17 September 1949 Blackpool 2 Charlton Athletic 0
Wild Blackpool shooting wastes much good work
MORTY SETTLES IT
Blackpool 2, Charlton Athletic 0
By “Clifford Greenwood”
THEY SPELL ILLUMINATIONS AS “I££UMINATIONS ” IN BLACKPOOL FOOTBALL
The first weekend of the late-season attraction packed the Blackpool ground this afternoon for a match which had little box office about it.
The longest queues I have seen since the Stoke Cuptie were outside the gates half an hour before the kick-off, and with 15 minutes to go the absence of movement on the terraces of the Spion Kop slopes gave the impression that the gates had been closed everywhere except outside the stands and paddock turnstiles.
Thousands of people must have been locked outside when the teams appeared.
W. Slater, the young Blackpool amateur who had such an impressive baptism in the First Division last week, could not play, and Blackpool fielded the forward line, which except at outside left, had been in action all season.
Charlton, after scoring six goals against Newcastle a week ago, were held to a draw by Huddersfield Town in midweek. One result was that John Shreeve was recalled to the defence and Herbert Johnson to the halfback line.
SOUTH AFRICANS
Two of Mr. Jimmy Seed’s South Africans, Syd O’Linn and Dudley Forbes, were also in the cast.
It was another fine afternoon. The storm clouds drifted away shortly after noon, and again the sun shone on a day windless and warm as ever after last night’s half-gale.
Teams:
BLACKPOOL: Farm; Shimwell, Lewis, Johnston, Hayward, Kelly, Matthews, Mortensen, McIntosh, McCall, Wardle.
CHARLTON ATHLETIC: Bartram; Campbell, Shreeve, Forbes, Phipps, Johnson, Fell, O’Linn, Vaughan, Lumley, Revell.
Referee: Mr. H. Trenholm (Stockton-on-Tees).
THE GAME
Charlton, who played in unusual jerseys - blue, with a white bar down the front - won the toss and defended a south goal which was at least in a little shadow.
In the first minute, in the sun’s glare, Farm fielded a free' kick punted half the length of the field by Campbell, and before another minute had passed had raced out almost to the edge of the goal area before falling in a heap under Vaughan’s unceremonious shoulder charge as the ball rolled out of play.
Repeatedly in the opening minutes the Athletic’s forwards advanced.
The offside whistle halted Revell after Blackpool’s right flank of defence had been passed while this brief opening pressure continued
Yet as soon as Blackpool’s for wards entered the game a real purpose was revealed in a couple of raids, McCall cutely selling the dummy to his half-back before opening an attack I with a perfect pass which won a corner.
In the next minute Matthews cut back a ball which Johnston shot barely over the bar.
CHARLTON FAST
Yet it was the Charlton forwards who were more often in the game in the succeeding minutes, moving fast to every pass and making progress with effective football.
Vaughan hooked one pass from the right inches only outside a post, and then in a. fast breakaway, Wardle made a pass - a gem of a pass - inside his full-back which gave McCall position to shoot a ball which Sam Bartram repelled perfectly.
It was still nearly all Charlton’s game. Yet twice inside a minute, with only 10 minutes gone, it was the Athletic’s goal that nearly fell
The first time the alert Mortensen darted on to a half-hit clearance, and with the Athletic’s defence retreating in front of him, raced into shooting position and shot a ball which Bartram beat out with those big fists of his as he fell to his right.
IN PERIL
Phipps, racing back, hooks the ball clear
That raid had not been repelled before the Athletic’s goal was menaced again - and again the man to menace it was Mortensen who leaped at War die’s high centre before heading down a ball which appeared to be bouncing outside even Bartram’s long reach as Phipps, racing after it, hooked it hack.
The Athletic were still not outplayed, but it was Blackpool’s football which in the first 15 minutes had the front-of-goal decision in it.
Twice in rapid succession McIntosh, chasing everything again today, headed centres into the waiting arms of Bartram, and repeatedly Matthews opened raids with those long crossfield passes which one too seldom sees in the present-day game.
There were times when there seemed to be one pass too many in Blackpool’s football, but with the 20th minute reached the Athletic were still going back and when they were going forward were meeting a Blackpool defence less often outwitted by the fast crisp passes of their forwards.
LEWIS THERE
Lewis was again positioning himself admirably, cutting off pass after pass to Charlton’s right wing.
All the time one had the impression that the London team’s early challenge was waning.
A goal which had been threatening for minutes ultimately gave Blackpool the lead in the 24th minute. It ended a raid which was opened less, I think, by design than accident as Wardle, trying a shot from a nearly impossible range and angle, sliced the ball far out on to the right wing.
There, when nearly everybody had given it up, Matthews retrieved it.
Mortensen was first to the centre as it was crossed, and shot the ball as it bounced in front of him. A man in blue leaped in the path of the flying ball - it was Phipps, I think - and beat it down with his hand.
There was only a token protest by the Athletic against the penalty which Mr. Trenholm immediately awarded. SHIMWELL was called to take it, and scored with a fast shot low and wide of the falling Bartram’s right hand.
It was all Blackpool afterwards.
A second goal was cheered but quickly, and again without protest, disallowed as McIntosh leaped to Wardle’s magnificent centre and headed it backwards out of Bartram’s reach over the line.
BLACKPOOL RAIDS
Clearance as Mortensen races in
Raid followed raid afterwards. McIntosh beat even the big Bartram to another left-wing centre, fell backwards, and was still sprawling as Phipps cleared off an empty line, with Mortensen racing in to the open goal.
With half an hour gone, Blackpool were leading 1-0 and threatening to make it 2-0 every minute.
Mortensen, who has no luck whatever this season in front of goal, missed one chance when he lost a ball which Wardle had put enticingly at his feet.
A minute later McCall cut through Charlton’s defence as if every man in it were standing still, and won a corner.
Another minute, with Blackpool still raiding all out and Sam Bartram playing the sort of game I always seem to see him play, this Charlton goalkeeper held superbly a ball headed fast into his arms by McIntosh.
PERFECT PASS
Another minute, after leaving his full-back On the grass asking the old familiar question “Now where’s he gone?” the elusive Matthews put on a plate a pass for McCall which the little inside-left only half hit, with the goal open in front of him.
This was the sort of football which Blackpool were playing at Villa Park nearly all the time last week. There was just about everything in it except goals, with the Athletic by this time almost completely outplayed.
Yet, with five minutes of the half left, the Athletic were near to a goal in a breakaway, Fell racing away from Lewis before crossing a centre which Farm could only beat out backwards, leaving Shimwell to head it away from the line of an open goal for the first corner, the Charlton forwards had won in 20 minutes.
HAYWARD CLEARS
This corner had not been cleared, either, before Hayward made a desperate clearance from Vaughan, with the centre-forward racing in to a loose ball.
Matthews was as brilliant at times as I have ever seen him, almost ambled past Shreeve at his leisure.
He went away from the fullback again in nearly the last raid of the half before crossing another of those centres which had gone to waste this afternoon.
McIntosh, racing in to it. lashed over it, and missed it.
With a little composure in front of goal Blackpool would have been ahead by a winning distance at half-time.
Half-time: Blackpool 1, Charlton Athletic 0.
SECOND HALF
A corner which Charlton should never have been given might have levelled the scores in the third minute of the half.
From the flag-kick the ball was only half-cleared, bounced out to Campbell, who shot it back again at a pace which would have beaten any goalkeeper on earth as the ball, flying over, almost brushed the bai.
It was the Blackpool left wing, still tangling up the right flank of Charlton’s defence, which was Blackpool’s chief attacking instrument early in the half.
It won a corner and then a free-kick, but, for the rest, the opening of the half was not exciting, with never a promise of a goal in it until Farm had to dart between two Charlton forwards and snatch the ball away from the pair of them.
Johnston raced 40 yards with a Matthews pass before shooting inches wide of the far post, and two minutes later returned the compliment with a pass from which Matthews cut inside and shot low at the crouching Bartram.
Afterwards, raid after raid - threequarters of them built by the magnificent Matthews - surged on Charlton’s goal.
The outside-right finished one of them himself with one of his infrequent shots - a shot of such pace that Campbell appeared to head it off the line after it had flashed past even the stonewall Bertram.
Three times in succession the Charlton forwards scored rugby goals with shots feet too high, and twice Kelly, a superb halfback today, halted a couple of them before they could reach even these speculative positions.
With half an hour left, Blackpool were still in front, but one still had the Impression that they should have been further in front.
In the 16th minute of the half they were nearly, in fact, not in front at all, as Pell crossed a centre which in the end was headed over the bar of an empty goal after the ball had flown away out of Farm’s reach.
LEAD IN DANGER
There were signs that this 1-0 lead might not be sufficient to win the game. Charlton continued to challenge it at a time when this London team ought to have been completely out of the match.
There were five minutes when the ball was never in the Charlton half of the field. It was not often within shooting distance of Blackpool’s goal all that time, but always there was a chance that the Athletic might still snatch a goal and with it a point.
Yet twice in a couple of minutes a Blackpool goal was near again.
The first time Mortensen darted to a bouncing ball, shot it low at Bartram, who beat it out and was still on his knees as it bounced away from McIntosh, who could only stab it back at the goalkeeper again.
In the next minute Wardle released a perfect down-the-centre pass which McIntosh reached, took away from Phipps and made position brilliantly for himself before shooting inches outside the far post.
If near-misses counted as goals it would have been about 4-0 or 5-0 for Blackpool by this time.
FANTASTIC!
Fifteen minutes were left and there was still only a penalty goal between the teams.
Then, with 10 of those minutes gone, the Athletic were again near to a point which on the play they would never have deserved.
This time the ball bounced up, hit Shinwell’s arm as the full-back stood apparently a yard inside the penalty area.
Mr. Trenholm gave a free-kick a yard outside - and nothing came of it.
A corner for the Athletic followed which Farm held and cleared in a pack of men swarming in front of his goal.
It was fantastic that Blackpool should have been playing at this time in the afternoon this desperate sort of rearguard action after dominating the game for three-quarters of the match.
Yet with two minutes left, that elusive goal to settle the game came.
It was a right-wing goal in creation and completion. Matthews creating a position for himself with a perfect swerve away from his full-back before making position for his partner. MORTENSEN, to race on to the ball and shoot it at a pace and from an angle which left Bartram standing.
Result:
BLACKPOOL 2 (Shimwell 24, Mortensen 88 mins)
CHARLTON ATHLETIC 0
COMMENTS ON THE GAME
ABOUT all that was wrong with Blackpool today was that the forwards could not score goals. The team had nearly everything else.
Relentless pressure, built by football which in the open had class in it - too many passes at times, but otherwise beyond criticism - produced until the last two minutes only a penalty goal.
The Blackpool forwards had no luck whatever - Mortensen and McIntosh in particular - and always there was Sam Bartram playing a game of England grade in the Charlton goal.
But with Matthews intent on convincing the selectors that his days are not yet done, crossing passes and centres with precision into positions where inside forwards should shoot goals, this line should have won by a distance.
Otherwise, there was not a man in the line who after the first half-hour was not moving too fast to the ball for the Charlton half-backs and full-backs.
STRONG DEFENCE
The defence opened with no particular conviction, but after the first 15 minutes neither Shimwell nor Lewis was often passed by Charlton’s wing forwards, and whenever they were Hayward presented another of his They shall not pass” acts in the centre.
And the longer the game lasted the greater was the influence on it of Kelly and Johnston, who in the tackle were almost impassable and in attack were the sort of wing half-backs who are the answer to a front line’s prayers.
Blackpool should have had a bigger win. Otherwise it was a good show.
IT will be Blackpool’s first all-Lancashire match of the season at Maine-road next week. Twice since the war Blackpool teams have played the City at Maine- road. The first game, two years ago, Blackpool lost by the only goal.
The second, last season, ended in a 1-1 draw, one of the eight home draws the Manchester team played during 1948-49. Neither game was a classic. Both were, as the score indicates, dominated by the two defences.
Yet already there are reports that thousands of people will go to the city from the coast for the match, including the famous “Atomic Boys” and the successor to the late lamented Donald the Duck.
Good, bad or indifferent, whenever two Lancashire teams meet, there is always plenty of excitement in the
air, whatever happens on the field. There will be plenty again next week - and this time there may at last be something in the football to be excited about.
And, considering the cast and all the famous names in it, there ought to be.
NOT TOO LATE FOR AN ENGLAND COME-BACK
Matthews and Mortensen can do it
By Clifford Greenwood
BY "CLIFFORD GREENWOOD" 17 September 1949
FARM HAS A GOOD YEAR
TODAY is the first anniversary of George Farm’s baptism in First Division football in England, writes Clifford Greenwood.
The Scot from Hibernians made his bow at Bolton in a match in which Stanley Mortensen scored his will-o’-the-wisp 100th League goal for Blackpool, and the Wanderers, after losing 2-0 made a 2-2 draw at Burnden Park.
Frankly, not everybody was to0 impressed by the debutant goalkeeper. His curious grip of the ball - one hand above it and the other beneath it, instead of the conventional one hand each side of it - gave a few good folk incipient apoplexy.
But George soon made good, ranked long before the season’s end as one of the best bargains of the season at a £2,700 fee, and today, only one short year after, playing in his 42nd successive First Division match, is among the first dozen goalkeepers in the game on this side of the Border.
I recall the days when Farm practised hour after hour outside training hours, accepted every word of counsel which was offeree! him, and in the end made himself the first-class footballer he is today.
This is the first of many happy birthdays I hope he’ll have at Blackpool.
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He's happy there
THERE is not only a horses-for-courses theory in present-day football which Blackpool’s immunity from defeat in the Portsmouth and Villa games has already confirmed, but there is a men-for-grounds theory, too.
Some players never lose on certain grounds. As soon as I met Eddie Shimwell when he boarded the bus for Birmingham last weekend and asked him “Playing tomorrow?” the big man from Sheffield said “It won’t be my fault if I’m not,” and recalled that Villa Park was one of his favourite resorts.
It is a fact that in all his years in football, both for Sheffield United and Blackpool, Eddie has never finished a game on the losing side on the Villa ground.
Well, he played last weekend against the Villa, and the record is still intact.
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AS Australian cricketers have for years been migrating into the Lancashire League so are South African footballers coming into English football.
Gordon Falconer at Blackpool and hear the highest reports of his first game last weekend in the Central League - is only one of several who have made the pilgrimage.
There were Gordon Hodgson, Arthur Riley, Barry Nieuwenhuys - “Nivvy” as he was called because life is so short - in an earlier generation.
Now the centre of attraction has moved from Airfield to the Valley, where at Charlton are Syd O’Lynn, a scoring inside-forward, Dudley Forbes, a wing- half, Norman Nielson a 6ft. 3in. full-back, one or two of whom may have been playing at Blackpool this afternoon;
Not forgetting the giant goalkeeper, A. G, Uytenbogarrdt.
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I CANNOT understand a line of forwards wandering nine times in a game into an offside trap. Yet the Villa forwards managed it in last weekend’s game at Villa Park - and six times it was the impetuous Trevor Ford who was the guilty man.
Whether it is prudent to exploit such a trap as persistently as Blackpool employed it a week ago is questionable, but as long as there are forwards who continually stand in an offside position defences will resort to the no-back game. And who, in the circumstances, is blaming them?
Tale of this Villa-Blackpool match is contained in Mr. George Sheard’s census sheet, which shows that Blackpool had only eight goal-kicks all the afternoon while the Villa’s accomplished young reserve, Keith Jones, had to take 17.
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IT was the biggest attendance at a match in which Blackpool have played this season - the biggest by thousands - at Villa Park last weekend. The turnstiles admitted 61,000.
The total approached 65,000, which was only 5,000 fewer than the capacity all-ticket figure for the famous ’Spurs semi-final on this magnificent enclosure in 1948.
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So they have made Ivor Powell w captain of Aston Villa. It’s a wise decision.
I am not among those who think that if a club pays £17,000 or £20,000 for a player, a star of majestic dimensions has inevitably been signed. So often he has not.
But when last winter the Villa paid a fee for this big-hearted Welshman which was nearer £15,000 than £10,000 they were immediately assured of 20s. in the £ value.
Without Ivor the Villa today would probably have been in the Second Division.
For that they would probably have been prepared to pay twice £15,000 But it is not only the football. he plays - and it’s restless, assertive football all the time - which gives this son of
Wales his chief distinction, but the influence he exercises over every team in which he appears.
In Blackpool wartime football he came into the team as a Third Division Queen’s Park Ranger, but had First Division all over him.
And he became so fond of the town that he married a Blackpool girl, the daughter of Tommy Browell, the ex-Hull City, Manchester City and Blackpool forward.
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One of Ireland's best
CON MARTIN, the Irishman - there’s a player for you.
He was about 75 per cent, of the Villa’s retreating defence in the match last weekend. Yet this was his third match of the week.
He had played a First Division game against the champions, Portsmouth, on Monday, had crossed the Irish Sea and appeared for the Free State against Portugal two days later - and, transferred to centre-forward, had scored a couple of goals - and yet back he was in the thick of the fray on Saturday, as fast and intense as ever in the 90th minute as he had been in the first.
There was another player, too, in this Villa team, not yet as famous as Con, but who one day may be.
Miller Craddock, a reserve who had shot a “hat trick" in the Central League a week earlier, revealed a shot in him which may yet make his name.
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LETTER OF THE WEEK
“CONGRATULATIONS to the Blackpool team on the fine display of football at Villa Park. It was thoroughly enjoyed by the Blackpool supporters who saw it - all 14 of us.
“My heartfelt sympathy goes out to thousands of fans who claim such loyalty to the team when Cuptie tickets are being issued. Brothers, you missed a treat.
“Keep it up, Blackpool; and maybe before the season ends you will have another ‘away’ match at Villa Park - the Cup semi-final.”
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