24 September 1949 Manchester City 0 Blackpool 3

MATTHEWS GLITTERS IN BLACKPOOL VICTORY

Attack too clever for City

STRONG FINISH

Manchester City 0, Blackpool 2

By “Clifford Greenwood”

THERE WERE UNCONFIRMED RUMOURS THAT THE ENGLAND SELECTORS, PRESENTED WITH UNEXPECTED FORWARD PROBLEMS AFTER THE GOODISON PARK FIASCO THREE DAYS AGO, WERE AT MAINE-ROAD THIS AFTERNOON.

The general impression was that Stanley Mortensen and Stanley Matthews, of Blackpool, two of the discarded in the Eire defeat, were being watched again.

The City, who have had 10 days at Saltburn, the north-east base frequently visited by Blackpool, again fielded Ronnie Powell, one of the successors to Frank Swift, the England goalkeeper, who this afternoon was one of my companions in the Press box reporting the match.

Three or four thousand people came from Blackpool, but the congestion on the roads - I counted a coach every 10 seconds for miles - reduced the exodus, and the preliminaries were unexpectedly quiet and decorous for this first match between Lancashire rivals in Blackpool’s programme this season.

40,000 CROWD

The teams took the field as selected in front of an attendance approaching 40,000. There was little sunshine - when is there any in Manchester? - but it was fine and mild.

Teams:

MANCHESTER CITY: Powell (R); Williams, Westwood; Walsh, Fagan. Murray; Oakes, Munro. Turnbull, Black, Clarke.

BLACKPOOL: Farm; Shimwell, Lewis; Johnston, Hayward, Kelly; Matthews, Mortensen, McIntosh, McCall, Wardle.

Referee: Mr. R P Hartley (Burnley).

THE GAME

Blackpool won the toss, and might have lost a goal in the City’s first raid.

Direct from the kick-off the Manchester front line raided on its left. Clarke crossed a high centre, Hayward leaped at it a split second late, missed it in mid-air, and left Lewis to clear as Jack Oakes raced into a position where it would have been an odds on bet on a goal.

Twice in successive raids Blackpool’s left back halted the City’s raiding line, crossing the path of Oakes again before hurling himself into the way of Black, who, within another half minute, was halted by Hayward.

Except for one brief excursion over the halfway line by the Blackpool forwards it was all the City in the opening three minutes.

DESPERATE SAVE

And yet in one breakaway Blackpool were as near a goal as the Manchester front line had ever been. Wardle cutting into the centre before opening an attack which ended in Mortensen chasing a forward pass and shooting a ball which Powell mis- fielded and retrieved desperately after the ball had crawled up his chest and fallen in front of him.

Frank Swift is a lot too charitable to gay “Tut, tut” about that, but he would have been entitled to say it

Raid followed raid by the City’s forwards, but in another Blackpool advance, built on short precise passes. Westwood was glad to concede a corner with Matthews in his immediate vicinity.

And that corner was followed by another which ended in the aggressive, tireless Mortensen shooting wide as he fell.

There was a big gap all the time in the centre of the City's defence - a defence which seemed inclined to go into a panic with or without provocation.

Into the gap Mortensen galloped again before shooting outside of the near post.

Another minute and England’s rejected right wing nearly had a goal on its own, the glittering Matthews luring Westwood out of position before releasing a pass which Mortensen reached a yard in front of the unprepared Powell and raked the face of an empty goal with a shot so fast that McIntosh, catapulting at it, could not reach it.

It was Blackpool nearly all the time afterwards. Repeatedly the forwards cut through the City’s defence as if it were moving in slow motion.

Powell leaped at one shot by Kelly, appeared to pull it down against the face of the bar, and in the end was glad to punch it over the bar.

A goal was always imminent against this open, excitable City defence. It came in the 10th minute as another long forward pass, this time via Hayward and Wardle, split this defence again.

THE LEAD

After the pass Mortensen, who must have run a couple of miles in those first 10 minutes, chased. Out to it a half-second late, after a fatal hesitation, came Powell.

MORTENSEN was on the scene first, leaped at the high, bouncing ball, seemed to head it almost out of the goalkeeper’s hands as the man in the green jersey clutched vainly at it as it bounced over the line of an empty goal.

That lead was deserved, and yet in furious Manchester counter-attacks it was almost immediately lost.

Clarke dived full length to head barely wide of a post which Farm could never have reached, and as the pressure continued a couple of comers were conceded.

Farm made a great clearance from Turnbull, falling to his left to beat out a ball sailing away from him a minute before Hayward, standing on his goalkeeper’s right, headed out a ball which no goalkeeper on earth could have reached.

The interchanging of positions by Blackpool’s forwards had a variety in it which seemed limitless.

PATTERN WEAVING

But Blackpool attack makes progress

There were raids in which Wardle and McIntosh in succession appeared unexpectedly in the outside-right position, with Matthews wandering about between all the inside berths.

Powell clutched at and. not for the first time, mis-fielded a shot by McCall after the little Scot had zigzagged almost impudently into a shooting position.

The City’s raids were limited to forays down the middle by Black. The football with purpose in it was still being played by Blackpool as the first half-hour ended, with the forward still weaving all sorts of complex patterns and yet still making progress.

As the half entered its last 15 minutes there was not a lot in it, but prospects of a goal for the City’s attack, still moving only in jerks and spurts, appeared remote as ever,

The City had gone off with a bang, but, slowly and tamely, afterwards fizzled out.

Incidents were few. McIntosh was discovered yards offside in one Blackpool raid a minute before Lewis, for once, sliced a clearance which might have caused a little bit of concern if Shimwell had not been given all the time he wanted by the laboured City forwards to retrieve the error.

Not for a long time have I seen a forward line as bereft of punch as the City’s.

There was neither plan nor anything else in their raids Blackpool were content, in the meantime - or so it seemed - to hold the lead.

BRILLIANT RAID

Crowd's ovation for Matthews

Yet two minutes before halftime the Blackpool goal nearly fell twice in half a minute, Shimwell clearing almost on a post after Oakes’ centre had flown outside Farm’s reach and Hayward making a similar clearance from the corner after the Blackpool goalkeeper had fallen among a pack of men.

In the half’s last half-minute Matthews made a raid of his own which had the crowd on its feet and the baffled West- wood sprawling on his back - a raid which this time the out- side-right ended himself with a rising shot which missed the far post by only an inch or two.

Forty thousand people gave this elusive and sparkling Matthews an ovation as the teams left the field.

He had given distinction to the half, and if the England selectors were present they must have been left wondering.

Half-time: Manchester City 0, Blackpool 1

SECOND HALF

You could not keep Matthews out of this report. Nor could the City’s defence keep him out of this game.

In the half’s first minute ne almost walked away from Westwood - who seemed by# this time reluctant even to tackle him - cut inside, and shot into the side net.

Yet in the second minute the City threatened a goal, and, I think, should have had one.

This time Lewis hesitated before clearing. Munro swooped on him, dispossessed him, raced on, and shot into Farm’s arms, with the goal path wide open.

Nor had this raid ended before Hayward had taken the ball away from Turnbull, with the City’s centre-forward moving into the shooting zone.

Half a dozen raids of the early City model hammered and thundered on Blackpool’s defence afterwards. Johnston crossing to an exposed left flank in one of these assaults to head away a ball which was bouncing high and away from the vigilant Hayward.

These raids continued, however, with the City awakening at last. Oakes, m a flying dive, headed a centre crossed high from the other wing only inches over the bar.

Yet in Blackpool’s next raid Wardle twice sold the dummy to his full-back before putting McCall in possession, and there was still just that extra little bit of class about Blackpool’s football against a City still telegraphing every move and invariably making it a half second too slow.

The City, nevertheless, were still storming into the attack and repeatedly galloping full tilt into the offside trap in the process.

At last. too. Westwood halted Matthews’ little gallop, and there was a cheer which could be heard half a mile away.

WESTWOOD CHECKED 

Blackpool’s grip on the game was definitely waning with 15 minutes of the halt gone, even Westwood in one of a continuous sequence of raids becoming a forward and being brought to a standstill only inside the penalty

The Oakes-Munro partnership was constantly surging into the match, and it was. in fact, an almost continuous story of City raids for minutes on end.

Then in one Blackpool advance Matthews studiously made position for Shimwell, waited with the ball until the full-back was in a shooting position, and in the end cut it back for the right-back to shoot a ball which Powell reached and cleared in a great- leap to his left for the greatest clearance either goalkeeper had made all the afternoon.

NOBOBY THERE 

Before the raid ended, McIntosh, who had not been a lot in the game, raced after one forlorn chance, reached the ball on the line, and hooked it back, with nobody to take it in front of an open goal.

Blackpool attacks, however, were as infrequent as in the first half they had been almost continuous. With 20 minutes left the City were still desperately raiding for a goal to level the scores.

Black, who all the afternoon had been the City’s best forward, shot into the side net after a 40-yard run.

Then, with 15 minutes left, came the goal which settled the match, and a great goal it was. too.

Wardle opened the raid by enticing two men out of position, leaving them both standing before crossing a centre which ultimately rolled out to Matthews Waiting for the square pass which came, JOHNSTON hit the ball as it crossed him 30 yards out, leaned with joy as it shook the far wall of the net with Powell still diving at it, for the first goal the Blackpool captain has scored for nearly two years.

A minute later McIntosh shot wide with another swift exchange of passes that left him in front of the City’s goal with Powell at his mercy.

A third goal came five minutes after Lewis had gone limning on to the left wing and with only eight minutes left.

McCall made it, and with the City defence scattered McINTOSH took the little inside-left’s pass to race across the front of the City’s goal before hooking it. away from Powell as the goalkeeper fell bravely but vainly at his feet.

Result:

MANCHESTER CITY 0

BLACKPOOL 3 (Mortensen 10, Johnston 75, McIntosh 82 mins)

COMMENTS ON THE GAME

CLASS told its tale at Maine-road. Blackpool had it and the City, earnestly and desper­ately as they played at times, simply had not.

Blackpool’s football during half an hour in the first half and in the closing 15 minutes had a design in it which the hit-or-miss City never approached.

During this time and, in fact, throughout the match the Matthews - Mortensen - Johnston right wing triangle split the City’s defence almost at will by the quality of its football and its pinpoint passing.

These three were the archi­tects of the first defeat of the City by Blackpool on this ground since the war.

Wardle had his best game of the season, with McCall always on the move and even on a day when McIntosh until near the end was curiously subdued the line was always the master of an unconvincing City defence.

There were times when Black­pool’s left defensive flank was being a little too often outpaced by the Oakes-Munro partnership, but it was seldom, in spite of all the second half pressure, that the City seriously threatened a goal.

DESERVED WIN

It was a deserved victory, won primarily by a forward line which was never content to make orthodox moves and which in Stanley Matthews possessed a wing forward still probably with­out a peer in all this realm.

Shimwell and Hayward were as resolute as ever when the City’s front line hurled itself on them.

The attendance was 57,815.

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NEXT WEEK: Fulham - after 13 years:

THERE will be strangers on x the premises at Blackpool next weekend. And they will be here with intent to commit a larceny of a couple of points - if Blackpool will let ’em.

Fulham will be in town for a match for the first time since a Craven Cottage team lost a Second Division engagement at Blackpool during the Christmas weekend of 1936.

Then Blackpool, after winning in London 3-0 on Christmas Day, made a Happy Christmas of it - happy for Blackpool - by completing the double 3-1 in the return game.

Blackpool went on to win promotion and the clubs’ paths never crossed again until they met in one of last year’s Cup-tie's, the 2-0 quarterfinal at Craven Cottage which admitted Blackpool to the Cup semi-finals for the first time in history.

Next weekend’s game will be the first the clubs have ever played in the First Division.

The records reveal all that can happen in football in less than 13 years. When Blackpool met and beat Fulham in that Christmas match of 1936 these men were in tangerine:

Roxburgh; Blair (D.), Witham; Farrow, Cardwell, Hall; Cook, Hampson, Finan, Jones (T. W.), and Hill.

Not one of them is playing in League football today. 

Time marches on... and footballers march out.

---

REFEREES ARE CRACKING THE WHIP

Where “Thug player” stunt goes wrong

By Clifford Greenwood

THE STUNT SPECIALISTS ARE IN FULL CRY AGAIN IN FOOTBALL. THIS TIME THE QUARRY IS THE FOOTBALL THUG.

According to the anything-for-a-headline boys the game is infested with players who pull no punches, who enter every game with malice in their hearts, and with everything except sawn-off shotgun as their armaments.

It makes a good banner head across a page. But it is not true.

I have seen 12 games in the first month of the new season, and while I am not pretending that the professional footballer is a completely reformed character I am asserting that he is not half so bad as he is reputed to be and that in the mass his behaviour on the field this season has been a lot less ruthless than in the first three postwar seasons.

What has happened is not that there is greater crime on the field but that the punishment by referees is beginning to fit whatever crime there may be.

More penalties

I HAD not watched a couple of games this season before I, began to suspect that either by order of the authorities or their own tacit consent referees everywhere were at last exercising their authority.

They were not content merely to give free-kicks for flagrant violations of the law, but the offender was called back to listen to a warning. Penalties have been awarded in increasing numbers. It is seldom that so many men have been sent off during a season’s opening month.

There were 15 penalties alone in last weekend’s games in the League’s three divisions.

And another man had marching orders.

Two theories

THERE can be two interpretations of these facts.

One is that football everywhere has become as lawless and as near to barbarism as the Rangers-Celtic feuds in Glasgow.

The other is that the FA and League have decreed that crime shall no longer be allowed to pay and that the referees have been instructed to crack the whip - and not, admittedly, before time, either.

It is the latter alternative which, I think, is nearer the truth.

I have seen two Blackpool matches this season in which were playing men whose reputation in postwar football has given them a close resemblance to the late Mr. A1 Capone than to the Knights of the Round Table.

Cutting it out

THEIR conduct in each game was exemplary- Both are good footballers - when they condescend to play the ball instead of the man. Both revealed in those two games how good as footballers they can be when they cut out the sliding tackle, the ankle-tap, the boot-over-the-ball and all the other little malpractices They had realised, I suspect that the way of the transgressor was going to be made very hard and had decided to tread, however belatedly, the straight and narrow path.

I may be wrong, but I do not think I am.

In every match, In all the tumult and excitement, with a partisan public - and the public have never been blameless - inciting the men to all sorts of excesses there are spurts of ill-temper, rancour and retaliation.

Black sheep, but—

NOBODY expects anything else. This is no game for milk-sops and Little Lord Fauntleroys. And nobody in his senses expects it to be.

But it is not the blood bath which a few of the ill-informed are making it out to be, is not being played by a generation of men who have neither scruples nor common decency.

There have been black sheep in this fold for years. Now that they are being sorted out and sheared, or, at last, to escape retribution are beginning to behave themselves, the circumstances are being distorted and the impression created that football has been debased to the level of the cockpit.

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ON THE SPOT - Sports News

BY "CLIFFORD GREENWOOD" 24 September 1949

ON THE PENALTY MARK

EDDIE SHIMWELL, THE BLACKPOOL FULL-BACK, HAS PROBABLY CONQUERED HIS PENALTY COMPLEX, WRITES CLIFFORD GREENWOOD.

He took one penalty all the time he was with Sheffield United, missed it, and refused to take another. 

At Blackpool, when one forward after another was unable to shoot the ball past a stationary goalkeeper from 12 yards, he could not be persuaded to accept the post of penalty-taker.

It was not, in fact, until the Cup Final, after a few secret practice sessions that Eddie took his next penalty.

That day, in the electric atmosphere of the Stadium, when it would have been almost pardonable t o make a hash of it, he scored.

Whereupon everybody said,

“He’s the man at last.”

And in the first match of the following season another penalty came - this time at Bramall-lane - and on his old ground the ex-Sheffield full-back shot at the goalkeeper, and went into retirement again.

It was not until the season’s last away game at Stoke that he took another penalty and converted it.

***

Jock’s still there

THERE are rumours in these x parts that Jock Wallace has retired from the game. There is no truth in them.

The goalkeeper who left Blackpool on the eve of the Cup conquests of 1948 is still in Leith Athletic’s goal, was defying a line of forwards again when the Athletic won at Raith last weekend. And still in Scottish League football, too, is Ken Dawson, the enigma wing forward, who came to Blackpool with a scoring reputation and at a big fee in 1938, could not score at all in England, went back to Falkirk and began hitting nets as soon as he trod Scottish soil again.

He is still Falkirk’s outside-left and still shooting goals.

***

FOOTBALL’S quaintest character is at every Villa match. I saw him for the second time when Blackpool were at Villa Park.

A couple of years ago, I am told, he made a bet that one day before a Villa match he would walk on his hands from centre-circle to goal line. Every home game at the Park since he has run out into the middle a few minutes before the teams appeared, balanced himself on his hands, and embarked on his upside-down pilgrimage.

And every time after the first few yards a police officer has strolled majestically into view and told him that he could not do that there here. And sadly he has walked - on his feet instead of his hands - back to the terraces.

He can do it - but until the Birmingham constabulary emulate Lord Nelson and pretend that he is invisible he’ll never be allowed to do it.

***

THERE were three ex-Blackpool players in one Northern Section match last weekend.

Jock Dodds was leading the City forwards at Lincoln - but for once not scoring - and in the visiting Carlisle United team were George Dick and Tom Buchan, neither of whom has  missed a match for his new club this season.

There might I have been five men who once m wore the tangerine jersey in this game.

Dick Burke, the full-back, who was at Carlisle last season, was, when last I heard of him, asking for a transfer and expressing a preference for a Scottish club. And George Eastham, who was on Lincoln's books last season, might have been in the game, too, but instead was, I .noticed at Blackpool, watching the Charlton match.

***

NOBODY could say that Alec Smith, one of the men transferred by Blackpool during the summer, is not versatile.

He came to Blackpool as a centre-forward, became a centre-half, and finished - all in three seasons - as a full-back.

It was as a full-back that he played his one game this season in Bradford’s Second Division team. Now he is in the Midland League side of the Park-avenue club, and still a full-back.

***

On the trek of stars

MR. JIMMY SEED, the Charlton manager, was not at the Blackpool match last weekend. He is reported to have taken a plane for South Africa, presumably concerned by the fact that Blackpool have walked into the market which since the war has been an almost exclusive Charlton preserve.

He has lost Gordon Falconer, who, I am told, is so content at Blackpool that his letters home may persuade one or two South Africans to take the trail he has blazed. In the meantime, as I reported a month or two ago, there are two other South Africans - one of them a young outside-left about whom there are glowing reports coming over on the cables - who have more or less promised to enlist with Blackpool.

But there is still other gold in the Union to be quarried by the enterprising clubs as long as South Africa’s footballers retain their amateur status, and Mr. Seed, I suppose, is out after it before the Union authorities close the shop.

Two of his imports, Syd O’Linn, a strong foraging inside forward, and Dudley Forbes, a tireless wing-half, were in the Charlton team that lost at Blackpool.

***

ONE for the record books. If Eddie Shimwell, the Blackpool full-back, had not been hurt in the season’s second game and missed the next four matches, he would have been making his 100th League appearance for Blackpool at Manchester this afternoon.

Now, if he keeps out of the wars, his 100th First Division game for the club will be at Highbury in the Arsenal game on October 22.

***

STATISTICS from the Blackpool scoring chart:

Stanley Mortensen, - before this afternoon’s match at Manchester, had scored the last four goals credited to Blackpool, excepting Eddie Shimwell’s penalty against Charlton.

The last time any other Blackpool forward had scored was when Willie McIntosh had headed a goal at Portsmouth on August 27.

Only two goals have been scored by Blackpool wing forwards - Walter Rickett against Huddersfield this season and Rex Adams against Portsmouth last season - in the team’s last 14 games.

Not that it matters who scores them as long as they are scored. But there are still too few of them.

***

GENERAL assumption that Bill Slater, Blackpool’s talented 21-year-old amateur, was born in Blackpool is incorrect.

His home town is Clitheroe, and he has lived in Blackpool only six years - and of those six years three were in His Majesty’s uniform.

A young footballer of greater modesty I have never met. He still cannot convince himself that he is as good as Manager Joe Smith and several other expert judges have been telling him that he is.

He was persuaded against his own convictions to accept promotion from the “A” team to the Central League, and considered his elevation to First Division status almost an impertinence.

***

The pride of Preston

I SAW two great wing forwards in action last week, writes Clifford Greenwood.

One was Stanley Matthews playing for Blackpool against Charlton. The other was Tom Finney glittering and sparkling If as if he were part of the Blackpool Illuminations switched on a day or two early in the Preston-Queens Park Rangers match.

Somebody was calling Preston “Finney North End” after the match. It's not quite that, but the England man is about threequarters of the attack in a team which in this match was not up to promotion standard.

 It is early yet to be talking about championships, but the team the Deepdale club are fielding these days has not, I think, the strength either at wing-half or inside-forward to put Preston in the First Division again.

But while it has Tom Finney it will always be a team worth watching.

***

Blackpool sign young winger

MANAGER JOE SMITH, of Blackpool, went to Manchester last night to sign another young professional.

The new player is John Taylor, a 20-year-old outside- right who has just completed nis Army service.

He has played this season for Blackpool “B” in the Lancashire Combination second division, and last season was in the club’s Manchester League side as an amateur.

“He is a young player of some promise,” said Mr. Smith today.

***

STATISTICS from the Blackpool scoring chart:

LETTER OF THE WEEK

AFTER seeing ‘Morty’s’ goal in the outside-right position from Matthews’s inside-right pass, I thought both players would make a success of changing positions - Matthews as a schemer and Morty as a scoring wingman.

‘‘Matthews would, I think, make a second Alec James, making goals for the other forwards, while Mortensen’s speed would be fine on the wing.

“I don’t suppose you will publish any of this.”

“ S.B.J.”

Hayfield-avenue,

Bispham-road,

Blackpool.

Why shouldn’t I publish it? It’s not high treason. One of the best judges in the game has always said that Mortensen would make a great wing-forward.

But Matthews as an inside forward? No, no, a thousand times no.

***

IN QUEST OF HONOURS

THE soccer season is again in full swing, and we feel sure that this year the Blackpool team will go far in the quest for honours, writes “Supporter.”

It gives the members of the Supporters’ Club a feeling of satisfaction to watch “the boys" playing first-class football, and we hope that exhibitions like these will bear fruit and ensure that at least one of the trophies will find its home in Bloomfield-road by the time May comes round.

A word of praise also to the reserve team for their record to date, and a word of welcome to the South African, Gordon Falconer.

For the diary

NOW, two dates to be noted in the diary.

On the afternoon of October 19th the ladies’ committee will hold a military whist drive at the Albert Hall. Excellent voucher prizes will be given, and the usual novelties presented.

The other event is the annual November dance, this year on Wednesday, November 2 at the Tower Ballroom. This effort will be even bigger, better and more enjoyable than its predecessors.