15 October 1949 Blackpool 0 Liverpool 0
Blackpool have second half play, but not the inches
OH, FOR A MARKSMAN!
Blackpool 0, Liverpool 0
By “Clifford Greenwood”
BLACKPOOL v. LIVERPOOL, PLUS THE ILLUMINATIONS EQUALS CLOSED GATES IN THE SIMPLE ARITHMETIC OF FOOTBALL.
They wore closing them at Blackpool again half an hour before the kick-off this afternoon, when the undefeated team from Anfield came to town for the first all-Lancashire match of the season on this ground.
Fifteen minutes later every gate was locked with 31,000 people inside and thousands outside the ground. This was another of those days when Blackpool lost about £1,000 and could do nothing about it.
Hundreds of little boys were allowed to crouch beyond the barriers in front of Spion Kop and in the south-east corner, always a congested area.
Dozens of others were passed down over the heads of the packed crowd,
The international at Cardiff reduced the casts, Blackpool fielding a new left wing with Andy McCall at inside-right and Liverpool fielding three deputies, among them Cyril Done, a forward who invariably has a good match and seldom fewer than one goal against Blackpool.
I hear, by the way, that Liverpool’s 11 games in succession without defeat is an opening-of-the-season record for the Anfield club.
Teams:
BLACKPOOL: Farm: Shimwell, Garrett, Johnston, Hayward, Kelly, Matthews, McCall, McIntosh, Davidson, Rickett.
LIVERPOOL: Minshull; Lambert, Spicer, Jones, Hughes, Fagan, Payne, Baron, Stubbins, Done, Liddell.
Referee; Mr. J. Williams (Bolton).
THE GAME
Liverpool, playing in with red collars because of a colour clash, won the toss and defended the south goal with the aid of the wind.
Billy Liddell went away on his own in the first minute, darting down his wing and veering across field into the inside-right position before Hayward put the brake on him.
Inside this first minute, which was fast and tempestuous, Blackpool built a raid which McCall opened with a perfect pass to his partner and ended by lashing over the ball as his partner returned it square to him.
This raid continued, too, until Minshull actually fielded a long throw in by Johnston which hit the grass only once before it reached him and in the end nearly bounced over his head.
Nearly all Blackpool’s raids in the opening minute s were limited to the right wing. Nearly all these raids, too, were built by Johnston, who opened another which ended in McCall shooting fast into the arms of the waiting Minshull.
HIT THE BAR
That was in the fourth minute. In the next, Liverpool were the unluckiest team in the world not to go in front.
Principal in the episode was the sharpshooting Liddell, who tore after a pass, reached it 40 yards out, hit it, and watched it shake the underside of the bar, with Farm still in midair beaten by its pace.
Out the ball cannoned, was retrieved by the goalkeeper, with no other Liverpool forward within 30 yards of him.
I had the impression in the first 10 minutes that Liverpool’s football had the direct qualities in it which, without giving a game any particular elegance, make goals.
Blackpool were not outplayed, but all that happened within shooting range of the Liverpool goalkeeper was a succession of shots off the beam by McCall.
A grand tackle by Kelly cost a corner - the first of the match with Liverpool’s front line tearing away full-tilt on Blackpool’s goal again.
BACK PASSES
Both goals have narrow escapes
When a corner came for Blackpool in the 13th minute it was nearly an unlucky minute for Liverpool.
No particular peril beset the Liverpool goal when captain Willie Fagan decided to pass back, mishit the pass, and left his goalkeeper racing vainly across his line to a ball which bounced inches outside a post.
The corner was repelled by Liverpool’s tall defence almost nonchalantly, and within a minute a similar front-of-goal error nearly cost Blackpool a goal.
Hayward this time passed back under pressure a ball which Farm had to parry at Done’s feet before falling in a heap as the aggressive Liddell darted on to the scene.
These Liverpool forwards required a lot of watching. Fast to the ball in every position, they built another shooting chance, but a great interception by Hayward repelled three of them. This centre-half was playing another great game.
GARRETT’S TACKLES
Equally resolute on the left flank of a Blackpool defence still under a lot of pressure was Garrett, who twice in rapid succession halted Liverpool’s perfectly-timed tackles.
Blackpool s forwards could make a defence giving them inches in nearly every position.
Matthews worked one opening astutely for McCall to cross a centre, but the high-flying ball was headed away from Davidson.
In the 23rd minute Liverpool’s front line was near a goal again.
Again it was the flying Scotsman Liddell who was in the incident racing into the centre-forward position to take away a long forward bouncing pass before shooting at Farm’s knees as the goalkeeper, left at his mercy, galloped out to meet him
At a conservative estimate, Liverpool might have been leading 2-0 after 25 minutes. Yet in the 26th it could, and should, I think, have been Blackpool who went in front.
RICKETTS RAID
Goalkeeper falls, is hit by shot
There was a brief spurt on Blackpool’s left wing. A rebounding ball sailed out, off, I think, a Liverpool full-back’s head.
Rickett went after it, was all on his own, the full-back vainly chasing him as he shot a ball which hit Minshull as the goalkeeper fell at his feet, and cannoned out, with Liverpool’s defence, for once, scattered.
A series of Blackpool raids followed. In one of them Shimwell shot a free-kick a couple of yards outside the area into the packed ranks of Liverpool men in front of him, and in two others Matthews, after outwitting his full-back, crossed centres which no man in Blackpool’s attack was tall enough to reach.
Repeatedly at this time centres flew across Liverpool’s packed goal area, revealing that in these goalmouth sorties the big man wins nearly all the time - and Liverpool had the big men today.
IN RETREAT
Half an hour had gone, and Liverpool, in command of the game for the first 20 minutes, were going back everywhere, were still retreating as Kelly surged into the forward pack and stabbed a shot wide of a post.
Another free - kick within ominous distance of the penalty box came, this time so excitedly disputed by Fagan that the referee halted the game and lectured the Liverpool captain.
Not that the free-kick was worth anything, for when it was taken Kelly was protesting against another infringement and completely unprepared for the pass which Matthews made to him from the kick.
Twice in a minute afterwards McIntosh shot into the arms of Minshull, who was never a reserve in his appearance today but was instead a model of coolness. advancing a minute later to snatch away Rickett’s long centre from Blackpool s pursuing centre-forward.
GREAT LEAP
Magnificent clearance by Farm
There was not a lot in it afterwards, although when Hayward conceded a corner Farm, from the flag kick, had to make a great leap before clearing magnificently, with three Liverpool forwards challenging him.
Everything was a little too excitable, a lot of the early order having gone out of the football.
Yet a couple of minutes before half-time Liverpool might have had a goal when Liddell, wandering over to the right wing crossed a perfect centre which Stubbins missed in mid air in a position where he has scored a goal or two in his time.
The half ended with Liverpool raging to the attack. Hayward crossing Stubbins path with a desperate tackle as the centre- forward moved into a shooting position.
The tackle cost a corner and was probably worth it, and the corner had hot been cleared before a great interception by Johnston halted another Liverpool forward in a scoring Position And then, to complete the switchback. Blackpool won a corner in the last 20 seconds, to make three corners in the half's last two minutes.
Half-time: Blackpool 0. Liverpool 0
SECOND HALF
Comers still came in the second half.
Another was conceded in desperation by a Liverpool defence which was still never too sure against Blackpool’s right wing. It went the way of all the others cleared ultimately by fullbacks and half-backs whose height was still making a lot of difference.
McIntosh was under treatment for a minute afterwards, and was finally persuaded to leave the field bv the referee, who. when the centre-forward returned couple of minutes later was cheered when he crossed over to examine the player.
Even with 10 men Blackpool's attack was maintained, Rickett hooking a centre from the right wing into Minshull’s arms.
Yet before the centre-forward returned Liverpool, in a breakaway, nearly snatched a goal, Done taking a pass from a free-kick and shooting in low a ball which hit Hayward and cannoned out off him when a goal seemed certain.
FIGHTING BACK
Blackpool put in more attacks
Blackpool were still making six raids to everyone by the Anfield men who, against the wind, seemed to have lost a lot of their fire in the forward division.
Hughes was content to concede another corner from Garrett's long clearance, and the corner nearly produced the elusive goal at last, McIntosh leaping at the crossing ball and heading it in so high and fast that Minshull had to punch it over the bar for another corner.
And this one Matthews actually put behind, which is nearly a Matthews record.
Still the Blackpool offensive was almost continuous, Minshull fielding another centre from the Matthews assembly line before Liverpool conceded another corner which a massed and by this time desperate defence again repelled.
FREE KICKS
Liverpool, except as a defensive force, had nearly faded out of the match, were conceding nearly as many free kicks as those interminable corners.
It was almost an event when Stubbins took Payne’s pass in the outside-right position and crossed a centre which Farm collected and cleared all in one movement.
Blackpool’s sixth corner in the 21st minute of the half came - and went. A goal seemed to be beyond mortal man to contrive. Fifteen minutes left and one had still not come.
One of those last 15 minutes had gone and a goal was as near as it had ever been.
It was a half-back who almost scored it, too, Kelly racing into position before shooting a ball which hit the angle of bar and post and bounced high out.
So it continued to the end - a Blackpool assault, with an infrequent breakaway by Liverpool Liddell in one of those raids rocketing a shot high over as Hayward tumbled him to earth.
Result:
BLACKPOOL 0
LIVERPOOL 0
COMMENTS ON THE GAME
LIVERPOOL will never be nearer to losing an undefeated record than they were in this match.
After threatening to win it, and, to be frank, being unlucky not to snatch an early lead, the Anfield men spent the last hour of the afternoon massed in defence of a goal under constant pressure.
That this goal never fell, with Stanley Matthews repeatedly crossing passes into open spaces, was chiefly, I think, because Blackpool’s lightweight forwards had not the armament in pounds and inches to batter down a stronger, heavier defence.
Out in the open the line, even if at times a little inclined, to play the short pass to excess, had little wrong with it once the left wing came definitely into the game after an indifferent first half.
I have not seen the Blackpool defence stronger this season. Eric Hayward had a game which not even he has often equalled and the “Merseyside Matthews,’ Jimmy Payne was never in the match, so vigilantly was he watched and ultimately played out of it by Tom Garrett.
There was not a position in this defence which was not competently serviced, with the wing halves constantly putting the ball through to the forwards.
This defence came out of the match about 100 per cent.
If only those forwards could score - if only nature had endowed them with those inches and pounds which in the hurly burly of such a game as this make all the difference!
THERE was a time early in the season when there were nearly black borders in a few of the London papers’ sports pages, when the headlines were so grim and forbidding that a stranger to these isles might have been pardoned for thinking that empires were decaying and civilisation collapsing.
All that was happening was that Arsenal were losing, writes Clifford Greenwood.
But they were not losing for long. At Highbury next weekend Blackpool will meet “Gunners” whose guns have begun to fire again, who have not lost a match since 29-year-old Reg Lewis came back into the attack on September 7 - unless Middlesbrough have done it at Ayresome Park this afternoon.
And they have not only won, but their forwards have scored, too, entered today’s match with a total of 28 goals, which made the line marksmen-in-chief in the First Division.
It should, therefore, be another major test for Blackpool’s new ironclad defence in London in a week’s time, with the prospect of Blackpool’s own forwards producing a bit of smash-and-grab against an Arsenal defence which has been a little too generous this season in its concession of goals.
There was a time ’prewar when Blackpool teams were invariably put to the sword at the Highbury.
Those days have gone. Blackpool lost there 2-0 last Easter with a skeleton team and were defeated 2-1 a year earlier. But there was a 1-1 draw in 1946, and, in fact, there has never been a lot in it since the war.
There should not be a lot next week. But there could definitely be a classic of a match.
THE LOCAL BOY CAN NOW MAKE GOOD
AT BLACKPOOL
— and so can young South Africa
By Clifford Greenwood
SPORT SNAPSOTS
BY "CLIFFORD GREENWOOD" 15 October 1949
The Merseyside Matthews
YOUNG man I shall have been watching today with particular interest: Jimmy Payne, the Liverpool outside-right.
They call him at Anfield “the Merseyside Matthews” assert that he is destined one day to wear the famous Stanley’s mantle.
From all 1 have seen of him in the last year or two that’s not so improbable, either, writes Clifford Greenwood.
Yet, if England have decided that a long-term policy dictates the appointing of a forward to reign in Matthews’ stead, the inevitable selection must still, I think, be Tom Finney, who is one of the greatest wing forwards of this generation and should be in England's team for years yet.
***
BOX-O-TRICKS SHACKLETON
WELL, is Len Shackleton the answer to England’s inside-left problem now that Wilf. Mannion is no longer the automatic selection for the position.
I would never pass judgment on a man after watching him in only one match, but, according to the Sunderland-Blackpool game a week ago, the answer would have to be “No.”
Of the variety of his accomplishments as a ball player one could write a long essay. He knows every move in the book, and has invented a few of his own - and some of them have a cock sparrow impudence in them which the gallery loves.
And for half an hour last weekend he played for Sunderland as if the Empire and a continent or two were at stake.
But I should think that as a team man he can often be an almost negative quantity. He outwits and baffles and exasperates and torments the men he is playing against, but that often, too, I think, is the fate of the men he is playing with, for he’s such a box-o’-tricks that nobody ever knows what he’s going to do next.
Yet the fact remains that he scored two master goals in two games against Blackpool last season, and nobody could dispute that he has earned his chance in the England team today.
***
JOCK DODDS has recommended another player to his club, Lincoln City.
The first was George Eastham. Now, on the big centre-forward’s advice, the City have given a trial to Ronnie Matthews, Stanley’s brother. He played his first game at inside-right for Lincoln’s second team last weekend.
“If he’s only a few of Stan’s tricks he’ll do for us,” says Manager Bill Anderson.
***
BLACKPOOL broke the ground record at Roker Park last weekend by 453.
Arsenal created the previous record - 64,436 was the official figure - on September 18 last year.
Records for all matches is 75,118 for a Derby County Cuptie in March, 1933. But where they packed them all that day is nobody’s business. The Home Office would assuredly not allow it these days.
Blackpool are always an attraction on Wearside.
There were 47,750 at last season’s match at Roker, and even on a day when the rain fell in torrents and the pitch was such a sea of mud that I remember Mr. “Jack” Howcroft saying in the Press box "If I were referee, I’d call it off,” there were 46,950 there for the famous 1933 Cuptie.
***
May yet be a Rover
WALTER RICKETT could have been playing in the
blue-and-white quarters of Blackburn Rovers at Swansea instead of watching
Blackpool at Sunderland last weekend.
As soon as it was known that the little man from Sheffield was on the transfer list the Rovers renewed the offer they had made for him a few weeks earlier.
But this time the wingman, tired as he may be of being Blackpool’s 12th man at Sunderland it was his fourth successive match as first understudy - said, “No,” and repeated that he would prefer a club closer to his home in Sheffield.
I shall still not be surprised, however, if he finishes up at Ewood Park, for wherever Ronnie Suart is there will Walter Rickett always be happy. They called them “The Inseparables.”
I still think Blackpool might regret parting with this little man. Once the rains come and the mud with them, the forward who made his name in the famous mud of Bramall-lane - and there is no thicker mud anywhere - may easily come back, too.
***
Overtime at Roker
IF it had been Mr. W. Pickles broadcasting for the BBC at Roker Park last weekend instead of Mr. J. S. Pickles refereeing for the Football League, the bill would have been faded out.
This was the longest football match, except for extra-time Cupties, I have ever watched. By the grandstand clock, by my own watch, and by the watch of every Pressman present, Mr. “J.S.” played between six and seven minutes overtime in the second half.
The trainers had been on the field for casualties once or twice but I cannot think that seven or even six minutes had been lost.
Yet this competent Bradford referee - and he was competent - constantly consulted his own watch, and, in spite of one or two furtive signals by his linesmen, permitted the play to go on and on until in the end I began to think that I was at a timeless Test.
It made no difference. But what would have happened if a goal had decided the game in those overtime minutes?
***
IT will seem strange visiting Roker Park in future years without seeing Colonel Joseph Prior stalking the corridors behind the scenes in his brown bowler and his flowing Victorian cravat.
“Joe” Prior, when you met him, made you think you had gone back in time, and were at the National Sporting Club in its olden golden days, instead of at a football ground. He was football's Forsyte.
None of the 64,000 people knew of the tragedy which was being enacted as they watched Blackpool outplay Sunderland in the second half.
To his home was telephoned the half-time score of 1-0 for the team he had built.
"That,” said the Colonel, “is very good. Let me know the final score;”
They rang his home again, and when there was no answer a Sunderland director went by car to the house on the outskirts of the town, and there found the Colonel dead.
Somehow I am glad that the last news he ever had of his team was that Sunderland were winning.
***
It was news to nearly everybody in Fylde cricket when the report was published in “The Evening Gazette” that Bill Lawton, St. Annes CC’s professional, had transferred from Oldham Athletic to Chester.
Few people knew that he played football, fewer that he was on professional contract as a wing-half at Boundary Park.
His transfer to Chester will enable him to renew acquaintance with Eric Sibley, the ex- Blackpool fullback, who went to Chester during the summer and who has met the St. Annes professional on the cricket field.
Eric has been out of action for a week or two, was convalescing in Blackpool when I met him the other day.
***
WHENEVER I go up into the north-east for a football match I meet Albert Watson, the former Blackpool captain, the man who scored the goal that reprieved Blackpool from a Second Division sentence one afternoon in 1931.
I met him again a week ago.
Blackpool was Albert’s first League club, and always it will remain first in his affection and his allegiance. He scouts for Blackpool these days in a territory which has probably produced a greater number of players for the first-class game than any other in the country.
Kenneth Smith, the reserve inside-forward, is one of the several men signed by Blackpool or offered trials since Mr. Watson began to prowl the north-east on the club’s behalf.
Not that football is a full-time occupation with Albert these days. He is on the staff of a factory manufacturing electrical components, works a five-day week.
***
SOLD
LATEST tale they are telling in the northeast is about the director of a certain famous club which is always on the scout for new players.
Weekend after weekend this director was prospecting. In the end he went to one match, was greatly impressed by the visiting team, recommended the signing of three of its players.
No action was taken. He had been watching his own team!
***
CROWD LIKED OUR TEAM
CONGRATULATI ONS to Stan Mortensen on his selection to play for England today, writes “Supporter.”
Once more the senior team drew a record crowd on their last away game and impressed all who saw them with their fighting qualities and the standard of football they played,
No luck
THE Reserve lost their first match this season, but, given a small slice of the cake labelled "Luck,” would have won handsomely.
The two junior teams again impressed their public with two most convincing wins, Of these junior teams more will be heard - and may a few internationals graduate from their ranks.
Whist drive
THERE are still some tickets left for the military whist drive next Wednesday afternoon (2-30) in the Albert Hall.
They are obtainable at the Supporters’ Huts, price 1s.
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