17 December 1949 Huddersfield Town 0 Blackpool 1
Attack snatches lead in bright start, then fades
GOAL UNDER SIEGE
Huddersfield Town 0, Blackpool 1
By “Clifford Greenwood”
BLACKPOOL played this afternoon on the field which was Liverpool's Waterloo last week, and a grim sort of field it seemed to be from the Press box, too, almost bare of grass and soaked by the recent rains.
Blackpool, who for the first time for months, were able to travel on the morning of an away match, fielded the selected team, but as Jimmy Glazzard, Huddersfield’s inside-right, finished a fitness test with a limp, Harold Hassall, the Western Command man, who is prepared to play anywhere and is often asked to, was given the inside-right position.
Otherwise, and understandably, Huddersfield selected the men who ended Liverpool’s conquering progress in their 20th game and in a last- minute finish last weekend.
It was as cold as the scenes on Christmas cards always look, with a bitter wind, even if the gale was blowing itself out.
PACKED TERRACES
Rain clouds were massing near kick-off time, and so were the people by the thousand, packing the terraces so rapidly that they were talking of a record attendance for this season well before 2-0 o’clock.
Blackpool had lost their last two games on this ground without scoring a goal, but entered this match with only one defeat on tour on the record since the end of August.
Teams:
HUDDERSFIELD TOWN: Mills: Hayes, Howe (J), Battye, Hepplewhite, Boot, McKenna, Hassall, Taylor. Nightingale, Metcalfe.
BLACKPOOL: Farm: Shimwell, Garrett, Johnston, Hayward, Kelly, Matthews, McCall, Mortensen, McIntosh, Wardle.
Referee: Mr. C Fletcher (Northwich).
LIVELY “ATOMS”
The “Atomic Boys” soon made the headlines. The squad appeared on one of the terraces 10 minutes before the teams appeared, heralded by a fanfare on the famous ship’s siren.
The hundreds of Blackpool people who had come by special train and in a fleet of coaches gave the “Boys” a Cuptie reception.
Immediately the police were mobilised in front of the paddocks, where the “Atoms” were gathered, but over the top one of the “Boys” climbed, swerved the waiting guards, the tangerine duck tucked under his arm, raced with it to the centre circle, and, in accordance with custom, deposited it there.
DUCK, UNDER ARREST
Whereupon the police closed in on him, one lifted the duck from the grass, put it under close arrest under his cape, and solemnly marched off with his captive while the man who had invaded the field darted back to the paddock.
Hoots and jeers rose in a hullabaloo, and cheers when he disappeared into his retreat, shielded from the pursuing constabulary by his companions.
THE GAME
First Half
There were 20,000 people on the ground, and, according to all reports, 20,000 more outside queuing at the turnstiles, when Harry Johnston, with sleet falling fast, won the toss for Blackpool and gave his team the benefit of a diagonal wind.
There was the customary watch on Stanley Matthews during the opening minutes, two or three men posted on him to halt a couple of raids on this Blackpool right flank before the line advanced on the other wing without being able to cross a centre.
Before two minutes had gone there were only three men, including goalkeeper Farm, in one half of the field, and the rest of the 22 were in the other.
MORTENSEN’S CHASE
All the time, almost inevitably, the game followed the wind’s course, with Mortensen chasing a Hayward clearance almost into the arms of the crouching Mills before heading it high over the bar.
In front of a packed Huddersfield goal a centre was crossed with an almost mathematical precision by Matthews.
The Town forwards’ task against the hail, wind and sleet was unenviable.
These forwards were, in fact, scarcely in the game at all until a right wing raid was built which Garrett halted by intercepting the last pass, but actually the line was not repelled until it had forced a profitless corner.
BLACKPOOL AHEAD
Mortensen there to take rebounding ball
Of ordered football there was very little, but Blackpool were playing what there was, and a goal came in the eighth minute after these two brief forays by the Town’s front line.
The raid was on the left this time, where Wardle chased a long pass, reached it a split second before Hayes, and crossed such a centre as this wing man can do.
Mills leaped perceptibly late at the ball, missed it, watched it hit Hepplewhite as the centre- half stood near the goal, and cannon off him to MORTENSEN, who shot it into the net.
Half a minute later there was nearly a scene as Hepplewhite hurled himself into McIntosh’s path and was given a lecture by Mr. Fletcher.
DISPUTED PENALTY
Another minute and the ground was in tumult when the referee awarded a penalty which all 11 Town players and about 20,000 of the customers disputed to a man.
Mortensen went after a long clearance into a gaping defence. Out of his goal galloped the deserted Mills. The men collided fell in a heap, but as the goalkeeper had gone into the tackle feet first a penalty was given.
Mortensen had to have attention before it was taken, and Shimwell was a long time settling the ball on the spot.
Then at last, the preliminaries ended, the full-back shot, and Mills, diving to his right, fisted out the flying ball and was still falling as McCall rocketed the rebound into the side net, with cheers acclaiming the goalkeeper and half the Huddersfield defence mobbing him.
NEARLY A GOAL
McCall shoots straight at goalkeeper
Nobody could complain that there was no drama in the game.
For another five minutes it was still almost exclusively Blackpool’s game, and a second goal nearly came when McCall took McIntosh’s squared pass and shot it at a goalkeeper who was merely in his path as it hit him and bounced off his feet
There were Huddersfield raids, but there were few of them, even if in one of them Farm had to snatch the ball away from Taylor as Metcalfe crossed it low, and a couple of minutes later Garrett had to make a fine headed clearance as the Huddersfield outside-left crossed another centre.
There were still half a dozen attacks by Blackpool to every one of Huddersfield as admittedly there should have been with such a wind blowing in Blackpool’s favour.
SHOOTING FORWARDS
The Blackpool forwards shot, too. In five minutes I saw shots by Wardle, Matthews and McIntosh only inches off the target, and each of them flying fast.
On Blackpool’s right wing Stanley Matthews was having a field day, taking the ball up to and past his man every time he was given a pass, and today he was being given plenty.
With 25 minutes gone, the wind seemed to be falling off and the sun was actually shining.
Still, Blackpool’s command of the game was a semi-monopoly, with the “Atomic Boys” calling the old chant of “One, two, three, four.”
There had. nevertheless, been only one with half an hour gone, and one goal, with all this sustained pressure, was not the winning dividend it should have been.
In fact, as this 30 minutes ended, Huddersfield achieved several raids.
In one of them Taylor put a shot a long way wide, and in another Nightingale flashed the ball over the bar at an amazing pace against the wind from 30 yards out.
Howe opened a movement which went down the left flank before Metcalfe crossed a high centre which Taylor headed on to the roof of the net.
The elusive Metcalfe was often in the game as Blackpool’s grip on it was being lost everywhere, and one mass attack on the left flank was not repelled until the Blackpool inside forwards had retreated to the aid of a defence hammered by relentless pressure such as probably rocked Liverpool off their throne last week.
There was not the method or the design in Blackpool forwards’ football that there had been, and yet the aggressive McIntosh panicked Hayes into the concession of another comer.
HAYWARD THERE
Hayward was always there whenever his defence required him, and that was often during the closing minutes of the first half, with Metcalfe often racing away from the right flank of the Blackpool defence.
In almost the last minute of the first half this accomplished winger raced through again, cut inside, and, as Farm came out to him and fell in the mud, shot at the sprawling goalkeeper’s body, with three- quarters of the goal gaping open.
This had been a half of Blackpool for 30 minutes and Huddersfield the rest, and the Town during that last quarter of an hour had more than once nearly taken Blackpool’s goal by storm.
Metcalfe limped out of the game a few minutes from the end.
Half-time: Huddersfield Town 0, Blackpool 1.
SECOND HALF
The Town were at full strength again when the second half opened, but in the first half- minute McKenna was in the wars and fell to earth stunned after a collision with Garrett.
The Blackpool defence was soon under fire as I expected it to be, with the Town forwards on the wings of a wind which had fallen a little but was still very strong.
Metcalfe shot wide in one of the Huddersfield attacks, but it was McIntosh and Wardle who made the first designed raid after half-time, and this led nowhere as the wingman made a pass too many and left his partner offside.
There was no great class in the subsequent football for a time, and all that could be reported was that the Town moved almost nonstop on Blackpool’s goal, and that Kelly twice halted them brilliantly.
ATTACK SLUMPS
Blackpool passes miss their men
Of Blackpool’s front line there was scarcely a sign, and when there was the final pass nearly always missed its man.
Still the Huddersfield pressure continued, and after Johnston had given a corner he crossed Metcalfe’s path brilliantly to put the brake on this elusive customer when the forward was racing on to the ball in a scoring position.
BALL BURSTS
When Blackpool did make one of their infrequent advances the ball burst, and another one was ordered by Mr. Fletcher.
The Blackpool forwards, denuded of any semblance of a pass, could make no progress against the wind, and a desperate defence was still in continuous action, content to clear whenever and wherever it could.
One chance offered itself to Blackpool, and it was missed. Mortensen chased a pass and shot wide as the ball skidded away from him with the wind.
Afterwards, however, the Blackpool forward came into the game again at last.
BRILLIANT RAID
But Mortensen caught in offside trap
After Johnston had created a position for Matthews with the sort of pass which had entered Blackpool’s football far too seldom this half a comer was forced, and this was followed by a brilliant raid inspired by Kelly but ending in Mortensen tearing into the offside trap.
Inside another minute McIntosh took a pass in an open space, cut inside, made a shooting position for himself, and shot at Mills as the goalkeeper fell bravely and desperately at his feet.
Twenty minutes were left and Leeds road was in tumult again as Hayward calmly played Metcalfe out of possession of the ball, which from the Press box seemed unexpectedly to bounce up and hit the centre-half’s hand.
FLAG IGNORED
Immediately a linesman’s flag was lifted, presumably for a penalty Mr. Fletcher ignored the signal, waved play on, and on it had to go, with nearly 30,000 protesting.
As I saw it, it was a correct decision by the referee, who, with another five tumultuous minutes gone, had to call out both trainers when Hepplewhite, chasing Mortensen, reached him as the centre-forward shot into the side net, and both men fell in a heap.
It was nearly a couple of minutes before the game was resumed, with both men still in action, but nursing their injuries.
Fifteen minutes to go, and Blackpool were no longer being outplayed. They were, in fact, raiding as continuously as Huddersfield.
Blackpool’s goal was under a raging siege in the closing minutes, with Johnston heroic in this last rearguard action.
Three corners were forced, but there was no repetition of last week’s last-minute drama. In fact, Blackpool twice nearly increased their lead.
Result:
HUDDERSFIELD TOWN 0
BLACKPOOL 1 (Mortensen 8)
COMMENTS ON THE GAME
THERE was a little bit of everything - good, bad and indifferent - in Blackpool’s game today. For nearly half an hour Huddersfield were in the match very little except as 11 names on the programme.
A goal came in the eighth minute, and if the penalty had not been missed in the 10th there might have been a rout.
Slowly afterwards the forwards, deprived of passes, faded out, and there was a time before the interval and for a long time afterwards when the storm tactics which shattered Liverpool’s record a week ago threatened to stampede a not-too-sure Blackpool defence out of the match.
In this defence I noticed Hugh Kelly still winning in the tackle nine times out of 10, and Tom Garrett almost as often halting his wing.
STONEWALL HAYWARD
But it was a long time before the right flank mastered the elusive Metcalfe, and often the stonewall called Hayward stood in the path of a hell-for-leather front line.
The forwards were good for half an hour, but seldom played as a line afterwards.
It was, in short, not as impressive so early in the afternoon as it promised to be.
Still, to win where the League leaders lost last week must rank as an achievement.
ONE of these days a Portsmouth team will beat a Blackpool team in a First Division match. Another chance to lay one of football’s biggest bogies offers itself to the Fratton Park men on Christmas Eve.
The last time Blackpool finished without a point in a Portsmouth match was as long ago as August 31, 1938, when Portsmouth won by a half-back’s goal down on the South Coast.
Since that time, admittedly there has been a certain major event called World War II, but the clubs have met during the intervening years eight times, and of those eight games Blackpool have won six and drawn the other two, and it is a fact which is only whispered in corners down Portsmouth way that a Portsmouth team have yet to win a point at Blackpool since the war.
Last season Blackpool won 1-0 with a team denuded of several of its stars, the deciding goal being scored by young Rex Adams - his first and only goal in the First Division.
A season earlier one of Harry Johnston’s goals settled the match, and in 1946 not even three goals by the Portsmouth forwards were worth even a £1 bonus, for Blackpool’s front line scored lour, three of them in a row for a Willie Buchan “hat trick.”
And at Fratton Park in postwar football it has been 1-0, 1-1, 1-1 and last August 3-2 for Blackpool.
If there’s something in Portsmouth’s Christmas stocking next weekend it will not be before its time. But what a way to treat a team that will come to Blackpool next weekend
THE MORTENSEN STORY — No. 4
WAS FAME JUST A DREAM?
No champagne no whelks!
By Stanley Mortensen
Jottings from all parts
BY "CLIFFORD GREENWOOD" 17 December 1949
MR. SMITH IS PROUD OF THE YOUNG MEN
WHILE the few people who knew that Mr. Joe Smith was not at the Stoke City match last weekend were speculating on his exact whereabouts and asking each other “Who’s he watching today?” the Blackpool manager was actually watching not one man but 11 men - and all of them were in tangerine jerseys.
To Anfield went Mr. Smith for one of his infrequent close-ups of the remarkable reserve team which this astute football strategist and his board have built since the war.
He looked upon his work and decided, I think, that it was good.
Particularly, so he said when I was talking to him this week, was he impressed by the little featherweight centre - forward, Jackie Mudie, whose football has made a notable advance during recent months, and who, in this match, the 12th the team have won this season, scored his seventh goal in his last eight games.
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Goal-scorer
THERE is not a lot of this young man, singularly little when he is pitted, as he often is, against 6ft. centre half-backs, but he continues to shoot the goals, and at his present rate of progress, there may be a considerable future in the game for him.
And Mr. Smith, too, was also attracted by the fast direct raids, and by the shooting - blessed quality in a wing forward these days - of Rex Adams, the ex Oxford City speed merchant, who played nine games in Blackpool’s First Division team last season and must now be on the fringe of it again.
This Blackpool second team is one of the unexpected bombshells of 1949-50. Before today it had already won only one fewer game than it won all last season, and it required only five more points to equal its aggregate for 1948-49 - and all this before the end of December.
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Men of future
COLUMNS are written about the Matthews and the Mortensens, the Farms and the Johnstons and the Haywards, and, newspaper space being still as limited as it is, only an occasional paragraph about the Croslands, Kennedys, Wrights, Fentons and Hobsons. All of which is a pity, but unavoidable.
Yet these are the men to whom Blackpool’s future is committed After all he saw at Anfield, where I am told, Mr. Sam Jones’s boys did him proud, Mr. Smith should not be at all depressed about that future.
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Eddie Quigley
NOT- for instance, sufficiently depressed to have paid £26,000 for Eddie Quigley, good footballer as this 28-year-old Sheffield Wednesday inside-right unquestionably is, and good shot which is as almost as important, as he is, too.
Blackpool could have signed Quigley at this figure a week ago, and there were members of the board, knowing that Blackpool could have afforded to pay it, who would have sanctioned the outlay.
To the question, “Should Blackpool pay £26,000 for one man?” there are, as I see it, two answers, and they are “Yes,” if the signing of such a player were essential to the club’s salvation in the First Division, and an unequivocal “No” if it were not.
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Best policy
BLACKPOOL’S policy of developing their own recruits is still preferable.
There is a time to spend, and a time not to spend, and at Blackpool this is the latter time unless an unexpected bargain - and what a hope there is of that - presents itself.
The day may yet come when all the money now in the bank - and there is plenty - will be required desperately, for you never know from one month to the next what will happen in this great gamble called professional football.
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Matter of seconds
WELL, was it a record? The answer is in the negative.
W. J. Slater, the Blackpool amateur, had the roof of the Stoke City net shaking exactly 11 seconds after the kickoff in last weekend’s match at Blackpool.
It was probably the fastest goal ever scored on the ground, but it was still not a record, writes Clifford Greenwood.
That distinction was held for a few months by William Sharp, of Partick Thistle, who, playing against Queen of the South at Firhill Park on December 20,
1947, was credited with a goal seven seconds after the kick-off.
Then Bob Langton equalled the exploit for Preston against Manchester City at Maine-road on August 25 last year, leaving Bob Iverson’s goal in nine-and-three- fifths second for the Villa against Charlton Athletic on December 3:
1938, as second best.
Bill Slater, according to the record books, now comes fourth in the list - and this, too, with the first goal ever scored by an amateur in the First Division for Blackpool.
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So George Ainsley is off to India as one of the FA coaches.
The former Sunderland, Leeds United and Bradford forward, who was Blackpool’s first wartime captain, has probably played his last game in this country, has been appointed to the FA’s coaching staff, and has now been given his first major assignment. He will be out of England for four months.
I can think of few men with higher qualifications for such a post. For George not only knows football, but he can talk about it intelligently and fluently - as he can about a few other subjects too.
As an impressionist, too, he is football’s Peter Cavanagh, although that particular accomplishment will not, I suppose, be required out in Pakistani
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Unfair to Neil
To hear some folk talking after A Stoke City’s defeat at Blackpool last week, you would think that Neil Franklin was on the way out. The football public’s memory is notoriously short.
The England centre-half has not this season been playing the almost classic football which he played a year ago. At Blackpool he was only a shadow of the man who almost on his own won
the January Cuptie for the City on this ground.
Neil Franklin will come again. No footballer as brilliant as he was less than a year ago can go into a total eclipse in a few short months.
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NET RESULTS
TWENTY goals have been scored in the last three home games at Blackpool.
In the previous three the not-so-grand total was four.
Even goals are on devaluation now!
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BEGAN WITH STRIPES
WANT to win a bet? Ask 99 out of every 100 people who watch Blackpool football and are, therefore, authorities on it, and they will be prepared to lay a good shade of odds that the club’s first colours were white - the old Lilywhites.”
And they would be wrong.
A Blackpool team first took the field in blue-and-white stripes. Afterwards the jerseys were red before they were white at all, and then came the famous tangerine, which for a season or two was discarded for dark-and-light-blue stripes.
You can collect on that, and I ask for no commission.
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KEN DAWSON is still among the goals.
The left wing forward, whose 39 goals from outside-left for Falkirk in 1935-36 is still a record in British football for a man on the wing, shot another couple for the Scottish League club the other day immediately after he had been out of the game on a six-weeks suspension.
Dawson came to Blackpool after creating his record, but in these parts could not score at all, went back to Falkirk after a few months and soon became a public enemy of goalkeepers again. He must be nearer 40 than 30 these days, and yet still he’s shooting ’em in.
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EX-BLACKPOOL men in last weekend’s Cupties:
Willie Buchan at inside-left for Gateshead at Newport.
Tom Buchan playing at wing- half for Carlisle against Swindon.
Bill Lewis in the Norwich City defence at Hartlepools.
Peter Doherty captaining Doncaster Rovers against Mansfield Town
Jim Todd in the Port Vale half-back line against Tranmere Rovers.
And not one of them was in a losing team!
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SECOND FOUR
TO settle a few arguments:
When Blackpool won 4-2 last weekend it was the second time this season that the team had scored four goals in a home First Division game. The first was in the 4-1 defeat of Huddersfield Town on the season’s opening day.
It was a total which the front line never achieved all last season, and, in fact, the last time it was exceeded in a First Division match at Blackpool was on January 3, 1948, when Everton lost 5-0 at Bloomfield-road.
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Cheer them away, too!
THERE is no doubt that Blackpool are in fine form this season. It should be a matter of local pride, shown by vocal and other support.
The vocal support is good at home matches, but it is sadly lacking when the team are playing on other grounds. Why cannot we hear some of it at Burnley, Manchester, Liverpool and elsewhere?
Surely enthusiasm can overcome distances, and it can be done through the Supporters’ Club, who are anxious to increase the support at away matches and will welcome any suggestions from members.
Reminder
THE FA Cup competition is only a month ahead, and members are reminded that subscriptions for 1950 are due in January.
May we ask each member to introduce a new one during the coming year? We can do so much more with a really strong membership, and at present we are well behind such clubs as Hull City, who have an organised Supporters’ Club of 10,000 members.
What about it, Blackpool fans?
The ladies are holding their annual “turkey” drive in the Indian Lounge, Winter Gardens, on Wednesday afternoon, December 21. We hope to beat last year’s excellent results if everyone will give their support.
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