19 November 1949 West Bromwich Albion 1 Blackpool 2
Abandonment brings team protest
BLACKPOOL LEADING
West Bromwich Albion 1, Blackpool 2
By “Clifford Greenwood”
NOT UNTIL 10 MINUTES BEFORE THE KICK-OFF WERE THE GATES OPENED AT THE HAWTHORNS THIS AFTERNOON FOR THE FIRST VISIT TO THIS MIDLANDS GROUND BY A BLACKPOOL TEAM SINCE 1937
Odds against the match being played were about 100-1 when I reached the ground shortly before two o’clock. The mist was thick all over Birmingham, and for miles beyond, according to all the weather reports.
Before the Blackpool team left their hotel in the centre of the city provisional arrangements were made to return by rail instead of road, but the indications were that whatever route was taken nobody would be home until morning, and one could only hope it would be Sunday and not Monday morning.
“ This,” said Stanley Mortensen, walking out into the semi-darkness, “is worse than the Dynamos game in London in 1945.”
It could scarcely have been a lot worse.
With a few hundred people waiting less in hope than faith outside, the locked gates it was impossible at two o’clock to detect either goal from the centre circle except as a pale skeleton looming in the remote distances.
The rules decree that unless both goals are visible from the halfway line a referee must call a match off.
“HAVE A GO”
The minutes passed in speculation and rumour. “It’s lifting. “It’s falling.”
Nearly all the time it was falling, and yet 10 minutes before the teams should have taken the field Mr. J. S. Pickles, of Bradford, who apparently considered that he should act according to his name, ordered “Have a go, and 22 men discontentedly trooped into the dressing rooms to bring off collars and coats and telling each other “It’s impossible.”
I agreed with them. A couple of minutes later the gates were opened. Never have I seen people on a football ground in such amazing circumstances.
Both goals were hidden from the Press box. There were two or three hundred people clustered on the paddock walls below. How many others there were scattered on a ground which can accommodate 60,000 it was impossible to estimate.
I have written that the odds against the game being played were half an hour earlier 100-1. Against it being finished they were about 1,000-1.
Teams:
WEST BROMWICH ALBION: Sanders; Pemberton, Millard, Kennedy, Vernon, Ryan, Elliott, Williams, Walsh, Smith. Inwood.
BLACKPOOL: Farm; Shimwell, Garrett, Johnston, Hayward, Kelly, Hobson. McCall, Mortensen, Davidson, Wardle.
Referee: Mr. J. S. Pickles (Bradford).
THE GAME
They were out five minutes later to a cheer whose volume denoted, I should think, about 20,000 people.
They were out - and then they were hidden. Press photographers had a special privilege. They saw the coin being tossed. Nobody else saw it. Who won it I don’t know or who kicked off.
Blackpool attacked the goal to the right. That was revealed by the presence for half a minute of Albert Hobson on the near line.
Half a minute later I saw a raid on the Albion’s left wing which Shimwell appeared to halt in collaboration with Hayward.
Then, for an undetected offence, Mr. Pickles gave a free-kick which the Albion did not dispute for the good and sufcient reason, I suppose, that nobody knew what it was for.
I thought they only played blind man’s buff at Christmas parties. Obviously I was wrong. One was being played this afternoon and being called a football match instead of one of the old Keystone comedies.
Every now and again some wit shouted “Goal,” but so far as I was aware, without being dogmatic about it, not one was scored in the first five minutes.
SHOT WIDE
In the sixth an outside-left in a striped jersey called Inwood cut inside within visible distance of the Press box, and presumably shot wide.
I write “presumably” because a phantom in the mist who resembled George Farm was seen a minute or two later taking a goal kick.
When, for half-a-minute, the curtain lifted I was granted the privilege of watching Walsh, the Albion centre- forward, take a lobbed pass and shoot a ball which Blackpool’s goalkeeper fell on and reached in a heap on his line.
Down the mist descended again. There were thunderous noises behind this goal which Farm was guarding, and a few less thunderous ones behind the other goal.
Presumably, therefore, the Albion were raiding more often than the visitors, but, frankly, I wouldn’t be certain about it.
PENALTY GOAL
Elliott gives Albion the lead
Exactly 12 minutes had gone. There was a raid on the Albion’s right. I heard a whistle. Somebody said it was a penalty.
An Albion player came racing to the line, summoning the trainer who was presumably required to attend to an Albion man.
Half a minute passed. Through the gloom several men in tangerine jerseys could be seen in fervent argument with a character who was, I think, the referee.
Another half minute - another blast on the whistle - and a cheer.
Rumour reached the Press box, and was afterwards confirmed, that a penalty had, in fact, been given and that ELLIOTT had converted it.
So the Albion were definitely leading 1-0 after 12 minutes. And it was 1-1 in exactly 14 minutes.
MYSTERY EQUALISER
This goal was a major mystery. Everybody disappeared in the direction of the Albion goal. There was a subdued commotion. Back they came to line up in the centre of the field.
It was always a nice shade of odds that it was MORTENSEN who had scored.
This is an old Blackpool custom, and a messenger dispatched to the line to Blackpool’s trainer, Mr. Johnny Lynas, confirmed the supposition.
I saw nothing after that little incident for five minutes. So I spent the time recording that this was Mortensen’s 12th goal of the season and his sixth in four games.
The Albion penalty was only the third conceded by Blackpool in 12 games, counting this as a game.
By three o’clock I had reached the conclusion that if the public had paid to watch a football match it was daylight larceny, for they were not seeing one - they were not seeing anything at all by that time.
JUST A GLIMPSE
Shimwell boots ball into paddock
Visibility was down at times to fewer than 20 yards. The only two men I had seen between 2-55 and 3-3 were Shimwell, the Blackpool full-back, and the Albion outside-left he was watching - if he could see him! He must have seen him in one raid for he crossed his path, hooked the ball back, and booted it high into the paddock beneath the Press box.
The full-back beat this forward again half a minute later, but this time from the throw-in the Albion made progress on this wing, and from it a centre was crossed which was greeted by a big “Ooh” as it flew out of sight in the general direction of the invisible Farm and was ultimately cleared down the field.
At last I saw a movement from beginning to end. A clearance by Shimwell was taken by Johnston, who kicked it forward to Hobson, who swerving his man, disappeared from view. The final pass was reported to have gone to, Mortensen. who won a corner, and this corner apparently was cleared.
BLACKPOOL AHEAD
But the pressure must have continued, for during the subsequent minutes there was a lot of noise behind the Albion’s goal, and in the 35th minute this goal fell again.
The opening move in the raid was discernible from the Press box. Out of the murk came Kelly into the right-half position, glided a pass out to Hobson as if he were playing on Wembley turf in spring sunshine.
The deputy outside-right took the pass away and crossed it. and somewhere in front of the Albion’s defence MORTENSEN, as a bulletin from the touch line reported, hurled himself at the crossing ball and headed his 13th goal of the season to put Blackpool in front.
Afterwards the pressure must have been continuous on this goal, interrupted only when Inwood came galloping down the Albion’s left wing, reached a centring position, and sliced the centre into the side net.
Immediately Blackpool had another raid which won only a goal kick, but from all appearances Blackpool were raiding almost without interruption for minutes afterwards.
The next incident, not seen but from all the circumstances assumed, was a collision in the Albion goal area which required the presence of both trainers.
McCALL CLEARS
In view for first time in match
Immediately afterwards the Albion had an attack on the right which was repulsed by little McCall, who thus came into view of the Press box for the first time during the afternoon.
Hobson took his partner's pass, too, punted it far down the field for Mortensen to chase, and Mortensen chased it until he disappeared and was apparently repulsed.
I am indebted to an unknown informant for the news that five minutes before half-time Farm saved a fast low shot by Walsh in an Albion counter-attack, which was followed by one or two others.
As half-time approached Blackpool were raiding again on a right wing where young Hobson seemed to be very elusive, corkscrewing about before releasing centres into the murk.
Two minutes of the half were left when the whistle’s blast halted play.
Shimwell walked down the field and was seen no more.
It was either a free-kick close in or a penalty, but whatever it was it was not a goal, for after a lot of hullabaloo in the region of the Albion’s goal the teams did not line up again.
Half-time: West Bromwich A. 1, Blackpool 2.
SECOND HALF
There was a period early in this half when the field was visible from one touch line to the other.
As soon as they could be seen as a team the Albion turned on the heat, and won a corner on the right which Elliott headed fast into the hands of Farm.
Direct from the clearance a hall punted far down field was chased by Mortensen, who, in the end after losing it once to Jack Vernon, took it off the Irish centre-half and cut inside a pass which McCall shot into the crouching keeper's hands.
The mist began to fall again, hut definitely nearly all the movements were on the Albion goal.
After a long down-the-field pass by Wardle had opened one of these raids the offside whistle halted Hobson within half a dozen yards of the line.
Immediately, however, there were two raids by the men of the Hawthorns.
FARM’S DASH
The first was repelled by an unconventional clearance by Farm, who, tearing out of his goal full pelt, reached a loose ball a split second before Elliott almost at the edge of the penalty area, hocked the ball over the wing forward’s head, clutched the ball to his chest as it fell, and hurled it out to a waiting half-back all a dozen yards outside his own goal A minute later, too, Elliott thundered a shot wide at a pace which would have left at, goalkeeper on such a day as this wondering “Where has that one gone to?”
And within a couple of minutes of this raid Inwood in another shot wide again.
While all this was happening Mortensen limped to the line for attention and limped back again Whereupon the mist descended almost as thick as ever, but before it obscured the scene entirely I saw. Warble take a McCall pass and cross a centre which rose out by the far post.
Elliott, who was in the game more than any other Albion forward, then won the comer.
NEARLY A GOAL
Albion goalkeeper beats out a shot
A minute later, in the 14th of the half, Blackpool must nearly have made it 3-1.
I saw a Blackpool forward - I think it was Davidson - steer through a forward pass. A forward who by his pace could only have been Mortensen chased it, outpaced his centre-half, shot a ball which a phantom figure, who was presumably Sanders, beat out as he fell to his left, with his defence scattered in front of him.
That, obviously, was an escape for the Albion, who afterwards faced a lot of pressure.
Another two minutes, and as Kelly glided a perfect pass into an open space, Hobson darted on it and shot a ball which Sanders punched out again, and in another minute Wardle accepted a forward pass and missed a post by a cat’s whisker.
Twenty-five minutes left and Blackpool were still in front, and the encircling gloom was hiding everything that mattered.
BELLS AND RATTLES
Blackpool forfeited a free-kick somewhere about the halfway line, but nothing appeared to happen within visual range of the Blackpool goal, which was, however, presumably threatened again in the next few minutes, judging by the ringing of bells and the clattering of rattles in the hidden zone.
Elliott was still a menace whenever he came into view or faded out of it. Once I saw Garrett halt him superbly.
Then came the final sensation. With 20 minutes left and after a consultation with both linesmen Mr. Pickles abruptly blew a final whistle and abandoned the match.
The reason for his decision defeated all reason, for at that time visibility was greater than during any other time in the first half.
Blackpool protested to a man, even George Farm entering the swarm about the referee, while 20,000 people, or however many there may have been, stamped, whistled and catcalled.
The Albion walked off without a word, grateful for, I suspect, the reprieve.
The match was abandoned after 70 minutes with the score:
WEST BROMWICH ALBION 1, BLACKPOOL 2.
The loudspeakers were called into action, playing a gay march to silence the hubbub.
Slowly, almost reluctantly, the people filed away.
It was a finish which was the final travesty in a match which should never have been played, but which definitely, once it had been, should never have been abandoned when it was.
COMMENTS ON THE GAME
My only comment on this game was that the gates should never have been opened.
- AND EPILOGUE
Five minutes after the final curtain had fallen on the comedy the referee walked out alone on to the field, reached the centre circle, gazed about him as if to assure himself that he had made a correct decision, and afterwards had a consultation with two police officers on the line.
Then he went backstage - and that was definitely that.
IT will be 1948 Wembley (New Edition) at Blackpool next weekend, when Manchester United come to town.
The United won 3-0 at Blackpool last season, lost by the only goal in the after-the-Final match in 1948 - the game in which Stan Mortensen began as a centre- forward and ended as a Victoria Hospital patient - and lost 3-1 a year earlier.
The Manchester forwards have been strangely subdued in away games this season, have scored only nine goals in seven matches, but the odds are that this line led by Jack Rowley, the new England centre-forward, will give the biggest test for weeks to a Blackpool defence which has not lost a home goal for two and a half months.
Matt Busby’s boys are still one of the big teams of postwar football, will enter the game as championship
challengers, and on their day can be in a class nearly on their own.
It may be a closed-gates match, which would be unprecedented for Blackpool football in November. But box office is written all over it - and if it is as good as it promises to be it will be very good indeed.
DEFENCE NOW THE ACE IN THE PACK
But theorists are wrong
By Clifford Greenwood
Jottings from all parts
BY "CLIFFORD GREENWOOD" 19 November 1949
UNDER THE LIGHTS
IS there a future for football under floodlight? asks Clifford Greenwood.
I should not be all that depressed if there were not, for already too much football is being played - and to play it at night as well as in the afternoons would, I think, be of no particular benefit to the game.
Enough, as Mr. Shakespeare observed on another subject, is as good as a feast.
Yet Mr. Archie Hunter, one of Scotland’s football exiles who seldom misses a Blackpool match, went back over the Border the other day, and at Stenhousemuir saw a charity match played under arc lamps.
“It was a complete success,” he said. “They had a white ball, and you could see every move in the "game.”
It was only a 20-minutes-each-way match, for men who had played for Stenhousemuir a generation ago were opposed to the town’s professional men who were scarcely equipped for a game of longer duration.
The rain poured down all night, but still, according to Archie Hunter, there is a future for night-time football.
President of Stenhousemuir, by the way, is Bob Murray, who came to Blackpool - he was a centre-forward - with Willie Buchan from Glasgow Celtic, was shortly afterwards seriously hurt in a road accident, and has never since had a jersey on.
***
STATISTICS corner:
Of the last nine goals credited to Blackpool forwards Stanley Mortensen has scored eight. The last time any other Blackpool forward scored - before this afternoon’s match at the Hawthorns - was when Willie McIntosh beat the Manchester City goalkeeper on September 24.
The last time the Blackpool goal fell in a game at Blackpool was when the Wolves won on the ground on September 3. Six successive home games have since been played without the defence forfeiting a goal. This is another record in this season of Blackpool records.
No centre-forward has scored against Blackpool - unless the Albion, leader was done it today - since August 27 at Portsmouth. Take a bow, Eric Hayward.
Blackpool Reserve have played nine away games this season and not lost one. Take a bow, every man in the team.
***
So Liverpool have played 16 games without a defeat and have to play only two more to equal the record opening of the season sequence of Plymouth Argyle 20 years ago and Notts County in 1930-31.
All-time record in the League was created in 1920-21 by Burnley, who, after losing their first three games, played another 30 undefeated, winning 21 and scoring 68 goals to 17.
***
Good start by Lewis
BILL LEWIS was given a good Press in Norwich after his first game in the City’s goalless draw at Watford.
It was not until half an hour before the kick' off that he met the men with I whom in future he will be playing, among them the famous Bryn Jones.
His routine for a week or two will be day-by-day training in Blackpool and a train to Norwich or wherever the City are playing, every Friday.
By the end of a month the house which he was promised before he signed will be awaiting him, and he will say his last “Good-bye” to Blackpool.
Sorry he will be to say it, and sorry will Blackpool be to hear it.
***
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.
***
Yes, Lytham did it, too
COMPLIMENTS to Fleetwood from everybody in Blackpool football on reaching the first round of the Cup.
It is a great achievement by this enterprising club. Now, whatever happens, history has been made.
Yet it is not the first time that one of the Fylde’s clubs outside Blackpool has qualified to go into combat with the Third Division sides.
Lytham entered this exclusive circle once between the wars, being beaten by Oldham Athletic at Boundary Park.
The £ s d - and the glory - were both acceptable, and both deserved.
***
NOW that Don Revie has gone to Hull there seems less chance than ever for Willie Buchan, the ex-Blackpool forward, in the City’s first team.
Reason for his long absence from a forward line which still has Eddie Burbanks, the Blackpool wartime guest, on its left wing, is that he was hurt in the second match of the season, and it was not, in fact, until a fortnight ago that he had his first game for nearly two months in Hull’s Midland League team.
I notice that the Scot had three goals for this team at Halifax last weekend, and there are no rumours, such as one would have expected, that in the circumstances he will soon be seeking a move.
All I have heard is that Buchan’s future in Hull football is more less assured, that he will go on the scouting staff once, his playing days are over.
And, according to those three goals, they are not over yet.
***
A SHIMWELL CENTURY
ONE little fact which escaped general notice was that Eddie Shimwell played his 100th First Division game for Blackpool on the Arsenal ground a month ago
One consolation for this omission for the man from Sheffield - assuming he needs one - is that his 103rd, against Derby County last week, was given all the headlines and deserved them. I think Blackpool were first attracted to the full-back by the game he played against the Blackpool forwards on a Bramall - lane marsh exactly three years ago last weekend - a day when Walter Rickett scored a couple of goals against the team he joined later.
That day, I remember, “Big Eddie” was hitting the ball half the length, of the field when few other men could lift it any further than the length of a cricket pitch.
And once he shot this mud-caked ball almost from the halfway line, and Jock Wallace had to parry it under the bar.
***
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.
***
BACK almost into the mists of time - into Blackpool’s Stone Age - explores an interesting letter this week from a correspondent. “W.N.,” of Pleasant-street, who one of these days must be persuaded to write a history of distant times in Blackpool football.
“W.N.” recalls a double which Blackpool once scored over West Bromwich Albion on the ground where these two clubs met this afternoon for the first time for 12 years.
Blackpool won in 1909-10 in a Second Division match at Bloomfield-road and 3 -0 in the return at the Hawthorns. And in Blackpool’s lily-white jerseys in those days, years before in the introduction of the tangerine, were such men as Fiske, Gladwin, Connor, Clarke, Bradshaw, Beare.
“W.N.” can remember when once for a Blackpool-Luton match the turnstile receipts were £15 16s, ld., and when the club’s wages bill was less than £15 a week.
“It seems unbelievable,” he writes. But it is. I know, true, for old balance sheets confirm it. Those were the days ... Or where they?
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International record
NOW that Hugh Kelly is half an international, which is about what his selection for Scotland's reserve team means, Blackpool these days have no fewer than five men chosen by their country in the club's first team.
That is a record for Blackpool and nearly a record for the game.
And still on the staff, seldom playing but managing the “B" team and always prepared to play - already this season he has made two appearances as a full-back - is little Alec Munro, who was in Scotland's team shortly before he left the Hearts for Blackpool.
And as O.C. of the colts in the Fylde League there is Danny Blair, almost as small and probably the smallest full-back ever to wear the jersey he pulled on for the first time in 1929
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