WHIRLWIND ROKER THRILLER ENDS IN DRAW
Blackpool give no quarter
SHIMWELL HURT
Sunderland 2, Blackpool 2
By “Spectator”
JACKIE ROBINSON, the forward from Sheffield Wednesday, who played against Blackpool in the 1943 War Cup final, was reintroduced into the Sunderland attack for this match at Roker Park, where Blackpool have not won since the war.
Blackpool played the men who won at Manchester three days ago.
In spite of showers which had been falling every few minutes all day there were nearly 50,000 people on this ground up in the northeast, where the population is still as mad on football as ever.
Stanley Mortensen, who went to the game seeking his 100th goal in Cup and League since the end of the war, came to South Shields two days ago on a visit to his mother, who has been ill.
Last night he watched his old team of South Shields schoolboys play the Newcastle United nursery eleven and was presented to the players.
Teams:
SUNDERLAND: Mapson; Stettin, Hudgell, Scotson, Hall, Wright, Duns, Robinson, Davis, Shackleton, Reynolds.
BLACKPOOL: Robinson; Shimwell, Suart, Johnston, Hayward, Kelly, Rickett, Mortensen, McIntosh, McCall, Wardle.
Referee: Mr. R. A. Mortimer (Huddersfield).
THE GAME
Blackpool lost the toss, and almost immediately Sunderland nearly lost a goal.
Mortensen was the man who went after it direct from the kick-off, took a forward pass, outpaced Hudgell and crossed a high centre which Mapson held in great excitement as he fell forward to clutch it away from the approaching McIntosh.
HEADED AWAY
Within a minute, when Sunderland counter-attacked, Kelly headed away with complete confidence another high centre, crossed this time from Sunderland’s left wing, by that spry little forward Reynolds.
Hayward made an assured clearance in the field’s centre in Sunderland’s next raid, and in another which followed it immediately Robinson shot into the side net.
Blackpool were not outplayed, but pace and decision were revealing themselves so soon in Sunderland’s direct front line.
Three men, the goalkeeper among them, closed the path to Mortensen as the inside right chased Rickett’s headed pass, and in the next minute McCall swerved his man neatly before slicing his centre on to the roof of the net.
There was little in it in those first five, fast minutes with the football open and fast and both forward lines racing full tilt into the defences.
Suart halted one Duns-Shackleton raid after this right wing had passed him in a swift exchange of passes.
IN RETREAT
Before Sunderland’s fast attacks
With 10 minutes gone Blackpool were in retreat to an attack pulling no punches and making and taking their passes at great speed.
Robinson and Shackleton opened one advance after another for Sunderland.
One after another these attacks were repulsed without Joe Robinson ever being called into action in Blackpool’s goal.
Shimwell, Hayward, Kelly - all three broke these raids, and yet in the 15th minute Sunderland, in spite of this valiant resistance, should have gone in front.
OPEN SPACE
Into one of the few open spaces left by Blackpool’s packed defence Jackie Robinson glided a forward pass.
Shackleton took it, ran half a dozen yards with it, and was left all on his own.
Then he was guilty of the sort of error which £20,000 forwards are never supposed to commit, hooking the ball slowly wide of a post.
Two minutes later as a loose ball rolled out from nowhere in particular to Reynolds the little outside left shot as it reached him a ball which Robinson punched out brilliantly.
FIRST CORNER
Sunderland still hammered away.
The only interlude for a long time was when Hall passed back so excitedly to his goalkeeper with no Blackpool forward near him that the ball rolled out 10 yards wide of a post for the game’s first corner.
It led nowhere, which was where all Sunderland’s raids led as the minutes passed and the offensive increased in intensity.
A goal had to come. it seemed inevitable for minutes before at last SHACKLETON scored it.
Twice in the previous half minute Shackleton’s refusal to shoot from shooting positions had lost big chances.
These raids had not been repelled when out flew the ball to Wright.
In the next second the left half had released a forward pass to Shackleton who had shot it fast into the net with the goal-keeper moving late across to it and, I suspect, unsighted.
LEVEL AGAIN
McIntosh gets snap goal
Yet after all this - and the Sunderland raids continued for another five minutes - Blackpool made it 1-1 at the end of half-an-hour.
It was a good snap goal, too. Johnston opened the raid. Rickett took his pass and crossed it low.
With Hall at his heels MCINTOSH raced in judged the ball’s pace perfectly. jerked out one foot and stabbed it past Manson before the goalkeeper could close the gap at the near post.
Another minute and it was nearly 2-1 for Blackpool.
This time Rickett, took a speculative chance, and shot a fast rising ball.
Wright was in its path. Off him the flying ball cannoned, and it was crossing the line as Mapson dived desperately. He reached it, and clawed it round the post.
AMAZING PACE
Sunderland were as near a goal three minutes later in this game of amazing pace.
Then Wardle, who had come into the centre almost, I suppose, in despair of a pass out on the wing, made a short back pass to Johnston - a pass too short.
Robinson was on it before a mall could move, and shot a ball which Robinson beat out brilliantly in mid-air for a corner.
Another minute and the Blackpool goalkeeper had made another clearance as dramatic, reaching a ball which Shackleton had volleyed high and wide of him, punching it out for another corner.
There were brief Blackpool breakaways, but nearly all the time the game was surging on to a Blackpool goal at times almost besieged.
Robinson made another nearly incredible save as Shackleton shot at him from less than half a dozen yards out a ball which this goalkeeper, a brilliant goalkeeper today, punched yet again over the bar.
Pour corners Sunderland had won in half a dozen minutes, and in conceding three of them Joe Robinson had made saves almost theatrical in their brilliance.
OVATION
Two minutes before the interval, following a disputed free kick, McIntosh hooked the ball an inch wide of a post from an offside position.
With the aid of the wind and playing great direct football, Sunderland should have been a goal or two in front at half time - and would have been if Joe Robinson had not had a half which won him an ovation at the interval.
Half-time: Sunderland 1, Blackpool 1.
SECOND HALF
In the first minute of the second half Eddie Shimwell fell heavily sideways, had to have his shoulder massaged, and after another two minutes left the field.
The Blackpool captain, Johnston, retired into the fullback position.
With 10 men Blackpool were never as outplayed as they had been with 11.
In one of the half’s early raids, in fact. Wardle made a confident demand for a penalty as one of his centres hit Hall as the centre-half was in the area.
It required a desperate tackle by Suart to halt Shackleton in yet another scoring position.
The 10 Blackpool men were almost dictating the game in this half’s early minutes.
It was only by inches that McIntosh missed a centre which would have left him in front of an open goal as Hall tore across late and appeared to fall without any sort of apology on top of him
McIntosh again
Blackpool's 10 men go ahead
This Sunderland goal, under nearly continuous pressure, fell two minutes later, in the 10th minute of the half.
It was a replica of one of those goals at Maine-road on Wednesday.
Mortensen gave Wardle a perfect pass.
The outside left took it, crossed one of those centres which begin to fall high in the angle between the far post and the bar.
Up to it McINTOSH leapt, headed a great goal, his fourth in two matches since he was reintroduced into the first division.
A minute later Duns shot wide after Robinson half-hit out a centre from the left and the Blackpool goal had been left with no goalkeeper on its line.
Still Blackpool with 10 men were playing as they had never played with 11.
After he had been off the field for 15 minutes Shimwell returned, his left arm held to his side. He went out to outside-right.
Immediately, against a team ostensibly nearer full strength, Sunderland began to repeat a few of their first half raids.
Corners came on both flanks, and then a third followed which Reynolds hooked almost on to the packed Spion Kop.
But still Blackpool were never as outplayed as they had been before the interval.
Kelly shot wide in a raid by a team which still had a wing half at full back, a wing forward, Rickett, in a sort of roving half back commission.
With Sunderland still hunting for a goal to level the scores and looking not half as impressive as they had looked earlier there began a little ironical applause on the terraces.
GRAND GOAL
There were unquestionably signs with 15 minutes left that these Sunderland men had run themselves out in that helter skelter first half.
Yet in another two minutes something happened which awakened the entire team and all Roker Park.
It was one of the finest goals I have seen for years.
Len SHACKLETON, in that 77th minute, took a ball only a few yards inside his own half of the field, and raced away with the ball never a foot off his boot.
He corkscrewed into the penalty area, veered back again as Johnston fell, swerved another man and scored r goal which deserved the tornado of cheers which greeted it.
ALL OUT
Sunderland went all out afterwards to win a match which before that goal had seemed almost irretrievably lost.
Blackpool’s battered defence stood firm against a succession of raids which won two corners, but could not force the Blackpool goal’s surrender.
In the last two minutes Blackpool’s goal was under a relentless bombardment.
Result:
SUNDERLAND 2 (Shackleton 25, 77 mins)
BLACKPOOL 2 (McIntosh 30, 55 mins)
The official attendance at Roker Park this afternoon was 47,750.
A GREAT game by Robinson stood between Blackpool and defeat in the first half.
Afterwards, even when reduced to 10 men for 15 minutes and 10 and a passenger for the rest of the match Blackpool revealed glimpses of the football which defeated Manchester United.
McIntosh’s shrewd leadership and his two goals again justified his selection. Chiefly it was the defence which won this point.
It lost none or its resolution and seldom its position even when it had been shuffled after the interval with every man in it resolved never to give an inch.
Sunderland might have won before half-time, but in the end it was only a wonder goal which gave them a point.
Strange case of Jim McIntosh
By “Spectator”
A CORRESPONDENT WHO WROTE TO THIS DEPARTMENT A WEEK AGO IS ENTITLED TODAY TO ASK COMPLACENTLY, “WHAT DID I TELL YOU?”
For he told this writer in a letter posted days before the Blackpool team to visit Manchester was announced, “Thirty thousand people can’t be wrong in demanding the return of Jim McIntosh."
And, to add to this assertion, he wanted to know “ When will Mr. Joe Smith admit his error in leaving this player out of the Cup Final team?” All of which serves to introduce the strange case of Jim McIntosh.
I may be pardoned for smiling when I read that 30,000 people wanted him back as Blackpool’s centre-forward. For it is not two years ago that I was asking for fair play for this modest, unembittered footballer at a time when he might have been pardoned for no little resentment with a few thousand of the 30,000 thinking - and saying - that he should not be in the team at all, and a few hundred unashamedly barracking him out of it.
Nor can I forget, either, that the man who today is being blamed for not fielding him at Wembley - Mr. Joe Smith, the Blackpool manager - had been for years the chief counsel for the defence of McIntosh when the entire Blackpool directorate had lost faith in this man who came as a boy from Droylsden, and in prewar days once scored over 50 goals for Blackpool minor teams in a season.
Had not forgotten
MR. SMITH had not forgotten, and was never tired of reiterating, that whatever, was wrong with McIntosh’s football could almost entirely be attributed to the punishment he took when - at the public’s demand—he was played until he was nearly punch-drunk as a youth of 17, and was twice taken off the field with concussion.
His omission from the Final team - a decision, incidentally, which would have sent a few professional footballers stalking indignantly into the boardroom asking for a transfer, but which this player accepted with all the resignation of a good sportsman - was, I know, taken with the greatest reluctance by the Blackpool team selector.
He had, I submit, no other alternative. It was a decision based on contemporary form. There were six weeks between the semi-finals and the Wembley match. During those six weeks McIntosh’s game went under a shadow. It has happened to every player.
Under a hoodoo
I KNOW that McIntosh put everything he had into it, but he was a man convinced that he was under a hoodoo, and he could not banish it. So he went to Wembley, but only to watch, and never, during the weekend I was with him, did I hear a word of complaint pass his lips.
Whereupon, probably in acknowledgment of his good grace - and to make this strange case stranger than ever—he went to Preston a week later, and, although admittedly against a panic-ridden defence, scored five goals in a match and created a First Division record for Blackpool.
And now, left out of the team again, he comes into it when the right wing is crippled, scores two goals in an amazing match which nearly avenged Wembley, and, in the process, confirms, even if I this is incidental, a theory of mine which I have been submitting for years - that with a tall! centre-forward in the tine and Stanley Mortensen roaming at inside-right the Blackpool attack could be among the best in the land.
Not strictly an error
SO 30,000 people - if they were saying that Jim McIntosh should be restored to the team - were right. There is no question whatever that the correspondent who demanded his return was right. He was wrong only when he wrote of the manager’s error. For, except to those wise after the event, it was not strictly an error at all.
Now where do we go from hero?
Another chapter unquestionably opened in the see-saw saga of Mr. McIntosh at Maine-road three days ago. He missed the sort of chance centre-forwards dream about early in the match, and I am still convinced that if Blackpool want a smash-and-grab centre-forward - one who is hurling himself all the time on the other fellows’ defence - they would be wise to look elsewhere for their man.
But if they want- and I hope, in the interests of football as distinct from the madcap capers which pass by courtesy for such a lot of football nowadays, that this is Blackpool’s preference - a leader of a forward-line who literally leads it, McIntosh, as he played at Maine-road, on Wednesday, may have come back to stay.
New fluency
FOR in this game, he had the ball moving all the time, was reaching it in the air, heading it and on the grass gliding it into the open spaces to left and right. As a result the play-it-down-the-middle - to - Mortensen complex, which has become almost an inhibition at Blackpool, was at last forsaken, and the entire line moved with a new fluency.
It gave Mortensen, too, his best game of the season, and this in front of England’s chairman of selectors, Mr. Arthur Drewry, who was also able to watch Harry Johnston playing again as an England half-back should play, nearly dominating the match in the second half.
New fluency
NOT that all Blackpool’s problems were solved in this dramatic hour - and - a - half. Against a Manchester forwardline which is no spent force yet, which can still use the long pass better, probably, than any other forward line in the country, the defence now and again lost both composure and position.
Yet; taken as a match, it may have been the beginning of the end of Blackpool’s singularly unconvincing early football, and the man who has come back again, one of football’s enigmas, Jim McIntosh, had a lot to do with it.
Why it's Monday
WHY don’t Blackpool F.C. play their midweek matches on Wednesday, the town’s half-holiday?
I have been asked the question in a letter from a reader in Norfolk-road, writes “Spectator.” It is, I am told, a question of £ s d.
Whenever a match has been played on half-day closing day in Blackpool less has been taken at the turnstiles than at a Monday match.
Derby, Wolves offer supreme test next week
By “Spectator”
TWO matches which should pack the house again are on Blackpool’s home fixture list next week.
To town on Monday evening come Derby County who are promising to be one of the teams of the year. Next Saturday the Wanderers of Wolverhampton are on the coast.
These will be two matches to test all Blackpool’s qualities. Each by a coincidence ended in 2-2 draw last season.
The County led 2-1 on Good Friday at Blackpool until five minutes from time Stanley Mortensen shot a goal which saved a point. The Derby goalkeeper was Jock Wallace who, earlier in the afternoon, had given his old team a present of a goal as he stood dazzled in the glare of the Easter sun.
The Wolves lost two goals to Willie Buchan in last season’s match, but in the end made a draw of it with Mortensen wandering dazed about the field in a state bordering on concussion.
He was hurt in an accident early in the match, and knew little about what was happening.
Sequel to the game, revealing that there is still chivalry in professional football, was a letter from the man with whom Mortensen had collided, expressing regret and the hope that he would soon be fit again.
Not many months later the man who wrote the letter was himself seriously hurt and has never since been back in the Wanderers’ half-back line.
Jottings from all parts
BY "SPECTATOR" 4 September 1948
MARKSMAN MATTHEWS
IS STANLEY MATTHEWS evolving a new technique? Or resurrecting an old one?
In his early days - as he reveals in his hook, “Feet First” - he was often among the goals, once scored nine in a match - and from the centre-half position, too.
During his pomp he has always he has known as the man who made the goals but would not score them.
Probably he is tiring of this title. In his first three games for Blackpool this season he was constantly wandering into one of the inside positions and shooting.
He nearly won a point with a late shot at Sheffield, and was unfortunate not to give Blackpool the lead against the Villa.
Are we to see a new Matthews in the last five years he has given himself in football?
EXCLUSIVE intimation in this column last week that Jock Wallace was leaving English football was immediately confirmed by the news that he had left Derby County and gone to Leith Athletic.
I knew when I met him in Derby last Easter that his heart was in only one English club. That club - in spite of his walk-out on the eve of the Cupties - was Blackpool.
There were no signs that he would ever remain indefinitely in Derby. “I wish I were back again in Blackpool,” he said repeatedly - and this in spite of the fact that he had made it impossible to come back again.
I notice that the Athletic won their first match with him. One of the two goals which passed him in a 3-2 game was a penalty, and one reporter wrote:
“Wallace’s prodigious goal-kicks often set the home attack in motion."
There was nothing prodigious in his goal-kicks when he was in these parts.
ONE of the stars in Hull City’s smashing first lap in the Northern Section promotion race has been Eddie Burbanks, the outside - left from Sunderland, who was in Blackpool’s wartime team.
He would have come back to Blackpool a year ago if Sunderland’s price for him had not been as high as £5,000.
The City paid it or something near it - during the summer, and are now fielding him in an attack which contains the ex-Blackpool forward, Willie Buchan, who since Raich Carter went to Hull has settled his difference with the City, and scored one of the four goals which routed Mansfield Town a week ago.
I NOTICE that:
Dick Burke, the ex-Blackpool full-back, who went to Newcastle at a £3,250 fee nearly two years ago, scored a penalty to win a point for Carlisle at Southport.
This was after he had let in - as the result of a mis-kick - David Craig, another former Blackpool player, who scored a goal in the first two minutes of his first match for his new club.
The Accrington centre-forward. Mercer, who lives in St. Annes, is still scoring goals nearly every week for the Stanley.
Basil Hayward, brother of the Blackpool centre-half, has been starring in the early season games as Port Vale’s centre-half.
Eric Sibley was in the defence of the Grimsby team that won at Plymouth.
Crewe Alexandra are advertising for a successor to Frank Hill, the ex-Arsenal and Blackpool player, who resigned the managership after a difference of opinion with the directorate.
ASTON VILLA will soon begin to think it’s scarcely worth coming to play a match at Blackpool. For three successive seasons now it has been 1-0 for the home team.
Except for a 1-1 draw two seasons ago the Villa have lost every point at stake to Blackpool since the war.
And every goal against them has been an “M” goal - three for Stan Mortensen, one for Jim McIntosh, and one for George McKnight.
SUCCESSOR in the Barrow goal to Alec Roxburgh, who has gone to Hyde United, is Jack Hindle. the young goalkeeper from Wesham, who was Preston North End’s first reserve and played in the Cup-ties last season.
All the scouts watched him in his last days with Wesham, were present in force, I recall, when he played in a Blackwell Cup final at Bloomfield-road.
In those days Blackpool nearly had an embarrassment of goalkeepers.
Or else . . . . ?
***
WILL any of the Blackpool players enter for the tournament reserved for footballer-golfers at Woolton, the Liverpool club, at the end of the month?
A few of them will probably be in the list. Several of them play from single-figure handicaps - Stanley Matthews, for example, is on four - and nearly all of them have one day a week on a course as a variation in the training routine.
There will be two divisions -13 and under and 14 to 20 - at Woolton, and cups for the best gross and net scores.
NOTICE the new rule operating in football this season?
No longer is it permissible for a man to be charged when the ball is not within playing distance. They call it obstruction now, and for it a free-kick - from which a goal cannot be scored direct - is awarded.
The last time this law was reframed one of the first-goals resulting from it came to Blackpool in a match at Sunderland, where, after deliberate obstruction in the penalty area had been decreed by the referee, George Farrow converted the penalty and won the match with it. It caused no end of a controversy.
Since that time too many defenders - in particular those In Continental teams - have been getting away with murder. It was about time something was done about it.
***
HERE’S a good goalkeeper who has always had to play second fiddle wherever he has gone. Frank Clack is the name. Always his fate seems to be to act as an understudy to one of the famous.
He was deputy for Harry Hibbs at Birmingham and for Joe Crozier at Brentford. He went to Bristol City, graded for the first team immediately, and now, after the signing of George Marks from Blackburn - a goalkeeper for whom Blackpool were prepared to make a bid - he was reverted to his familiar second-team post.
Yet everybody in football tells you what a good goalkeeper he is.
***
Some footballers are as coy about their ages as prima donnas. Not Jack Oakes, the centre-half who has played with Middlesbrough,
Nottingham Forest, Clapton Orient and Charlton Athletic in his time and is now at Plymouth.
He is the senior of the 2,000 professionals registered by the Football League, entered his 21st successive season in big football a fortnight ago, and will - as he is not afraid to confess - be 43 this month.
And he’s still playing -and still nearly as good as ever.
***
COLCHESTER UNITED, whose visit to Blackpool was one of the highlights of last season, still command a public which makes their continued exclusion from the Third Division difficult to understand.
A Supporters’ Club with a registered membership of 11,009 - and every one has paid his subscription - is claimed as a record for the country. It probably is.
With a First Division team Blackpool’s club can put only 2,000 names on the roll - and a few hundreds of those enlisted for Cup Final ticket concessions last April - a cunning little move which was defeated - and may not renew membership.
Not that the Blackpool club will ever be content with a mere 2,000. Five thousand is their target. But that’s still less than half Colchester’s figure.
***
LESLIE SMITH, the ex-Brentford and England outside-left, who played for the Villa at Blackpool last week, was once the subject of a big offer by Blackpool, who, according to rumour, were prepared to exchange Willie Buchan and sign a four- figure cheque for him, too.
This shooting wing - forward has the distinction of being one of the 11 players who have not missed a League match in the last two seasons.
Yes, in the 88 League clubs there are only 11 men who have played in every match since the opening of the 1946-47 season.
Jock Wallace might have been in this select group if he had not left Blackpool, for he was in every League match Blackpool played from August 31, 1946, to January 3, 1948.
***
Pools boost gates
WHAT is the attraction of soccer that ever-increasing numbers of people are going to watch the first-class games,
When the million mark for a day’s programme was reached last season experts thought the limit had been attained and that a falling off in attendances would follow this season.
With a new record aggregate of 1,160,000 set up on Saturday at the 44 Football League matches opinions will have to be revised and minds attuned for the surpassing of even this huge figure.
More women attend
THOSE whose duty it is to analyse all happenings at football hold the belief that the pools are responsible for much of the interest taken by “nonregulars” in the game. They point out that more women than ever before appear to be attending matches, and club officials confirm this.
Of course, women as well as men have a flutter on the pools, and it is understandable that those who venture a “bob” or two want to see what the whole thing is about.
When pools started football chiefs had no good to say for them. Perhaps their judgement has undergone a change since those seemingly far-off days.
There with cheers
ANOTHER successful away outing was run on Wednesday when four coaches of members went to Manchester to cheer Blackpool’s great victory over United.
Another trip left early today on the long trek to Sunderland.
We hope that these outings will prove most successful and be well supported by members.
A printed brochure giving all details of trips to array matches is being issued.
***
THE big dance has been fixed for the Tower on November 5. We look forward to another great evening.
Members are reminded that our great helpers, the ladies’ committee, are running their weekly whist drives at the Liberal club each Tuesday evening.
Do not forget the special meeting of members to be held at the Central Library at 7-45 on September 16, when the new rules will be up for approval and a general discussion on the club will follow.
THE membership is still lagging behind that of other clubs.
Will all old members please send their 2s. 6d. and all new members their application form and 2s. 6d. to the new secretary, Mr. Charles A. Hay, 10, Swanage - avenue, Blackpool, immediately?
Leave a Comment