8 October 1949 Sunderland 1 Blackpool 1
Mortensen goal in second half come-back
SUNDERLAND TIRE
Sunderland 1, Blackpool 1
By “Clifford Greenwood”
IT WAS A FULL-SCALE UNOFFICIAL INTERNATIONAL TRIAL AT ROKER PARK THIS AFTERNOON.
One Sunderland forward, Len Shackleton, and the Blackpool right wing forwards were all reported to be under the notice of the England selectors, who meet tonight to choose the team for the match in Wales next week.
There were prospects of a capacity attendance approaching 60,000 half an hour before kick-off time. That, in view of Sunderland’s sensational defeat of the United at Manchester last week, was not surprising.
The illustrious cast on view would in any case have ensured it.
For the first time this season Blackpool were able to announce “No change” and in the end to field a “No change” team.
Harry Johnston did not come up to the north-east yesterday, but remained at home until early today at the bedside of his six- year-old son, David, who has been seriously ill.
Telephone reports on the boy shortly before the match were reassuring.
PARCHED PITCH
Rain fell in towns 10 to 20 miles outside Sunderland today, but in spite of grey skies there was none in Sunderland and the pitch was still parched and a lot firmer than the majority of players prefer it Nobody has prayed for rain more fervently than the professional footballer.
Nearly 76.000 people were once inside the Roker Park gates, but with fewer than 60,000 inside them today all the terrace gates were being closed.
THE GAME
Sunderland won the toss, but there was nothing in it, with scarcely a breath of wind fluttering the flags.
Tom Garrett was in position to repel Sunderland’s first raid on the right wing half a minute before Watson, in a tempestuous opening by Sunderland, punted forward a clearance which bounced so high that Farm had to hold the rising ball under the bar.
Twice in Blackpool’s opening advances Matthews was given perfect passes. Both led to menacing positions in front of Mapson, who was dancing about like a cat on hot bricks as the bouncing ball escaped Wardle, with the wing forward in a shooting position.
The next raid ended in Johnston shooting fast from the right wing forward’s squared pass into the arms of Mapson, who, a minute later, hurled himself between McCall and Mortensen to snatch a long lobbed pass from the two of them.
MATTHEWS BUSY
Seldom has Stanley Matthews been so often in a game for Blackpool in a match’s early minutes.
He took another pass, walked away from the fair-haired Hudgell once, and when the full-back chased him and reached him swerved away from him again before crossing a high centre which Mapson clutched down from Mortensen and McIntosh, with both forwards after it full tilt.
The Blackpool forwards in these first five minutes were fast as terriers into the tackle and in their pursuit of the ball.
Then Ivor Broadis, in a raid which the tireless foraging of Shackleton had built, shot the ball into the net after seven minutes from a position so many yards offside that not one of the 60,000 customers disputed Mr. Pickles’ decision.
It was fast and furious football in the first 10 minutes, and about 50-50 between the teams, even if one had the impression that Blackpool's closer game had a greater class in it.
SHACKLETON -
Halted by massed defence
Len Shackleton was racing about everywhere, one minute as a wing half, the next as an inside forward, ana a minute afterwards was to be observed galloping down the centre, where a massed defence three times in rapid succession repelled him.
This man, who seemed intent on playing himself into an England team again, built another raid which opened on the right wing and ended on the left, where little Reynolds, halted by Shimwell’s fast tackle, staggered away out of it, retrieved the ball and crossed a centre which the vigilant Hayward cleared anywhere.
These Sunderland forwards on the goal path were fast and direct, with the two inside men constantly bringing their wings into the game or cutting through on their own.
Farm made a great mid-air clearance after Shackleton had given position for Reynolds to cross a high centre into a goalmouth packed with men.
With 20 minutes gone, the pressure on Blackpool’s goal had become relentless and almost continuous.
MISSED CHANCE
There were, however, few chances, with the Blackpool defence as strong as ever again.
One came in the 21st minute, but Davis missed it, the centre-forward, trapped with his back to the goal, heading wide of a post after Tom Wright had put over a centre on a plate.
I knew this was to be the Blackpool defence’s greatest test for weeks. So it had been from the fifth to the 20th minute.
Ultimately, this quarter-hour siege lifted, and there were afterwards several excursions into Sunderland’s territory, nearly all of them made by Mortensen.
Twice the Blackpool inside-right zig-zagged over a 40-yard trail before force of numbers repulsed him.
In one Sunderland raid Farm fell full length to reach a ball shot fast and wide of him by Davis, but for five minutes it was the Blackpool front line that nearly all the time was in the game without being able to achieve anything conclusive.
ESCAPE - AND GOAL
Wright’s shot was one in a thousand
The Blackpool goal had a big escape in the 31st minute. Davis, chasing a random pass from a position, which for once was not offside, reached the ball, hooked it inside, and stood watching it as it appeared to brush the front of the near post and bounced down inside on to the line, where Farm, in a desperate dive, retrieved it.
Nearly 60,000 people were convinced that the ball had crossed the line, but Mr. Pickles find one of his linesmen said “No.”
Not that it made any great difference, for six minutes later, with Sunderland’s forwards surging to the assault again, the ball was not only over the line but indisputably in the net for the first goal Blackpool have surrendered in over five hours’ football.'
It took a wing half-back and a shot in a thousand to score it.
FLYING BALL
One of several attacks had been halted but not completely repelled.
Out came a loose ball into the left half position 30 yards out.
Arthur Wright hit it back as it roiled to him, stood almost nonchalantly as if he were doing this in every match as the flying ball sailed yards out of the falling Farm’s reach into the far wall of the net.
Strangely, it was Blackpool, and not Sunderland, who made the pace after this goal.
Mortensen, who at times in this match seemed to be a one- man attack, almost forced a passage on his own.
In the second of these raids Mapson had to fall to his left in a brilliant clearance as the inside-right shot wide of him.
In the next, three Sunderland players were glad to chase the ball over the line for a corner to halt this nonstop raider.
Sunderland’s direct football had won an interval lead, and was entitled to win it. If, however, there had been comparable punch in as many positions in the Blackpool attack Blackpool might not have been losing at half-time.
Half-time:
Sunderland 1 Blackpool 0.
SECOND HALF
Blackpool opened the half with another raid which had too many passes in it, the last one too fast for Matthews as McCall at last served a long one out to a wing.
Still these raids continued, one of them actually ending in Matthews shooting slowly, but still shooting, into the arms of the waiting Mapson.
There was an infinitely greater menace in Sunderland’s first attack of the half which might have produced something conclusive if Tom Wright had not overrun the final pass almost in the jaws of goal.
Blackpool’s raids, however, were still persistent if nothing else, McCall swerving past two men before stabbing his shot tamely wide.
That was what was wrong with nearly all Blackpool’s football. It glittered and sparkled in the open, but near goal everything repeatedly fizzled out.
BLACKPOOL PRESS
The pressure, nevertheless, continued.
A free-kick was awarded almost on the penalty area line and this, too, came near to a goal. Mortensen half slicing a fast ball which skidded away from McIntosh as the centre-forward hurled himself at it with no man guarding him.
Johnston hooked a clearance away superbly in a Sunderland breakaway after Farm had hit a centre too short.
But within a minute - the 15th of the half - there was a chance of sorts for Blackpool, created this time by an attack on an open front.
Mortensen opened it with an unexpected pass out to an exposed wing, where Wardle crossed a high centre which was beaten out by the falling Mapson to Matthews, who from 15 yards shot wide with his left foot as the goalkeeper sprawled in front of a gaping goal.
Afterwards the Blackpool front line advanced repeatedly by the long passes which for too long had been discarded.
McIntosh
Three times close to a goal
The inevitable result was that for the first time in the afternoon everywhere, the defence under this pressure revealing itself as a force of no great conviction.
Three times the aggressive McIntosh stormed into the game and was close to a goal. The first time Mapson hid magnificently a ball which the centre-forward headed at him at a great pace from Matthews’ precise centre.
The next time the leader took a Mortensen pass and shot fast and low, for Sunderland’s, goal-keeper to reach the ball again as he dived to his left.
The next time the heavyweight Hall halted McIntosh without any ceremony while all demands for a penalty were refused.
Blackpool were making a match of it with 20 minutes left. Gone was all the thunder and lightning of Sunderland’s front line before the interval.
One man who could have taken a snap chance could have won a point and probably the game for Blackpool at this time.
Free kicks - too many of them - were being conceded by a Sunderland defence unimpressive in retreat
A goal was always threatening and with 16 minutes left it came.
McIntosh made the chance with a headed pass down to MORTENSEN, who went after it, mastered the bouncing ball, swerved a full-back and with Mapson coming out lobbed it wide of the goalkeeper into the far wall of the net.
Blackpool won a succession of corners afterwards against a tiring Sunderland. McCall headed wide by inches from one of them and except for a missed chance by Davis, Sunderland were outplayed till the end.
Result:
SUNDERLAND 1 (Wright A, 37 mins)
BLACKPOOL 1 (Mortensen 74 mins)
COMMENTS ON THE GAME
After nearly being stormed out of game before interval Blackpool made great second-half comeback.
Once the long pass was introduced front line moved with new purpose. Earlier it had tangled itself in a mace of short passes.
Hayward was again No. 1 in defence.
Once Shackleton had been mastered - and it was Johnston who subdued him - Sunderland front line faded out.
Blackpool, undefeated since l September, snatched game out of fire arid if half chances had been taken would have won it by a goal or two.
Attendance 64,889, League record for ground.
FIRST all - Lancashire match of the season is at Blackpool next weekend. And if Liverpool have not lost a couple of points to Middlesbrough this afternoon, the Anfield men will enter the match as an undefeated team, writes Clifford Greenwood.
Dust off those “House full” notices again!
Blackpool may or may not be at full strength for the match - that depends on the England selectors - hut Liverpool, I think, will not come to it with all the confidence they might.
For no Liverpool team have won a point in a First Division game at Blackpool since the war. One of those teams arrived in 1946 as League leaders and with an undefeated record in 12 successive games.
That 13th game ended the sequence, for Blackpool won 3-2.
Since then a Liverpool forward has not scored at Blackpool. It was 2-9 for the home team in 1947 and 1-0 last year when Andy McCall’s goal was sufficient to win the day.
The Blackpool defence should have no picnic in this match, for Liverpool field a forward line which has a scoring shot in every position, a line led by Albert Stubbins, one of the best centre-forwards in present-day football, with the shooting Scot, Billy Liddell, on one wing, and on the other “Boy” Payne, the outside-right who is called on Merseyside “Matthews the Second.”
This could be one of the matches of the season. But, whatever it turns out to be, they will be closing the gates again.
CLUB TURN AWAY £1,000 A GAME
Best way to stop the loss
By Clifford Greenwood
SPORT SNAPSOTS
BY "CLIFFORD GREENWOOD" 8 October 1949
THINK OF THE OTHER CHAPS!
COMPLAINTS are still being addressed to Blackpool by west stand spectators who go to matches at Bloomfield-road in the not unreasonable expectation of watching a game from beginning to end, and week after week are seeing little of the opening and closing minutes.
The practice of arriving late and leaving early is so prevalent among a few of the clientele, writes Clifford Greenwood, that they are even being asked in the programme to show a little consideration to the rest of the community.
Whether it will persuade them to change their habits is questionable. There may be good reason for coming late, but when they begin to swarm out. five or 10 minutes from time as if the stand were on fire it’s gone past a joke.
The club are entitled, I think, to discourage this little practice, and the rest of the customers are also entitled to object to it.
***
MET one of the Euxton directors the other day and learned from him that Frank O’Donnell, the ex-Scotland,
Blackpool, Villa and Preston centre-forward, is still player-manager with the Derbyshire club.
He had been appointed to the post only a few weeks before I visited Buxton with Blackpool’s Cup team last season, had played his first game as a centre - half - and not liked it a bit - and had afterwards gone back to the front line.
He is fielding himself these days, when he plays, which is not too often, as an inside-left, the position where he made his name in Glasgow in partnership with his brother,
Hugh, another who took the Preston-to-Blackpool trail.
It was for Frank that Blackpool made the headline deal with Deepdale which included not only a big fee but the transfer of Dicky Watmough, who these days is in the hotel business in Bradford, and Jim McIntosh.
***
WHO was the England forward who played as a wing half for Fulham at Blackpool last week?
Albert Beasley,
The the left-half, was England’s outside-left in 1939 when he was at Huddersfield.
I noticed that Fulham fielded in this game the two full-backs and all three half-backs who met Blackpool in the Cup quarter-final at Craven Cottage last year, including Harry Freeman, the fullback who collapsed early in the Cup match and was out of it after the first 20 minutes.
Blackpool had a no-change half-back line from the Cuptie, but a new goalkeeper and a new left back, and of the forwards only Stanley Matthews and Stanley Mortensen survived from the London game.
Jim McIntosh led the line at Craven Cottage - and scored the late deciding goal in a 2-0 match - and the left wing was George Dick and Walter Rickett.
***
Nothing like it before
FOR the records - in case this particular record has been blown sky-high at Sunderland this afternoon:
When the match at Roker Park opened the Blackpool defence had been playing exactly seven hours and 52 minutes without conceding a goal. The last goal it had lost was against Wolverhampton Wanderers at Blackpool in the 68th minute of a match played on September 3.
In 53 years there has been no parallel to this exploit in Blackpool football.
***
In the England class
YOU seldom see his name in print these days among the prospective England leaders, hut you will see in action at Blackpool next week a centre- forward who has, I think, greater claims to the position than a few who' are being canvassed at the present time, writes Clifford Greenwood.
Albert Stubbins. of Liverpool, was one of the bull-at-gate bulldozer school when he was at Newcastle.
He is that no longer. Watch him, and you will see a centre - forward who a year or two ago came to the conclusion that he was rapidly getting nowhere by chasing about everywhere.
Now he leads the line in fact and not merely on the programme, still scores a high average of goals for a present-day centre-forward, and makes them, too.
In every game I have seen him play during the last two seasons he has been all that an intelligent front-line leader should be.
And you can count Tommy Lawton and a few others boosted by the London Press boys in that assessment.
***
MANAGER JOE SMITH did not see his team play Fulham at Blackpool last weekend.
He was watching a Second Division club’s inside forward whose name has made a lot of news during recent times. But by the player’s display in this particular match Mr. Smith was not greatly impressed - Blackpool are still on the quest for forwards - if they can find them.
***
THE last time a St. Annes amateur had been nominated for a Lancashire county game before Michael Johnson went as 12th man to Morecambe for the Northumberland match last weekend was when Harold Lord was selected as the county’s goalkeeper in the days not long after the first world war.
Those were the days when this bank officer ranked among the first half- dozen amateur goalkeepers in the country. Yet even in those long- ago times Harold Lord was no one-game man, was playing for the St. Annes Cricket Club for which he is now acting as secretary, and as a fast bowler was often among the wickets.
He came out of his retirement to play a game or two last summer, and it is questionable whether he has yet played his last cricket match.
Football he has had to desert long since, but while he was in it he adorned it. And that’s- not one of those tales which you tell to the Marines - the Marines with which Harold Lord served when the second war came.
***
LATEST rumour in Blackburn: Stanley Mortensen is following Ronnie Suart to Ewood Park. Forget it - there’s nothing in it.
***
His England team
AMATEUR team selectors have been standing-in all week for the board who select the English team for the match against Wales next weekend.
I choose one eleven taken at random from a formidable mail on the subject, this one chosen by Mr. j. E. Edwards, of Poulton-road, Fleetwood:
Bartram; Aston, Scott (if fit) or Etherington; Wright, Franklin, Taylor; Finney, Mannion, Milburn, Shackleton, Mullen.
Writes Mr. Edwards, who obviously knows his football: “What is wrong with Blackpool’s forward line is that there are only two scoring forwards. Matthews makes the goals, but does not score them, and McCall, Wardle and Rickett don’t, either.
“Look at Manchester United, the Wolves, Derby County, Liverpool - teams with all-scoring forward lines.”
I look at them and I admit that the argument is unanswerable.
***
BLACKPOOL team will have been playing this afternoon for the first time against Ivor Broadis, the Sunderland forward.
Manager Joe Smith and one or two others will have been watch- him with interest - and not for the first time. Blackpool were one of the clubs constantly in the market for this ex-Spur while he was at Carlisle, were prepared to make a higher offer for him than player.
But in those days there seemed no prospect that he would ever the club have ever made for leave the Third Division club.
Did I say, by the way, that Blackpool made their highest ever offer for Broadis? That is not strictly correct.
The late Col. William Parkinson made the highest - £15 000. according to what I was told by him, for a famous Scottish wing forward a few months before the signing of Stanley Matthews.
But the rest of the board knew nothing about it!
***
LET US HAVE FAIR PLAY
I FEEL I should start these notes with a strong condemnation of a section of the crowd which persisted in the “booing” and barracking certain players during Saturday’s match at Bloomfie1d - road, writes “Supporter.”
Surely, it is realised that such conduct only adds “fuel to the fire” when tempers are frayed. At times like these, a code of conduct is required such as that expected of the players
So let us have fair play for the players, no matter what their team, and. they in turn will give us of their best.
Also, let us hear more of the “Bloomfield-road roar ” and give our team all the encouragement they deserve.
Social side
THERE are some tickets left for the military whist drive on October 19, and they may be obtained at the Supporters’ huts on the ground.
Arrangements are well advanced for the Guy Fawkes dance at the Tower on November 2.
Leave a Comment