12 November 1949 Blackpool 1 Derby County 0
Morty goal - and then defiant defence
SHIMWELL STARS
Blackpool 1, Derby County 0
By “Clifford Greenwood”
FOOTBALL'S INDIAN SUMMER IS OVER, NOW WINTER HAS COME. THIS AFTERNOON, FOR THE VISIT OF DERBY COUNTY TO BLACKPOOL, A GALE WAS BLOWING, LASHING IN FRONT OF IT SQUALLS OF RAIN AND HAIL.
Half an hour before the kick-off there were not 10,000 people on a ground which only a few weeks ago was packed to the doors for the Illuminations matches and almost scorched under a hot autumn sun.
When the County arrived the first question they asked was “Which way is this so and so wind blowing?” “Every way,” they were told, which was about correct.
Spion Kop has not been as sparsely populated for a First Division match for a few years, and on the south paddock, which faced the tempest, only a few hundred people were huddled under the shelter of the stand.
Before the ball ever began to roll or skid on the soaked turf the odds against football in the strict sense were about 100-1.
It was the worst football day I recall since the snowstorm match at Everton last March.
FIRST HOME GAME
W. J. Slater came all the way from Leeds by road through the gale to make his first home appearance as a First Division forward for Blackpool, and the County included Bert Mozley, who will be playing for England at Maine-road next Wednesday, and the hero of Hampden, Billy Steel.
There were in the teams seven men - four for Blackpool and three for the County - who are still playing or have played for their countries.
Teams:
BLACKPOOL: Farm; Shimwell, Garrett; Johnston, Hayward, Kelly, Matthews, McCall, Mortensen, W. Slater. Wardle.
DERBY COUNTY: Townsend; Mozley, Parr; Ward, Oliver (K.), Musson, Harrison. Powell, Stamps. Steel. McLaren
Referee: Mr. K. A. Collinge (Sale).
THE GAME
Blackpool had most of the wind at their backs, attacking the south goal, when Harry Johnston won the toss.
Errors were inevitable, Garrett slicing one clearance and Hayward mis-hitting entirely a bouncing ball which Stamps was taking away fast before he lost it under a sliding tackle. Nearly 15,000 people saw football in these opening minutes which had plenty of pace but, pardonably, little design.
Inside a minute, too, once Derby’s early pressure had been repulsed, they saw Mortensen chase half the length of the field after a ball which was always being blown fast away from him.
SLATERS PASSES
Half a minute later they watched him pursuing another long forward pass into an almost untenanted half of the field as the offside whistle blew.
Bill Slater was not a lot in the game in the first five minutes, but when he was in it he never held a pass but released it into an open space like a born footballer. One of these passes would have given Mortensen a shooting position if the long legs of the fair-haired Oliver had not intercepted it.
Neither goal was in any particular peril in the first seven minutes. Then Harrison escaped Garrett with a subtle swerve before crossing from the line a ball which Hayward headed away for the first corner of the match almost out of his own goal keeper’s hands.
RAKING CENTRES
Oliver twice heads out from Matthews
Blackpool’s retaliation was a corner in the next minute - a corner which had not been repelled before Matthews had twice raked the County’s goal with centres which the tall, slim Oliver headed out.
Both defences were employing the offside trap and employing it with some profit, too, even if once Slater waited for the pass before taking the ball away.
In one movement he put his wing forward, Wardle, into the game in a raid which a retreating defence repelled.
After the first five minutes it had been nearly all Blackpool, and in the circumstances the football of both teams had been uncommonly good.
In the 15th minute a goal for Blackpool was close, and it was Bill Slater who nearly shot it.
PUNCHED OUT
Bert Mozley lost a ball which McCall had put to him with a bad short pass, and allowed the amateur to cut inside before shooting a ball which Townsend punched out as he fell full length in the mud with his head almost cannoning against a post.
From the corner, too, the County might have lost a goal, Mortensen taking McCall’s lobbed pass and hooking it high over the bar as Oliver challenged him.
NEARLY A GOAL
Mortensen stabs the ball wide
Two minutes later Blackpool should definitely have made it 1-0.
This time Kelly lobbed a perfect pass forward, Mortensen waited for it in an on-side position, raced past Oliver, who was expecting the offside whistle, ran on 10 yards alone, and with Townsend at his mercy stabbed the bail wide.
Those were three escapes for the County between the 15th and 17th minutes.
In the 18th it was the Blackpool goal that was near downfall, and probably would have fallen if Garrett had not been fast in a great leap at a high ball which Stamps was pursuing.
Little Billy Steel had not been in the game a lot. Now and again he made an astute pass, but otherwise it was seldom that the ball was near him or that he revealed any particular inclination to go after it.
STILL RAIDING
Blackpool were still raiding almost continuously - as they should have been with the wind aiding them, even if the wind was not entirely unmixed blessing.
Matthews, given a pass -such a pass as the one with which Mortensen once served him - was as big a problem as ever to a fullback, tangling Parr up into knots before almost lining his forwards up for a deliberate centre which Mozley cleared.
In the end, it required Billy Steel to race back 40 yards to put the brake on the winger before this raid was completely repelled.
Then, fast on the ball and employing the long pass everywhere, the County front line stormed on to Blackpool’s defence, outpaced the left flank, but was halted by Shimwell, who loves his game on such a day as this and repeatedly, in fact surged forward into a wing half position.
AN ESCAPE
McLaren slices wide of half-open goal
This Derby pressure continued and should have given Derby the lead in the 35th minute as Harrison crossed a high centre which flew away from Farm and his attendants and left McLaren, a wing man who has not been long out of Scotland, to slice wide of the post of a half open goal as he skidded at the ball feet first A minute later, too. this Scot shot wide of a post, and in the next minute lobbed another one into the waiting Farm’s hands.'
Before and after these raids for minutes on end the Blackpool fronT line had scarcely been in the game.
Yet the only consequence of this County pressure was, as so often happens, a goal from the other team
MORTENSEN SCORES
A grand goal it was, too. It came in the 39th minute of the half.
A pass reached Wardle far out on the left wing. From 30 yards away the wing man must have seen Mortensen’s hands raised for the long forward pass. It came, lobbed forward with a remarkable precision in the wind.
MORTENSEN went after it, reached it, veered out to his right, half lost it, and, as Townsend, deserted and desperate, galloped out to him, lobbed it over the goalkeeper’s head into the far wall of the net.
In the remaining minutes of the half the County’s goal was again twice under fire.
SLATER THERE
Shoots just wide of post at great pace
The first time Slater took a pass, stabbed the ball back to Kelly, asked for a return, and when it came shot barely wide of the far post at a great pace.
The next time Mortensen, revealing amazing speed in the mud, outpaced Oliver after another long forward pass, and shot a ball which hit Townsend, and cannoned back off him without this heavyweight goalkeeper knowing a lot about it.
Not that the County were out of the game as an attacking force.
Shimwell was superb on one wing whenever this flank was threatened, and on the other Garrett, after being passed once or twice by Harrison, outwitted Steel brilliantly as the two men went after a. bouncing ball.
This was a good half considering the conditions.
Half-time: Blackpool 1, Derby County 0.
SECOND HALF
In the first minute of the second half the England full-back Mozley, halted one McCall - Mortensen passing move as England full-backs are expected to halt raids.
Yet in the end he lost the ball, and it was nearly an expensive error, because before the attack had been repulsed Kelly shot back a ball which glanced off Townsend’s gloves, as the goalkeeper stooped down late to it, and skidded out wide of a post for a comer.
Afterwards the County were in the game as often as Blackpool.
Neither team could yet command a position of supremacy and hold it for long.
SHIMWELL’S SAVE
Yet out on the right flank of Blackpool’s defence Shimwell was often in glorious action.
In the seventh minute of the half he averted a certain goal as he hurled himself into McLaren’s path, with the outside-left in a position where he could scarcely have missed,
The wind was making for the County the little extra difference it had made for Blackpool before the interval.
The County were raiding three or four times to every couple of raids by Blackpool, who were still employing the long forward pass to the waiting Mortensen.
FAST AWAY
Mortensen raid halts County pressure
McCall had ultimately to retreat to the aid of his defence to put the brake on one down-the-centre foray by the aggressive County front line before this almost continuous pressure was ended by another of Mortensen’s fast tearaway assaults.
Seldom have I seen Mortensen as fast as he was in the mud today.
With Derby still attacking a lot and with Shimwell repeatedly sending this front line back in its tracks, the aggressive Blackpool leader exchanged passes with McCall before haring after the last pass, outpacing Oliver, and hooking the ball into the side net, with the County’s defence scattered by the speed of the move.
A minute later, too, Slater was back in the match, calling for a return pass, and, when Wardle gave it him, shooting a ball which Townsend parried brilliantly as he fell to his left.
JOHNSTON’S TACKLE
Yet still, with the wind’s aid, the County were attacking persistently. Johnston had to be fast into the tackle to snatch the ball away from McLaren with this wing forward again in another possible scoring position.
The employment by the Blackpool front line of the forward pass might have been almost monotonous, but it was still effective against a defence which seemed to have no counter to it, McCall taking one of these passes from Wardle before shooting tamely at the crouching goalkeeper.
Repeatedly the old firm of Shimwell and Johnston was in the path of almost continuous raids by the County’s left wing. On the other, with the Derby forwards still hammering away, a corner was won and was worth nothing.
GOAL NEAR
Farm’s saves keep the County out
With 15 minutes left it had become almost uninterruptedly case of Blackpool defence v. County attack, and with ten minutes to go this attack was as near a goal as it had even been, Farm twice beating out a ball shot straight at him before taking Steel’s low shot as he sprawled on the line.
There was still a chance of the County snatching a point.
The County played the last five minutes without Harrison, and the match ended unexpectedly with Billy Steel being given a lecture by the referee.
Result:
BLACKPOOL 1 (Mortensen 39 mins)
COMMENTS ON THE GAME
ANOTHER Stanley Mortensen goal, his 11th of the season, won Blackpool the points today.
The score tells the tale of the match. There was no more in it than 1-0.
Given the aid of the wind in the first half, Blackpool could establish only this one goal lead by half-time. It might not have been sufficient, and probably would not have been if the Blackpool defence had not played a game of dogged defiance in the second half.
Star of this rearguard action and a star all afternoon was Eddie Shimwell, who in this game was fit to compare with Bert Mozley, another full-back of infinite accomplishment.
Yet it was not in one position but everywhere that there was both resolution and decision in this defence - as there had to be - with Hayward seldom passed and Kelly as nearly invincible in the tackle as ever.
There was a big tactical error in the front line, which for too long concentrated the game on the left wing and obsessed itself almost to the exclusion of every other move with the downfield pass to Mortensen.
Not that the leader was anything but menacing when he went after these passes for invariably he had the Derby defence beaten for pace and, in fact, was Blackpool’s best forward.
REMARKABLE PACE
The pace - and it was a remarkable pace in the circumstances - was at times too fast for Bill Slater, and yet the amateur always made the intelligent pass and never seemed out of his class.
Blackpool should have had an unassailable lead by the interval. Otherwise nobody could complain a lot about the team today, and actually there was a lot to praise in a football match of about 100 per cent, higher quality than could reasonably have been expected on such a day.
BLACKPOOL will be in territory which no Blackpool team has visited for 12 years when the West Bromwich Albion match is played next weekend on the outskirts of the city where no Blackpool team has lost since the war.
It was on December 19, 1937, that last a team in the tangerine jerseys went to the ground where in the long ago caged throstles sang in the grandstand.
If they had been present for the 1937 match they would have hymned no song of praise, for the Albion, doomed a few months later to relegation, were beaten 2-1.
Highlights of this game, according to the records, were that Blackpool fielded an all-Scottish forward line for one of the few times in the club’s history, and that one of the winning goals was the first ever' scored for Blackpool by big Frank O’Donnell. Willie Buchan had the other.
Obviously, therefore, instead of throstles singing there should have been bagpipes playing, writes Clifford Greenwood.
For this was the first game Blackpool had ever won at the Hawthorns within living memory, and, in fact, followed five successive defeats there.
It will be a big test for Blackpool next weekend on a ground where the Albion have lost only five goals in nine home games, won five of those games, and revealed no inclination whatever to behave as if out of their class in the First Division.
Blackpool, who have drawn at the Villa Park and won at St. Andrews this season, would, I think, be content with a draw at the Hawthorns.
£30,000 TRANSFER “HAT TRICK,” BUT NO WILD BUYING
Blackpool can afford to wait
By Clifford Greenwood
SPORTS SNAPSHOTS
BY "CLIFFORD GREENWOOD" 12 November 1949
SPORTSMEN ALL-ON AND OFF THE FIELD
AS one who criticised Birmingham for a rough-house game at Blackpool last season, writes Clifford Greenwood, I gladly go on record with the report that the match at; St. Andrew’s a week ago was remarkably good-tempered. Birmingham are in a desperate position, and a lot of their football was desperate, too, but none of it offended the canons of common decency.
Whenever a man was hurt, it was a man of the other team who was first to him, apologising, lifting him to his feet again.
I saw this happen half a dozen times; noticed, too, how Bill Slater came off at the end offering his commiserations to Birmingham’s bandaged full-back who had been hurt in a collision with him, how Stanley Mortensen left the field with one arm of Birmingham’s goalkeeper about his shoulder as Gilbert Merrick complimented him on his two goals and, I suspect, joked with him about Mr. “Bill” Evans’ refusal of a penalty after this goalkeeper had unashamedly tackled the Blackpool centre with a swallow dive permissible at Twickenham, but not at St. Andrew’s.
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BEHIND the scenes, too, I am told, there was an uncomplaining acceptance of the home defeat and, in fact, only praise, unreserved and sincere, of the team that had won.
And. out in front, the long- suffering City public’s final salute to a Birmingham team they had cheered all afternoon was a consolatory “Well played, City!”
Few teams can have such a loyal crowd as these St. Andrew’s men. Barrackers, apparently, are an unknown species. How lucky they are at Birmingham!
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Now and then
BLACKPOOL RESERVE have lost their second match of the season. That makes news. A year ago it was news when this team won.
Two games lost, and both at home, out of the first 15. Last season only four of the first 15 won.
This is called Progress with a capital “P.” And from all I hear this 15th game should not have been lost last weekend.
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IT is a remarkable record which Blackpool have created in Birmingham since the war. Last weekend’s was the seventh played in the Midlands city without a defeat. These are the figures:
1946-47 Aston Villa 1-1
1947-47 Aston Villa 1-0
1947-48 ’Spurs (Cup) 3-1
1948-49 Aston Villa 5-2
1948-49 Birmingham 1-1
1949-50 Aston Villa 0-0
1949-50 Birmingham 2-0
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He’ll do it yet!
STRANGE how twice in successive weeks a “hat-trick” has eluded Stanley Mortensen.
Against Bolton Wanderers there was the disputed goal which is still being talked about, with some people saying the ball was in and others that it hit the bar, and everybody intensely interested except Mr. Mortensen.
A week later, at Birmingham in the last five minutes, when it seemed all the tea in China to a packet of potato crisps that the centre-forward would score his third goal, the deserted Birmingham goalkeeper came out to him, and, diving at his feet, upset the leader.
Everybody waited for Mr. W. H. E. Evans “Bill” Evans for short - to give a penalty. Instead this greyhound on two legs, one of the best referees in the business, refused, and another "hat trick” went west.
Was Mr. Evans wrong? I would not question the decision.
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Jack was here too
I WAS surprised to hear that Jack Bradley, the big strong forward from Southampton who played for Bolton Wanderers at Blackpool last weekend, was another of those stars who in their courses halted for a month or two at Blackpool during the war.
I had forgotten him - or else he played when I was otherwise engaged. If all the players who wore the tangerine jersey during the war years at Blackpool had their names collected. In one volume the book would be a “Who’s Who” of the famous in football for at least one generation.
There would be precious few missing from the list.
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Knock-out mystery
ASK Bill Slater what happened to him when he took the count in the first few seconds of the match at Birmingham a week ago and he will not be able to tell you.
Presumably he went down in a collision, but he has no recollection of it, said, when I asked him about the mystery k.o. after the match “The ball started to roll. I moved to it. Then there was a black-out. The next I knew I was on the touch-line and Mr. Lynas was bringing me round. I know nothing about falling or being carried off the held . . . nothing at all.”
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I LEARN from this accomplished young amateur, by the way, that he expects to complete his present course at the Leeds training college next summer, but that afterwards he contemplates, if he is accepted, another 12 months qualifying for a physical training instructor’s certificate.
Blackpool, presumably, will therefore be able to call on him only irregularly during the next year and a half, although he may be free, as I announced last week, for games in Yorkshire and Lancashire, and there also are the vacations at Christmas and Easter when the Blackpool public may at least be able to see him in a First Division match.
***
I WAS hearing again in the Midlands last weekend of the great service still being given to Wolverhampton Wanderers by a man whose name is seldom in the news.
Mark Crook came from a Yorkshire club to Blackpool, and was signed, I think, by Major Frank Buckley. He was probably the smallest centre-forward, without being in the featherweight division, ever to play for Blackpool.
He went to the Wanderers shortly after the “Major” had assumed office there, and, when his playing days were over, went back again into Yorkshire, where he has built up a nursery which has supplied Wolverhampton with several of the club’s present day stars.
They know how good he is at Wolverhampton. Elsewhere he is just another of the game’s unacknowledged backroom boys.
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'..IF YOU'LL ONLY! BELIEVE THE..GIPSY..'
THE Gipsy has spoken again.
The Romany who said before the Third Round ties two years ago that Blackpool would reach the Cup Final - and lose at Wembley has again been visited by prophecy.
“A certain Mr. Rickett,” she pronounces, “will again lose a Cup medal.” That is obviously, a bit of bad luck for Walter Rickett, the ex-Blackpool forward who was in the 1948 Final, and for his new club, Sheffield Wednesday.
But there is good news for the north-east. “Sunderland ... Sunderland, I keep thinking of Sunderland,” says the seer.
Sunderland are at 20s in the bookmakers lists. But they may soon fall after this pronouncement. for the Gipsy demonstrably knows her onions!
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CASSON SAID "YOU'LL WIN"
SUPPER conversation among the Blackpool team in their hotel on the eve of the Birmingham match was concerned not with football but with hypnotism.
In a Birmingham music-hall they had watched Peter Casson, m the young Svengali who once came to the “Evening Gazette” office, and, in my presence, sent to sleep in working hours half dozen people on the staff, and, while they were in that state of hypnosis, compelled them to obey his will.
It happened again on a bigger scale in the Hippodrome at Birmingham.
Mr. Jack Lister, who was on the Tower and Winter Gardens staff in Blackpool, is touring with the 27-year-old Casson,
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MR. LISTER came as one of Blackpool FC’s guests to the match at St. Andrews.
Mr. Casson declined the invitation, for he is one of the few people in this land not interested in football, has, in fact, attended only one match all his life, but still consented to autograph a photograph for Stan Mortensen, which, when the Blackpool centre- forward bad time to study it after the match, contained the assertion, “You will win 1”
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PEOPLE were questioning last week-end the accuracy of the statement in the Birmingham programme that Harry Johnston was the longest-serving member of the Blackpool team playing in the Birmingham match.
It was correct. The Blackpool captain is no greybeard yet, but he has been at Blackpool longer than any other player on the staff.
Yet as a First Division man ne beats Eric Hayward by only a week. His first game in the Division for the club was at Preston on November 20, 1937. On November 27 the centre-half had his baptism in the game’s highest grade.
Number of League appearances of the two for Blackpool: Hayward 185, Johnston 184. Somebody one day is going to call these two “The Blackpool Twins.”
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CONGRATULATIONS again to our teams upon their displays last week - and a word of consolation for the boys who played so well on Wednesday - and lost.
With a little bit of luck the result would have been reversed, writes “Supporter.”
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Blackpool are well up among the “favourites” for the Cup, so give the team every encouragement.
Give them a real reception on their appearances at Bloomfield- road, and forget all the uncharitable criticisms.
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Congratulations to Stanley Mortensen on his selection to play again for England.
May he continue to put England “on the road to Rio.”
Supporters are asked not to forget the military whist drive on Wednesday afternoon in the Indian Lounge. There are excellent voucher prizes.
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