the attack alone as recently as last season.
Nowadays, without anybody appearing to notice it, it’s different. There was an all-English defence at Roker Park last weekend in the tangerine jerseys - with the exception of wing-half Hugh Kelly - and only two Scots in the front line, Jim Mclntcsh and Andy McCall.
No particular significance attaches to this change in fashions. It just - unlike the New Look - seems to have happened.
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WHO’D be a goalkeeper? Other players can get away with murder. Goalkeepers have to make only one or two mistakes and everybody wants them out of a team.
Joe Robinson knows all about it at Blackpool.
Now, because of one indifferent game, the critics are asking, “Is Frank Swift finished?” and predicting that Ted Ditchburn, the man in the ’Spurs’ goal -the man who played a great game against Blackpool in the F.A. Cup semi-final, will soon be reigning in his stead for England.
Obviously Frank Swift can’t go on for ever, but I shall want a lot of convincing that he’s finished yet.
And, knowing Frank, so will he.
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They want Hugh
HUGH DOHERTY, the Blackpool forward who, after being offered an additional two-months trial by the club, decided, after all, to return home - he was signed by Blackpool from the Celtic in the closing days of 1946-47 and went on the first Denmark tour - may soon be in English football again.
A Third Division club are interested, are today seeking assurances that he is fit again after his cartilage operation during the summer.
A Southern Irishman. Doherty won fame as an amateur in Glasgow. He was given a free transfer by Blackpool at the end of last season.
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HUGH O’DONNELL is still wandering. Preston - Blackpool - Rochdale has been his route. Now he is at Halifax, and scored for the Town this week the goal which defeated Barrow.
Of his brother, Frank, who was once his partner with the Celtic in Glasgow and afterwards led the Blackpool forwards for a few months. I seldom hear these days.
Last I heard of him he was retiring from football.
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GRAND, THOSE CHEERS
THANK you, Spion Kop fans! The cheering and enthusiasm at the beginning of the second half in the match against Derby County on Monday evening was a real inspiration to the weakened Blackpool team. Let us hear more of it.
It is hoped, by the way, to open shortly a Supporters’ Club information hut on the Kop.
Another good news item is that the relay system is to be completely reorganised immediately.
Bv now every old member should have received a brochure setting out the travelling arrangements for away matches.
Next Saturday the outing to Bolton will not leave until 1-0 p.m. Now. Blackpool supporters, what about it? Let us have 20 or more coaches to Bolton to cheer Blackpool on.
November 5 is the date of the big dance at the Tower. Buy your ticket early.
The club’s new secretary is delighted with the response by old members who have sent their
subscription.
The membership is still only around the 2,000 mark, however, and with gates of over 25,000 there are obviously many sup porters who have not yet joined the club.
The more members we have the more we can do. Send that 2s. 6d. off today to Mr. C. A. Hay, 10, Swanage-avenue, Blackpool.
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