5 November 1949 Birmingham City 0 Blackpool 2
Blackpool weather early storm, rocket to victory
CLASS WILL TELL
Birmingham City 0, Blackpool 2
By “Clifford Greenwood”
IT WAS BLACKPOOL’S SEVENTH GAME IN BIRMINGHAM SINCE THE WAR THIS AFTERNOON, AND WHEN IT OPENED NOT ONE OF THE SIX - FIVE FIRST DIVISION MATCHES AND THE FAMOUS CUP SEMI-FINAL - HAD BEEN LOST.
Everybody I met assured me that this one would not be lost either. I have heard that before.
Bottom-of-the-table Birmingham, desperate with a record which included only five goals in home games and only one of those home games won, made another big team shuffle.
Bill Slater, who is on half-term leave, played his second game for Blackpool - his first, by a coincidence, was also in this Midlands city nearly two months ago - taking the inside-left position in a front line led by Stanley Mortensen.
Professional footballers have been praying for rain for months.
The prayers were answered with a bonus today. For 12 hours almost continuously there was a downpour in the Midlands, and at times it was almost torrential half an hour before the kick-off.
The field threatened soon to churn into thick mud and was so nearly under water in the goal areas that tarpaulin sheets protected both of them until a minute or two before the teams appeared.
SOFT EARTH
The attendance was on such a day inevitably reduced, but a ground which lost its main stand during the air raids and has still to be content with one of the smallest in t the First Division, with a corrugated iron roof on a web of steel scaffolding, had nearly 30,000 inside its gates when the teams stamped into view and trod soft earth beneath their boots at last.
Teams:
BIRMINGHAM: Merrick; Green, Jennings, Boyd, Atkins, Harris, Berry Jordan, Slater, Brennan, Roberts.
BLACKPOOL: Farm; Shimwell, Garrett, Johnston, Hayward, Kelly, Matthews. McCall, Mortensen. W. Slater, Wardle.
Referee: Mr. W. A. G. Evans (Huyton-with-Roby)
THE GAME
The rain had ceased for the first time since shortly after midnight when Harry Johnston lost the toss
In the first three seconds, almost as soon as the ball began to roll, Bill Slater took the count.
What happened was not discernible from the Press box, but after trainer Johnny Lynas had attended him for a minute the amateur was carried off the field.
This must be about the first time in history that a team has been reduced to 10 men before a minute of the game has been played.
Inevitably it unsettled Blackpool, who, for the next minute or two, were on the retreat and unable to build a raid which amounted to anything.
Twice Hayward halted Birmingham assaults, one on an open right wing before Jordan took a forward pass on this flank and shot over the bar, with Farm leaping at the flying ball.
Immediately, Slater came back, revealing no suspicion of a limp and apparently unaffected.
What exactly had been wrong was still a mystery.
GOAL IN DANGER
Birmingham’s forwards remained aggressive, Johnston delaying one tackle which gave the left wing an open chance for a goal, which was imperilled again until Hayward stabbed the ball back to his waiting goalkeeper.
Except when Mortensen chased a pass too fast for him, with Atkins pursuing the centre-forward, Blackpool in the first five minutes were never within measurable distance of the Birmingham goal.
Out near the left corner flag Garrett dispossessed Berry, but still there was scarcely a Blackpool raid, with Wardle twice racing back to the aid of a defence hammered but not reeling under this Birmingham smash-and-grab offensive.
Once Matthews exchanged passes neatly with Johnston, but the raid led nowhere as the wing forward ran the ball over the line.
The pace in these early storming minutes seemed too fast for Bill Slater, who, I suspect, was still not 100 per cent, after that remarkable first-minute accident.
NEARLY A GOAL
Massed defence keeps out Wardle shot
At last came a Blackpool attack with design in it, and, in spite of early Birmingham pressure it nearly produced a goal, Matthews and McCall making position for Wardle, whose thunder - and - lightning shot bounced out off a massed defence.
Up to the ball leapt the tall Slater and headed it wide of Merrick, who was staggering in the mud on the line as the ball skidded away from Mortensen.
But this was only one raid. Birmingham were making them by the half-dozen, often being repelled by a Blackpool defence, again resolutely served by Hayward and the full-backs, but still pulling out all the stops in as relentless a pressure as I have seen Blackpool face for a long time.
Yet again, in the 16th minute, in a breakaway, Blackpool were nearer a goal than Birmingham had ever been, as Matthews after a long duel passed his full - back and flighted across a gem of a centre, which Merrick beat out brilliantly a split second before Slater hurled himself at it.
There were signs afterwards that the early Birmingham storm was abating. In fact, there were a couple of minutes when the Blackpool half of the field was untenanted except for the vigilant Eric Hayward and his goalkeeper while the forwards raced on to the Birmingham defence. Both defences were settling. Mortensen made a speculative gambler’s shot from 20 yards after Slater’s neat, little pass had given him position, and a minute later won a corner by refusing to lose the ball to the shadowing Atkins.
From the comer, too. Johnston shot low into Merrick’s hands. Nor had another minute gone before Merrick had beaten Slater to a flying centre from Matthews with a great punched clearance.
Birmingham’s early assaults had been reduced to occasional tearaway forays, in which either one wing forward or the tireless Fred Slater in the centre ceased random clearances
Passes were being glided out repeatedly to Matthews on a wing not as closely marked as a Matthews wing generally is, and from one of them, taking the wing forward’s low pass as he stabbed it back, Johnston hooked the ball inches wide of a post.
PICTURE RAID
McCall just wide from Mortensen pass
The Blackpool captain was soon in action again, protecting his full-backs after the ball had escaped him, clearing superbly, and, in fact, opening the best raid of the match.
A picture-book raid it was. Slater built it into a shooting position by back-heeling astutely to Wardle, who crossed a centre which Mortensen headed backwards to McCall, who shot wide - but only just - with not one Birmingham man ever nearer to the ball than half a dozen yards.
This was class, and there was plenty of it in Blackpool’s football for the next few minutes. The story of the first half-hour had been 10 minutes all Birmingham, and the next 20 nearly all Blackpool.
In the 31st minute, with Blackpool pressure continuing, it should, I think, have been 1-0 as Slater put inside a pass which Mortensen sliced wide of a post with the Birmingham goalkeeper alone in front of it.
KELLY THERE
That was the sort of chance which Mortensen usually accepts and as it happened, it prefaced a Birmingham attack in which the City might have snatched the lead, instead, and would have snatched it if Kelly had not crossed Fred Slater’s path with the centre chasing a square pass from Brennan into a shooting position.
Yet afterwards it was soon again the familiar sequence of Blackpool building raids on both wings and Merrick, one of the game’s best goalkeepers, cutting out the centres with his big fists.
Wardle and McCall had one glittering raid on the left which ended in a goal-kick when both men were demanding a corner, and in another advance against a Birmingham almost outplayed by this time, Bill Slater escaped into an open space on his own, ran 20 yards and. with everybody expecting a pass, shot instead from 20 yards a ball which the crouching Merrick fielded on his line like a cricketer in the slips.
AN ESCAPE
Then a great goal for Blackpool
Yet a minute later Birmingham were near to a lead still eluding both teams, Berry tearing away after a long rolling pass, reaching it and crossing a ball which two of his inside men seemed to miss before Shimwell cleared it half the field’s length.
Two minutes passed and the 40th had been reached - and the goal came at last.
It was a grand goal, too, all in two moves, Bill Slater taking a pass, hesitating until his centre-forward was in position, and gliding it forward for MORTENSEN to rocket into the net from a yard or two inside the penalty area with a shot which was sailing away from Merrick’s left arm as the goalkeeper leaped sideways, but too late, at it.
In the last minute of the half Farm made a great clearance from Berry, holding a fast low shot as he fell to his knees.
Half-time:
Blackpool 1.
Birmingham 0,
SECOND HALF
Nearly 40,000 people watched the opening of the second half with fireworks cracking and exploding on the cinder track bordering the pitch.
Birmingham’s defence had to resort to a back pass to the waiting Merrick in the first minute, and before this minute had passed only a sliding interception of Kelly’s forward pass by Atkins deprived Mcall of a shooting position.
Immediately, Blackpool raided again, and, with Mortensen in an offside position, Slater showed his football intelligence by going on his own eluding one man with sinuous move, before falling under a tackle by Green.
This put Slater out of action for half a minute again and gained Blackpool a free-kick a couple of yards outside the penalty area which Mortensen halfshot and half-lobbed into a massed defence.
It was still nearly all Blackpool, with the wing half-backs constantly putting their forwards in possession, opening an attack which gave Mortensen the chance to chase a long pass but to miss Slater when he reached it and cut inside.
IN COLLISION
Shimwell’s long clearances - and how he can clear a ball when the mud coats it thickly - repeatedly put the Blackpool front line into the game, too, one of these clearances creating a perfect raid.
On to the ball Mortensen pounced, served it out to Matthews, who returned it high.
Mortensen and Green leapt at it together, collided in midair, and down went the fullback, who, escorted by Bill Slater to the appreciative cheers of the crowd, had to go to the dressing room with a sponge pressed to a gash over his left eye.
Strangely, with 10 men, Birmingham were more assertive than they had been, Harris thundering a shot wide.
The collision had taken its toll of Blackpool, too, for after it Mortensen had limped out to the right wing where once, from Slater’s pass, he shot wide, with War die looking strange and unfamiliar in the centre.
NON-STOP RAIDS
Brilliant Merrick save from Johnston
Blackpool’s forwards remained in this formation only five minutes, but even then Blackpool were attacking almost continuously.
Raid followed raid, a gallant Birmingham defence repulsing all of them, before Merrick - could be called into action, until Johnston intercepted a short pass by his opposite number in a blue jersey, went off on his own, and from 30 yards shot a ball which Birmingham’s goalkeeper leaped at and punched over the bar brilliantly.
Yet a minute after, that Birmingham nearly made it 1-1 With a breakaway on the left which Roberts completed with a fast low centre which escaped Farm.
The ball was rolling and skidding towards Berry, in a scoring position, as Garrett crossed in front of the waiting forward and desperately hooked it over the line for Birmingham.
Yet Birmingham were never permitted long to assume command of the game.
McCall’s fast deliberate shot was cleared by Merrick for a corner which nearly produced another goal and would, I think, have made it 2-0 if the ball had not bounded away from Mortensen in the jaws of goal.
GOAL NO 2
Still, it made no difference, for a second goal came with Birmingham’s defence tired and riddled with 22 minutes of the match left.
This time it was wing-half Kelly and inside-forward McCall who made the goal. Each released a short pass, MORTENSEN went after the second of them, reached it, waited until the deserted Merrick came out to meet him, and neatly glided it past him and almost unconcernedly stood watching as the ball rolled on, hit the base of the far post, and bounced off over the line,
Rain began to fall in torrents afterwards. For all practical purposes it was all over. There was fight left in Birmingham’s 10 men, but little else.
BATTLE IN RAIN
All the football had gone, and even when Green returned, 15 minutes from time with his head bandaged, only a faint cheer greeted him.
Still, Birmingham, with the rain pouring down relentlessly, battled on and on, made little progress, but sufficient to ^put Blackpool in retreat without compelling Blackpool to lose a little bit of their confidence.
The forwards, in fact, in one breakaway, won a corner almost nonchalantly, and with 10 minutes to go it was merely a case of playing out time.
Five minutes from time Mortensen tore away on his own into a deserted half of the field, reached Merrick, and was preparing to glide the ball past him again when he fell.
This released a demand for a penalty which Mr. Evans refused while a full-back was still chasing the ball and clearing off an empty line.
A “hat trick” still eludes Stanley Mortensen.
Result:
BIRMINGHAM 0,
BLACKPOOL 2 (Mortensen 40, 68 mins)
COMMENTS ON THE GAME
IT was the expected, almost the inevitable, that happened at St. Andrews.
For 10 minutes early in the afternoon sheer pace and desperation outplayed but never stampeded Blackpool. Then class told its tale - and today there was plenty of it, in the forward line and everywhere else.
Bill Slater had another triumph, never lost his composure, seldom made a false pass, and had the line moving smoothly and efficiently.
And again, too, the game established that the centre- forward for Blackpool is the man who can take the chances, Stanley Mortensen, who in this game scored his 10th goal of the season and was always alert and aggressive.
I liked Wardle, too; he had his best game of the season.
But down the entire length of the line was a precision which Birmingham never equalled and seldom approached, gallantly as the St. Andrews men played, and played, too, for 20 minutes of the second half with 10 men.
FROM DEFENCE
The Blackpool defence lost position only in those early storming minutes. Otherwise it was as firm and almost as impregnable as ever, with Hayward always there when he was require - and that at times was often - the wing half-backs architects of countless raids, and the full-backs protecting their goalkeeper with a complete efficiency.
A lot of compliments there, I know, but they were deserved by a team that won with a complete self-assurance.
ONE defeat and two draws is the postwar record at Blackpool of Derby County, who come to town next weekend.
That is not unimpressive. And as the County this season had before this afternoon’s engagement won eight points away from home and only six at the Baseball Ground, it is obvious that if the County are to take the count next week it will require a bit of good football to put them down.
It could be one of the matches of the season.
There are sufficient personalities in both teams to give the match distinction, for, apart from Blackpool’s stars, the County can put in the field a forward line with non stop Billy Steel - £15,000 worth of perpetual motion in it - and a defence which includes the England full-back, Mozley, and the centre-half, Leon Leuty, who, according to Derby, would be an England centre-half if Neil Franklin had not established his monopoly.
These names make news - and they ought to make a more successful team than the County have been this season.
At Blackpool since the war, Derby teams have been beaten 2-1 in 1946-47, when Alec Munro and George Dick scored a couple against Raich Carter’s one; made a 2-2 draw on Good Friday, 1948, and were concerned in a 1-1 draw early last season in a match chiefly notable for the fact that Jack Wright and Ewan Fenton had their First Division baptism in it.
People who think this match may be a Blackpool walk-over should study the County’s away record.
MORTENSEN IS BEST AT CENTRE
And Bill Slater will add weight to the attack
By Clifford Greenwood
SPORTS SNAPSHOTS
BY "CLIFFORD GREENWOOD" 5 November 1949
SO WE LL NEVER KNOW
ONE last word about the famous disallowed goal in the Bolton match at Blackpool. The referee said it was a goal. The linesman said it was not.
Half Spion Kop - or nearly half, according to my mail- bag - was convinced that it was a goal, writes Clifford Greenwood.
An “Evening Gazette” photographer, within half a dozen yards of one post, and, therefore, a star witness, said “The ball was never over the line. It hit the angle of bar and post.”
There is another star witness, Stanley Hanson, the Wanderers goalkeeper. What has he to say?
“As far as I know it was a goal,” he admitted after the match.
It will rank as one of the unsolved mysteries of football.
Not that it is of such great importance, except that it deprived Stanley Mortensen - and he says “I’m not sure whether it was a goal or not” - of the first “hat-trick” he would ever have scored in the First Division.
Yes, incredible as it may seem, it would have been his first ever.
***
FOUR-MEDAL PERRY
BILL PERRY, the 19-year-old South African, who landed in this country a week ago, holds four senior medals won in football in the Union.
It is probably a record for a player of his few years.
He was in the Johannesburg Rangers team as was Bernard Levy, the 17-year- old wing-half, who came half across the world with him - which won the South African Cup a month or two ago.
And if he is half as good as the South African Press and public say he is he will be the best importation among wing forwards from that distant land since Barry Niewuerihuys signed for Liverpool.
Yet Perry himself says he prefers to play at inside-left.
IT will be news to a lot of people, but there has been only one “hat trick” by a Blackpool forward in a First Division match since the war. Willie Buchan scored it in a home match with Portsmouth on September 23, 1946 and even this one included a penalty.
What about Jim McIntosh’s five goals - a First Division record for Blackpool at Preston on May 1 last year?
Well, what about them? In that 7-0 game he scored the first and second, the fourth, sixth and seventh. He had not three in succession - and that sequence alone constitutes a “hat trick,” information which may surprise not a few folk who seem to think three in a match suffice for the distinction.
The last prewar “hat trick” for Blackpool in the First Division was scored by Jock Dodds against Middlesbrough on April 15, 1939, when the big Scot had all four goals in a 4-0 match, and the only other since the club’s last promotion was Frank O'Donnell’s against Chelsea on October 8, 1938.
***
THERE are two midweek fixtures on Blackpool’s list next week.
On Tuesday the Lancashire League team play at Burnley. The following afternoon, at Blackpool, there will be the replay with Rochdale in the Lancashire Cup, a meeting of the two clubs who clashed in the Final last season.
***
The Cup? They’re at 16 to 1
SOMEBODY seems to think Blackpool might go places in the Cup again this season.
According to the list of odds in a circular which came to the office this week Blackpool rank as joint fifth favourites with Derby County at 16-1.
The Wolves are top of the list at nines, Manchester United second at 10’s, Liverpool and Portsmouth level third at 12’s, and Arsenal at 14’s.
And if you want a nice long shot you can have 21 teams from Accrington at “A” to York City nearly at the end of the alphabet at 1,000-to-l.
Probably you prefer to give your money to charity!
***
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.
***
THEY are still singing the praises of Bill Slater in London since his game for the FA XI against the RAF at Fulham last week.
Yet, according to the Blackpool chairman, Mr. Harry Evans, and the manager, Mr. Joe Smith, it was not one of the Blackpool amateur’s best days and could scarcely be expected to be, for it was a day of rain and wind and Polar cold.
The fact remains that “Big Bill” was still indisputably the FA’s best forward.
Major Frank Buckley would give a lot to have him in the Leeds United team, but it’s a vain dream, and I think the major knows it, even if that did not prevent his asking Blackpool for permission which he must have known would be refused.
***
IT WAS JIMMY'S LAST GAME
I NEVER go to St. Andrew’s, where I shall have been reporting the Blackpool match today, without recalling the Cuptie which Blackpool won there in 1938.
The match lives in the memory because it was the last game that Jimmy Hampson ever played for the club. Two days later he met his tragic death in a fishing expedition off Fleetwood.
It was one of Hampson’s flashes of opportunism that won the game, for, wandering out of the centre on to the wing, he took a throw-in unexpectedly, and before an unprepared Birmingham defence could marshal its forces, had accepted the ball and shot it past Harry Hibbs.
There will have been two players in the Blackpool team today who were in the 1938 match - Eric Hayward and Harry Johnston. The others, apart from the immortal Jimmy, were Roxburgh, Danny Blair, Witham. Farrow Munro. Willie Buchan. Tom Jones and Bob Finan.
***
Facts and figures
The last visiting team to score a goal at Blackpool were the Wolves on September 3, Two months and not a home goal lost is another Blackpool record in this Season of records.
Stanley Mortensen’s eight goals in his first 13 First Division games this season are exactly as many as he scored in the first 13 last season - but in 1948-49 three of the eight were converted penalties.
There has not yet been a change in the Blackpool half-back line this season, and, in fact, the last time the man in the centre of the line, Eric Hayward, missed a First Division match was a year ago today.
George Farm will - the Fates permitting and all that - play his 50th successive game in Blackpool’s First Division team next week against Derby County.
***
WHENEVER I go to London with the Blackpool football team there are times when I think I have wandered into the theatrical garden party.
No team has such a lot of fans among the profession. There are Geraldo, Ted Heath, Charlie Chester, Eddie Standring, Tom Moss - and if Uncle Tom Cobleigh were a footlights star he would be there, too.
Cheerful Charlie was still talking, when I met him a day or two ago, about the comic football match at Blackpool which after only a couple of day’s build-up in “The Evening Gazette” - “and,” says Charlie, "one man with a sandwich board” attracted 10,000 people to Bloomfield-road.
Whether he is in Blackpool or not next season, Charlie still thinks the match should be made an annual event on behalf of charities.
Why not? It could become a Blackpool summer institution. And, with fine weather, it would pack the ground every year. The time could come when it would be making £1,000 a year for various good causes.
Leave a Comment