3 September 1949 Blackpool 1 Wolverhampton Wanderers 2
Blackpool unlucky in the first half
MATTHEWS’ FINE GAME
Blackpool 1, Wolverhampton Wanderers 2
By “Clifford Greenwood”
ONE of these days Blackpool full-backs will be asking for “danger money.”
Three of them were lost to active service on the eve of last year’s Cup Final. Another three have been put out of action in the first four matches of this new season.
This afternoon, for the visit of Wolverhampton Wanderers, Ronnie Suart, the only survivor of the line of a fortnight ago, moved to the right flank, and for his partner had Bill Lewis, who was despairing of ever playing in the First Division again.
In fact, Lewis, in this match, had his first game as a First Division full-back for nearly three years.
Mr. Stanley Cullis is one of those managers who apparently refuses to subscribe to the old fallacy that a winnings team must never be changed.
In spite of winning eight points in the first four games, and entering this match as division leaders, the Wanderers recalled the old full-back Angus McLean, and introduced again the young forward Dennis Wilshaw, who skyrocketed to fame in the last two months of last season, and, out of obscurity, went into England’s “B” team on the Continental tour.
NEARLY 32,000
It was another of those hot afternoons which so often plague football at this time of the year, and this afternoon there was a capacity attendance of nearly 32,000 with all stand tickets sold days ago and all the paddock tickets gone before noon.
Police were massed in front of that south-east corner where, on such days as these, there is always a congestion. Not a square inch seemed left on Spion Kop, and the paddocks were packed closer than I have seen them for a long time.
Teams:
BLACKPOOL: Farm; Suart, Lewis; Johnston, Hayward, Kelly, Matthews, Mortensen, McIntosh. McCall. Rickett.
WOLVERHAMPTON WANDERERS: Williams; McLean, Pritchard; Crook, Shorthouse. Wright, Hancocks. Smyth, Pye, Wilshaw, Mullen.
Referee: Mr. H. T. Wright, Macclesfield
THE GAME
At a glance Blackpool seemed to be giving away inches and pounds in nearly every position.
The Blackpool defence faced the sun in the northern half of the field after losing the toss. Billy Wright soon had his forwards moving, but Lewis repelled the first Wolverhampton raid with a long, confident clearance.
The Blackpool forwards were repeatedly advancing afterwards, In the first couple of minutes Mortensen lost his partner’s perfect pass, stabbed the baked turf and soon began to limp.
AMAZING ESCAPE
A minute later the Wanderers’ goal had an amazing escape. McIntosh’s pace enabled him to race past Shorthouse before squaring a pass across an open goal.
On to it, as it reached the other wing, Rickett pounced, crossed the ball low again.
Mortensen was waiting for it, shot with the goalkeeper out of position, appeared to hit a full-back standing on the line.
The ball crawled on this line before eventually cannoning out, with the Wanderers’ defence scattered and all at sea.
It was a stormy opening, packed with promise, by Blackpool. Every pass was finding its man, and the Wanderers were in a complete and almost panic- ridden retreat.
SECOND ESCAPE
Shot rocks goalkeeper off his feet
This Wolverhampton goal had another escape with five minutes gone as McIntosh tore after a gem of a pass, headed forward to him by Mortensen, and shot a ball of such pace that, as it hit Williams’ legs, it rocked the giant goalkeeper off his balance, leaving a full-back again to clear off an open line as the ball cannoned away.
HAMMER BLOWS
Another minute, and with the Wolverhampton defence almost in chaos under these hammer blows, Mortensen back-heeled a loose ball which was again passing Bert Williams as, for the third time, one -of his attendant full-backs cleared it under the bar.
It could have been 3-0 for Blackpool inside 10 minutes. Ten minutes, in fact, had passed before the Wanderers reached shooting distance at all.
Then Wilshaw stabbed a shot a long way wide. With 15 minutes gone it had been Blackpool on top for about 14 of them and the First Division leaders nowhere at all.
NON-STOP RAIDS
McIntosh’s shot misses by inches
Smyth shot wide in another Wanderers’ breakaway.
It was still Blackpool who were raiding nonstop with Matthews, given at last a succession of perfect passes, raking the Wanderers’ goal repeatedly.
The Wanderers’ half-backs could make no contact with their forwards.
McIntosh went after another of those lobbed passes which were finding a great gap in the Wolverhampton defence - this time the spry McCall made it —raced on it, missed a post only by inches with a fast rising shot.
BEST FOR LONG TIME
This was about the best football I have seen a Blackpool forward line play since the march to Wembley last year. McIntosh seemed always able to give Shorthouse a couple of yards and still pass him.
That was making a lot of difference. When the Wanderers made infrequent excursions into Blackpool’s half the positioning of Lewis was beyond criticism, and his clearances were nearly all definite.
Once, however, a back pass by this full-back nearly escaped his own goalkeeper. Farm falling full length .to a ball which seemed to crawl over his body before he reached it in a despairing clutch as he sprawled a yard outside the line.
The next minute, in the 25th of the half, as so often happens when one team has been pressing almost continuously, it was the other team that took the lead.
For the first time during the afternoon, Hayward missed his man as he fell. On to SMYTH, all on his own, the loose ball rebounded, left the Irishman to cut in unchallenged and to score with a great low shot to which the deserted Farm fell, to his right in vain.
It was almost fantastic that the Wanderers should, at this time, have been in front, in spite of the pressure which had suddenly prefaced the goal.
SHOULD HAVE BEEN 2-0
Yet these Wolverhampton men might have made it 2-0 and should have done.
A couple of minutes after the first goal, another rebounding ball left a forward on his own. This time it was Pye, who shot wide excitably with half the goal gaping in front of him.
Blackpool’s complete grip on the game had, with half an hour gone, almost been completely lost.
The Wanderers, without releasing such pressure as Blackpool had earlier achieved, were still raiding nearly all the time.
Yet Blackpool were not out of it. Matthews passed his fullback nearly every time he was given a pass, and McIntosh was still a yard or two too fast for his centre-half.
McCall shot wide to end one raid which the elusive Matthews had created, and, in the next minute Rickett, after leaving two men trailing, crossed a high ball which Williams was glad to punch over the bar. for a corner.
ALL SQUARE
Mortensen darts to ball and scores
That corner, in the 35th minute, produced a goal. Matthews wanted to take the flag kick. The referee decreed that it was on the other wing, and so Rickett took it instead.
The ball surged out of the pack of men battling for it, rolled out far away to Lewis, who lobbed it back again.
After it, so fast that he beat the offside trap, went MORTENSEN and Blackpool’s two other inside forwards.
The inside-right was first on It, shot past Williams almost at his leisure, with Wilshaw, who had retreated to the aid of his defence, laid out on the grass, neglected 20 yards away.
Afterwards it was almost a repetition of the first 20 minutes, with the Wanderers in a ragged and at times desperate retreat.
Blackpool’s criticised left wing was playing its best half of the season. It built one raid on its own which ended in McCall’s final pass being headed away, and, repeatedly, it was nearly as assertive as the right.
LAST MINUTE
Yet, in spite of all this pressure, Suart let in Wolverhampton’s left wing in the half’s last minute, and before that raid was repulsed the Wanderers had been closer to a goal than they had ever been for nearly a quarter of an hour.
Except for a tendency on this right flank of defence to hesitate under pressure, it had been almost a 100 per cent, half for Blackpool.
The south stand gave Bill Lewis a cheer to himself as he left the field. He deserved it.
Half-time: Blackpool 1, Wolverhampton Wanderers 1.
SECOND HALF
The Wanderers opened this half with persistent pressure. It led nowhere, but it continued.
Wright brilliantly intercepted a pass in a Mortensen-Matthews raid, but otherwise the ball, during the first five minutes, was moving all the time on a Blackpool defence which, in the end, conceded a corner, and would have had to surrender another but for a superb tackle by Johnston.
Yet, all on his own, the pace and aggression of McIntosh caused Williams to leave his goal and slice a clearance anywhere in a Blackpool breakaway.
But it was still the Wanderers who were nearly dictating the game.
GRAND CLEARANCE
Hayward made another of those grand clearances which, repeatedly during the afternoon, had halted the Wanderers’ forwards in their tracks, and made yet another after Pye had escaped on his own and shot at the falling Farm a ball which cannoned off the goalkeeper’s chest and came out dangerously loose before the vigilant centre- half swooped on it.
Afterwards, there was one of those free-kicks which are taken only after a long Parliamentary debate when Farm was adjudged to have taken the ball outside the prescribed area.
With 15 minutes of the half gone the 'Wanderers’ pressure was waning and Blackpool were storming into the match again.
A Matthews free_ kick won a corner which Rickett wasted by slicing the ball on to the Kop, and later in this game, which had been packed with incident, there was for a few minutes scarcely an incident at all.
ALWAYS IN THE GAME
Yet after Matthews - yes, he was always in this game - had crossed a perfect pass to an open flank. Rickett lobbed in a high centre which, in the sun’s glare, Williams fisted over the bar for a corner.
Within another minute this Wolverhampton goalkeeper fielded a long centre raking the goal in front of him from the illusive man on Blackpool’s right Wing.
WOLVES LEAD
Brilliant goal from Mullen
Yet. two minutes later, the Wanderers went in front again with the sort of shot which wins games.
Hayward, chasing a forward pass with the persistent Wilshaw at his heels, passed back a ball too fast and wide of Farm for a corner on the right.
The ball was crossed, was lost in a ruck of men, came out on the other side of the pack and MULLEN, darting to it, shot a brilliant goal from a nearly incredibly narrow angle.
Afterwards, for minutes, the Wolves were rampant, surging in storming attacks on the Blackpool goal.
In one of these attacks back went Mortensen to the aid of his defence, took the full count, and ultimately was carried off.
Ambulance men were summoned to him and were still attending him as the Wanderers’ raids surged on.
McINTOSH HURT
A few minutes later. McIntosh, pivoting to Matthews’ pass and shooting barely wide of the near post, nearly crippled himself, fell, and for the next few minutes was limping.
All this, I think, was accidental, attributable to the game’s unrelenting pace.
Fifteen minutes were left and Blackpool were still losing, still challenging the issue as resolutely as ever, but revealing no great prospects of goals.
Blackpool were resigned, I think, to finishing another game with 10 men when back came the inside-right, hobbling a little, but as game as ever.
In the next couple of minutes the Wanderers’ trainer was twice on the field, first to attend to McLean, who fell in a tackle which cost his team a free kick, and the second time to Williams, who collided backwards into a post as he punched out a ball headed over him by McIntosh when the free kick had been crossed.
The Wanderers were always holding the lead, and threatening, now and again, to increase it in the closing minutes, with all Blackpool’s earlier inspiration, and nearly all their pace, gone.
Result:
BLACKPOOL 1, (Mortensen 35)
WOLVES 2. (Smyth 25, Mullen 68)
COMMENTS ON THE GAME
The Wanderers won this game as nearly everybody, before it was played, had expected them to win it.
What few people had not expected was the challenge which Blackpool offered to the First Division leaders during a first half in which the Wanderers might have been almost routed.
For nearly half an hour these Wolverhampton men were made to seem a laboured and disordered force by a Blackpool forward line which, during that time, was yards faster to the ball, and played football which had speed, precision and nearly everything else in it.
For these first 45 minutes the left wing, at last, played a game which had something except punch in it, and the entire line was magnificent.
Matthews was able to pass his full-back whenever he seemed inclined - and was still passing him to the end of the afternoon - and it took Shorthouse nearly an hour to find out exactly where the fast aggressive McIntosh was going.
With a shade of fortune Blackpool would have held a winning lead at half-time.
Later in the second half, I had the impression that all this pressure had taken its toll.
The greater pace - in the last 45 minutes was in the Wanderers’ front line which, on its left flank, passed the hesitant Suart, and repeatedly was halted only by the resolution of Hayward, racing out to the exposed wing, and by Johnston bravely closing it.
Bill Lewis had a game of unexpected composure and assurance. Nobody could blame him for a defeat which for half an hour seemed certain to be a triumph and might so easily have been.
On the air
The second half of the Blackpool-Wolverhampton Wanderers match this afternoon was broadcast.
The microphones were installed on one of the front rows of the reserved section in the centre stand.
BLACKPOOL’S sixth match in 16 days is on the list for Monday evening, when Newcastle United come to Bloomfield-road for only the second time in a League game since 1936.
This should be a Cuptie before its time in the calendar. The United have a habit of making all their games events of major importance.
Their visit last year was almost a north-east carnival. The United went for a week into special training at Cleveleys. And on the day of the match nearly 10,000 people from the Newcastle region stormed into Blackpool.
The United won 3-1, chiefly because Blackpool presented them with an early goal with a back-pass which never reached its intended destination and, not content with this generous little gesture, gave the United’s forwards an in-off goal late in the afternoon.
Still, the United were the faster, more aggressive team and deserved to win, as they deserved the completion of the double by a similar score at St. James’s Park later in the season.
Blackpool will have plenty to avenge - if they can - on Monday evening.
Next Saturday Blackpool are at Villa Park, where since the war no Blackpool team has lost and where last season a 5-2 triumph on New Year’s Day was the team’s biggest goal revel of 1948-49.
The Villa are one of the teams that have never beaten Blackpool since the war. Another Portsmouth?
GRAND LOT, THESE FOOTBALLERS
They are not the tough guys of popular fancy
By Clifford Greenwood
PORTSMOUTH - AND ALL THAT
THERE'S no place like home - so the song writers said. Blackpool’s footballers would not know about that this week, writes Clifford Greenwood.
They left the town last Friday morning, returned to it on Thursday afternoon. Six days away - and nearly 900 miles by rail and road for three hours of football at Portsmouth and Middlesbrough.
They have not been so long absent from home base, except on the 1948 close-season tour in Denmark, since they went to Ascot before the Cup Final.
And even the Final prologue and epilogue, culminating in that amazing, almost emotional reception when the defeated team returned, lasted only five days.
Mr. Joe Smith, the Blackpool manager, was even longer away. For when his team left Saltburn on Thursday he took a train down into the deep South again en-route to meet the Edinburgh Castle at Southampton - and his club’s new forward from South Africa.
The manager’s grand tour this week approached 1,600 miles.
One of these days, when he’s walking down Mere-road, he’ll forget the number of his house!
Happy pilgrims
YET there could be an unhappier lot than a Blackpool footballer has to endure when he is on one of these pilgrim’s progresses.
He is booked into good hotels. He is given every reasonable freedom of action - “I can trust these men anywhere," - Manager Smith proudly proclaims - and he meets all sorts of interesting people.
Among those the Blackpool players met last weekend at Portsmouth were:
Michael Denison and Dulcie Gray, the film stars, who are on a prior-to-London theatre tour of "Queen Elizabeth Slept Here” - which is one of the few places, I should think, where at one time or another the Blackpool football team have not slept.
Anona Winn, so charming, so unaffected.
The Deep River Boys - a new edition of the Inkspots and the Mills Brothers, who went to the Portsmouth-Blackpool match, and unashamedly cheered for Blackpool, and after the match exchanged autographs and a few comments.
Their white manager could not credit it when told that Stanley Matthews was paid only £12 a week.
“But,” he said, “over in the States that boy’d make as much as Babe Ruth.” Politely he was told that football was not baseball, that essentially it was a team game, that Mr. Matthews had - never asked for and never expected a higher rate than the rest of a team.
He still “tut-tutted” and “waal, I nevered” about it.
”Sign, please!"
Whoever said private enterprise had perished in this island kingdom can never have seen the autograph hunters of Portsmouth in action.
Not content with laying siege to the hotel on the Southsea front where the Blackpool men were quartered, they swooped, not as single spies but at about half the strength of a battalion on the bus which the team took to a musical-hall one evening, darted upstairs and downstairs in search of the precious signatures,
And as they had paid their penny fare the conductor could do nothing about it and was disinclined to, in any case, for autograph hunting is apparently one of Portsmouth’s approved light industries.
They even invaded the field - dozens of them - until the enraged constabulary chased them off, at halftime at Fratton Park.
One Blackpool player conducted his own little census, calculated that he signed his name 57 times in less than two days.
Island tour
THERE was Sunday - on the A little bit of heaven which fell from out the sky one day - and it was not called Ireland, either, but the Isle of Wight
Chicken lunch at Ventnor - lobster tea at Yarmouth - and all the loveliness of a coast line which with the white surf curling on its shores and washing placidly at the foot of the battle-mented Needles made the heat and turmoil of Fratton 24 hours earlier seem an episode in another incarnation.
Across the Solent, and as Ryde Pier was approached, and as the cruiser Sussex and the ugly duckling of the carrier, Formidable, passed to starboard, they began to talk about the Royal Navy, and I learned that there were three men in the Blackpool team who had served with the Fleet in the days of war. All were Scots.
One was Willie McIntosh, another was Andy McCall, who transferred to the Army after two years in the region of “E Boat Alley,” and the third was George Farm, who was in four years and spent two of them out East on a carrier.
In the mirror
THERE was the hall of mirrors which unexpectedly and incongruously - a custard - pie comic precipitated into a Dresden China ballet - is tucked away in a corner of beautiful Black- gang Chine - the mirrors which distorted a number of famous personalities in Blackpool into shapes wonderous and incredible.
It was quite a day on the Island. Not even the constantly- reiterated question “Where are these cows I’ve heard so much about?” by Britain’s greatest wit - after Charlie Chester - could spoil it.
Team song
LITTLE curiosities I noticed: The house next door to Fratton Park is called “Offside Cottage.”
Blackpool are not the only team with a theme song. Whenever Portsmouth take the field - for the kick-off and at half-time - the band play the Pompey Chimes which once pealed from a clock tower in Portsmouth before a German bomb hit the tower.
The speedway call creeping into Soccer. Time after time during the match I heard the crowd chanting “ P—O—M—P—E—Y.”
The Portsmouth management unable to decide when their team had last lost a home game - until they searched the records after the match.
Some said that Burnley had been the last visiting team to win at Fratton in the first match of the 1947-48 season. The files established that the distinction belonged to another Lancashire team, Manchester United, who won at Fratton on Boxing Day, 1947.
Between that match and Saturday’s defeat Portsmouth had played 32 successive home games without a defeat.
They said
COMMENTS record:
Mr. Joe Smith: Show me a scoring half-back and I’ll show you a bad ’un. (He was quoting a famous Scottish manager, but he agreed with the sentiment).
Mr. Johnny Lynas, the Blackpool trainer: Send a team from the North down into the South three days before a match in the South - and it’s the best way of losing a game I know. (The 100 per cent, fitness of the Blackpool men - a tribute in itself to Johnny - was the subject of a lot of comment at Fratton).
My own comment: Thanks for a grand weekend.
8,000 miles to play for Blackpool
FOR years a young South African has dreamed of the day when he would watch a first-class football match in England. He watched one at last today - the Wolverhampton Wanderers game at Blackpool.
For years, too, he has dreamed of the day when he would play in a match in
England. That dream will probably come true for him next weekend, when he may play for Blackpool's second team in the home Central League match against the Wolves' young cubs.
It cannot happen too soon for 23 - year - old Gordon Falconer, inside-forward from Johannesburg Rangers, who has come 2,000 miles by land to Capetown and another 6.000 miles from Capetown by sea to put his fortune to the test in English football.
He is the first overseas player ever to sign for Blackpool, writes Clifford Greenwood.
Five foot 9in. Falconer, an list, scoring forward, sailed from South Africa in the Edinburgh Castle.
South Africa ranks him as one of the best inside-forwards the game has produced in the Union. He has toured Australia and New Zealand with South African teams, has been assured by competent judges that he will make the grade in England.
Manager Joe Smith, of Blackpool, was on board the Edinburgh Castle to meet him.
I walked out on to the field with Falconer before today’s match. He pressed his toe into grass which has been baked for weeks in the sun. “They’d call that soft back in Jo’burg,” he said.
***
Good luck to him - and to his two compatriots - 17-year- old outside-left, Bill Perry - "a good player that,” says Falconer - and a 20 - year - old right-half. Bernard Levy, two Johannesburg Rangers, who will be leaving for Blackpool in a week or two.
List closed
FEW clubs are as generous in their allotment of accommodation for disabled spectators as Blackpool. Yet today the list has had to be closed.
“We regret it,” reported the club, “ but it is impossible to allot another seat. The demand now exceeds the supply”
Then came the war
TEN years ago today the last match in the First Division before the world went to war was played in Blackpool.
Who were the visitors? Wolverhampton Wanderers, who were here again this afternoon.
What was the result? Blackpool won 2-1, and Jock Dodds scored both the Blackpool goals in this team:
Wallace; Sibley, Butler; Farrow, Hayward, Johnston, Finan, Astley, Dodds, Buchan, O’Donnell (H.).
VERDICT MAY BE AGAINST FOURTH DIVISION
NO TIME has been lost by the Football League in implementing the decision of the annual meeting last May “to explore ways and means of extending the competition to include clubs worthy of League status who at present are kept out.”
The management committee have already held preliminary discussions on the subject, and prominent clubs outside the League, such as Colchester and Yeovil, Cup heroes of the last two seasons, and the National Association of Non-League Clubs are keeping their fingers crossed in the hope that a new Fourth Division will result.
They may be in for a sad disappointment for there is a growing feeling that points against a Fourth Division may outweigh the favourable arguments in the eyes of the Management Committee.
Always zealous in guarding the interests of their present dubs, the League rulers may well feel that there are insufficient teams outside their present jurisdiction to form a new division composed entirely of clubs up to the required standard in playing ability, ground capacity, potential support, and other directions.
Another factor likely to weigh heavily against the ambitious clubs is that several of them may appear to be so near to existing League dubs as to provide undue increased competition.
Examples are Bath Examples are Bath, within easy distance of Bristol, which already has two League clubs, Dartford and Gillingham, which may be said to be in the area from which Charlton draw sup- South Liverpool in a city two prominent League 1 sides.
LAST CHANGE
Of course, the non-League clubs can point to many strong arguments why they should have a better chance of admission to the premier competition of the country.
The last change in the composition of the League occurred in 1938, when Ipswich were elected. The Non-League Association, quoting recent FA Cup successes of many members, could put up a good case that there is an adequate supply of worthy clubs for a Fourth Division, which, after all, would presumably be considered below Third Division standard.
They could also point out that there are many ambitious clubs serving districts far removed from the nearest League ground, Chelmsford, Colchester, Worcester and Shrewsbury being examples which come readily to mind.
POSTWAR BOOM
Attendances the envy of League clubs
Another very strong argument in their favour is that the postwar soccer boom, which has benefited non-league clubs perhaps even more than their seniors, shows no signs of subsiding, and may not have reached its peak.
Many of them attract average attendances which would make many a League club jealous.
If the League does, in fact, turn down the non-leaguers’ repeated overtures for inclusion, they will make big efforts to strengthen their own present competitions in a bid to challenge the dominant position of the League.
IN THE SOUTH
The Southern League, which considers that big areas of the South are inadequately provided with good-class soccer, has already laid plans to begin a second division next season.
Many of the clubs in this and other good-class leagues are now wealthy enough to snap up League players open to transfer, and to resist offers from League sides for their own promising players.
***
Leave a Comment