24 December 1949 Blackpool 2 Portsmouth 1
Collects two points for Blackpool
GRAND GOALS
Blackpool 2, Portsmouth 1
By “Clifford Greenwood”
THERE were nearly 25,000 people on the Blackpool ground before two o’clock this afternoon for the visit of the League champions, Portsmouth, in the first of the four games in seven days which represent the professional footballers’ Christmas and New Year holiday.
That could only happen in this town at Christmas, Cuptie time or during the holidays. Otherwise there was nothing remotely resembling the traditional Christmas scene except that the band played carols when it was not marching to Sousa.
IT was almost as mild as a mid-September day, and the gales which have recently been lashing the coast had blown themselves out.
Portsmouth, who when this game opened had not won a match against Blackpool since 1935, had a forward line led by heavyweight Douglas Reid, one of the few men who hate to be beside this particular sector of the seaside, who is always ill in Blackpool and comes to the town only an hour or two before every match he plays here.
Blackpool fielded the men who won by a goal at Huddersfield a week ago.
Teams:
BLACKPOOL: Farm; Shimwell, Garrett; Johnston. Hayward, Kelly; Matthews, McCall, Mortensen, McIntosh, Wardle.
PORTSMOUTH: Butler; Hindmarsh, Ferrier; Spence, Flewin, Dickinson; Harris, Clarke, Reid, Phillips, Froggatt.
Referee: Mr. L. D. Thompson (Worksop)
THE GAME
First Half
Blackpool lost the toss and defended the north goal. Even after the pre-match ball practice both goal areas showed signs of churning up.
Not that there was a lot to churn them up in the early football, for only once in the first two minutes was a raiding forward inside them.
Then the new England wing-man Froggatt went after a long forward pass and tumbled over the crouching Farm in a circus somersault as the deserted goalkeeper fell forward bravely at his feet.
A clearance by Shimwell, hooked superbly away from Portsmouth’s raiding left wing and a desperate sliding interception by Johnston, repelled Portsmouth’s forwards in the raids which followed.
For a time in the early minutes it was the Portsmouth front line that was advancing almost continuously.
HEADED OUT
It won a corner in the fourth minute as Garrett headed out a centre by Harris, and for minutes afterwards was persistent in its challenge without ever being all that menacing.
Yet Hayward had to hook a bouncing ball away brilliantly with big “Duggy” Reid chasing it, and with Portsmouth’s pressure continuing, Phillips, from 20 yards out, shot barely over the bar.
It was, in fact, in the attacking sense, almost exclusively Portsmouth’s game in the first 10 minutes with Blackpool’s forwards unable to build a raid of any dimensions at all until Mortensen darted to a loose, bouncing ball, went away with it with three men at his heels and, in the end, shot a rising ball which Butler beat out as he moved almost casually to his left.
PORTSMOUTH MISS
Then McCall scores for Blackpool
Yet in spite of all Portsmouth’s pressure the Fratton Park men might have lost a goal in the 12th minute as McIntosh, from a position which, from the Press Box, appeared suspiciously offside, was permitted by Mr, Thompson to race on and shoot low at Butler as the goalkeeper fell forward into the path of the Scot’s low shot.
I think that should have been a goal, for the chance was there. A minute later Blackpool went in front.
It was a goal in two moves. All that happened was that Matthews took the sort of pass which he can always exploit, swerved away from his fullbacks, and decided almost studiously where he should cross one of his precision centres.
McCALL THERE
Waiting for it near the far post was McCALL who leaped at it and, in spite of the challenge of three men, taller by inches, headed it wide of Butler’s right arm as the goalkeeper, almost trapped in the mud under the bar, hurled himself late at it.
Whereupon, Portsmouth, who had been threatening to score for 10 minutes and had lost a goal in 13, went for a time into an utter panic with the defence losing position everywhere, and once, in its excitement, nearly forfeiting another goal as Flewin leaped at a high centre, headed it the wrong way and watched a full-back clear it off the line as it was crawling in the mud over it.
A corner for Blackpool followed a succession of raids, and, in the end, a tackle by Flewin on McIntosh, which had nearly 30,000 people roaring in protest.
KELLY OBEYS
Nor was that the end of Blackpool’s pressure, for five minutes after the goal Kelly, with all the customers commanding him to shoot, obeyed the order and shot a ball which hit Spencer’s back, cannoned off it and flew away wide of the post with Butler a mere spectator.
It is a long time since I have seen a team lose so completely the command of a match which in its first 10 minutes Portsmouth had been almost dictating.
Left-half Kelly was magnificent whether Blackpool were moving forwards or backwards, and Blackpool for a long time went forward almost without interruption after that early period of being outplayed.
McIntosh went crashing on to the cinder track in his pursuit of one long forward pass, climbed slowly to his feet, and when ambulance men offered their assistance waved them away.
FADE OUT
Portsmouth’s front line to defence’s rescue
That was the sort of tempo at which Blackpool’s football was being played at this time.
A minute later, after Matthews had “killed” the ball and eluded his man all in one movement, Mortensen took his pass and shot barely over the bar from a couple of yards outside the penalty area.
The Portsmouth front line had faded completely, was either back aiding its defence, which gave the impression of requiring all the aid it could be given, or reduced to three men watching events from the centre circle.
Yet again it was the raiding team that lost a goal, for in the 25th minute a back pass, which should never have been given, found Hayward so unprepared that he could only slice the ball almost at right angles into the centre where Clarke raced on to it and steered it out to his right wing.
MODEL OPPORTUNISM
A couple of seconds afterwards it was all over for in the slime Garrett could only half halt HARRIS, who went on with the ball as the full-back fell, shot it high into the roof of the net for a goal which was a model of opportunism.
That was sufficient to put Portsmouth completely back in the game again and to put Blackpool, as an attacking force, almost completely out of it.
For five minutes it was a repetition of the first 10 minutes, and during them Clarke shot wide of a post a ball which skidded so fast off the mud that it is questionable whether the falling Farm could have reached it.
BREAKAWAY
Yet, as had happened twice already in this game, the team on the all-out assault nearly lost a goal again as Blackpool, in the 32nd minute, escaped in a breakaway.
After a slowly rolling ball Mortensen chased, outpaced three men and, with the ball bouncing awkwardly in front of him, half-hit it wide of the advancing Butler, leaving Reg Flewin to pursue it desperately to reach it almost under the bar and, with the south stand clamouring "Goal,” hooked it away.
That was an escape for Portsmouth who, however, were still in the game a lot.
Yet they should have lost a goal again with several minutes of the half left as Mortensen, put in possession by McCall, gave Matthews a pass inside the full-back which the wing man took to within a couple of yards of the deserted Portsmouth goalkeeper before stabbing it the wrong side of the post with his right boot.
Matthews has so often made position from which other men nave missed. This time the position was made for him - and by the best pass of the half - and he missed it himself.
OMINOUS GAPS
Gaps were still opening with ominous frequency in the Portsmouth defence.
McIntosh stormed a pass into one of them, brushed past his full-back and again shot a ball which Butler reached as he fell in front of it.
There was little between the teams in the closing minutes of the half.
One still, however, had the impression that the Portsmouth defence was the more vulnerable, was slower to move to close an open space.
In the last minute of the half McCall shot low into Butler’s hands from Matthews’ pass.
Half-time: Blackpool 1, Portsmouth 1.
SECOND HALF
I admired the chivalry of Douglas Reid in the opening minutes of the half when he moved deliberately away from Farm after a fast back pass by Garrett had sprung away off the goalkeeper’s chest and he had fallen in a heap on top of the elusive ball.
The half had opened with a couple of raids by Blackpool but the first shot was released by a Portsmouth forward - Phillips -who was only inches over the bar from a position where forwards seldom shoot these days.
Immediately, however, Wardle made position for McCall nearly to rock Butler off his feet with a fast low shot which the goalkeeper was content to parry out for a comer.
SHOTS AT EITHER END
A couple of minutes later, too, McIntosh, taking another pass from Blackpool’s left wing forward. shot into the arms of the Portsmouth goalkeeper, and a minute after that Farm plucked down from almost under the bar a ball lobbed back high at him by one of his own men.
HOODOO
Portsmouth all out to end it
There were goals threatening every minutes at this time with both front lines fast and direct in the open, with Portsmouth’s forwards building one perfect raid in which, for almost the first time in the game, Froggatt raced away from Shimwell before crossing a low centre which Farm half repelled and the vigilant Hayward ultimately cleared.
Portsmouth were all out to end the Blackpool hoodoo for a time afterwards, raiding with the persistence which had given their football a bit of class but no particular punch early in the afternoon. Blackpool could find no passage for one of those familiar through passes to Mortensen, and when, on the right wing, Matthews was at last given a pass he could take away there were ironical cheers which might have been cheers of another kind if the ball had not escaped McIntosh after Butler had punched out the wing forward’s high falling centre.
SNATCHED AWAY
This raid, however, ended Portsmouth’s partial dominance for several minutes; and yet in the next raid by the men from the South, Harris chased Reid’s pass away from Garrett and had the ball snatched from his feet by Farm almost on the edge of the penalty area.
A minute later Stanley Mortensen was revealed as the great raider he can be, taking a random pass with four men guarding him, racing away from this escort and shooting a ball which Butler beat out brilliantly in a flying dive to his left.
A minute later Johnston and Matthews forced a path on Blackpool’s right wing before the forward, after an exchange of passes with the half-back, crossed a centre which must have hit a Portsmouth man, such was the tumult that arose on the Kop for a penalty.
GRAND GOAL
McCall cheers the Kop crowd
Another minute, the 22nd of the half, the Kop were cheering instead of protesting as Blackpool went in front for the second time.
A grand goal it was - a down centre raid fast and direct, a lobbed forward pass by Mortensen on to which McCALL raced and shot high into the roof of the net from almost under the bar.
Nearly every man in Portsmouth’s defence protested against the goal, half of them pursuing Mr. Thompson al to the centre circle.
Why there was a protest I do not know. Nor apparently did Mr. Thompson, who reiterated that a goal he had given and a goal it was.
There was, in fact, nearly another three minutes later as Wardle, from out on the wing, shot a ball whose unsuspected pace beat Butler, who was falling a yard short of the far post as the ball skidded away less than a foot outside it.
BRILLIANT STOP
A magnificent hooked clearance by Garrett halted one of a succession of Portsmouth raids which followed this goal.
There was, in fact, one such a free-for-all as one of these assaults was being repelled that two men almost simultaneously took a full count while a third was out for "six” or “seven.”
Fifteen minutes were left when these mass casualties had been treated and it was still not indisputably Blackpool’s game. For five minutes the Portsmouth goal was in a state bordering on siege and the defence was in utter desperation.
There were few Portsmouth raids, but that second Blackpool goal had settled it and a third was near when a minute from time Johnston lashed a scoring drive barely wide of a post.
Portsmouth were in retreat in the end.
Result:
BLACKPOOL 2 (McCall 13. 67 mins)
PORTSMOUTH 1 (Harris 25 mins)
COMMENTS ON THE GAME
Blackpool continue to beat Portsmouth. It has become almost an old Blackpool custom.
Yet again Portsmouth revealed a team not easy to beat, a team not League champions for nothing, pulling no punches, playing direct aggressive football and, in defence, at times relentless.
It is because Blackpool these days are not only a team on the programme but a team in the field, who can trade punches with the best of them, that Blackpool won this match and won it deservedly in spite of the fact that at times only a desperate defence had to repel Portsmouth’s hell - for - leather approaches.
It was not a game of big personalities, of box office exhibitionism, but a day of team work with every man of the 22 going full tilt into everything.
Both goalkeepers served their teams bravely and, at times, brilliantly, and the defences were as resolute as they were destructive, with Blackpool’s playing with infinitely greater assurance after the interval than before it.
Hugh Kelly was taking the game from the beginning, was the best half-back on the field, and all the time Stanley Mortensen, flanked by two inside men as busy as badgers, was always a menace, even on a starvation diet.
There was, however, no failure in this Blackpool team today. They played as a team and as a team they won their second double event of the season a week after the first at Huddersfield.
A MATCH today ....and another on Monday . . . and another on Tuesday .... and another on Saturday.
That’s the programme for Blackpool’s first team. The rest of the Christmas and New Year holidays are absolutely and exclusively their own.
The four games in seven days sequence continues on Monday, when Blackpool visit Turf Moor, where no Blackpool forward has yet scored a First Division goal.
It was 1-0 for Burnley on this East Lancashire ground two seasons ago. and 2-0 last season.
Nor have the Blackpool front line exactly run riot at Bloomfield-road -scene of Tuesday’s game - against the Burnley defence since the Turf Moor club were promoted.
The visitors took both points 1-0 in 1948 a week or two before the Cup Final, and last season, on the last day of 1948-49, were leading by a goal until Stan Mortensen made a 1-1 draw of it.
So that works out at one goal in six hours for Blackpool in these postwar Burnley games. It’s about time this famine ended.
The visit to Wolverhampton at the weekend would be forbidding, too, if past results were taken into account, which, seriously they are not.
For the Wolves have lost only one point in six to Blackpool at the Molineux ground since the war. and the one draw in three games was conceded only by a Wolverhampton half-back obligingly scoring for the wrong team.
If, therefore, it is a Happy Christmas for Blackpool, it will also be one ail the happier because a few past defeats have been avenged during it.
THE MORTENSEN STORY — No. 5
IN SEARCH OF FAME
That awful game at Fleetwood
By Stanley Mortensen
Jottings from all parts
BY "CLIFFORD GREENWOOD" 24 December 1949
THEY’RE COMING UP ON THE RAILS
FEW PEOPLE HAD NOTICED BLACKPOOL, ONE OF THE OUTSIDERS IN THE CHAMPIONSHIP STAKES,” COMING THROUGH ON THE RAILS UNTIL THE FIELD REACHED THE HALFWAY POST LAST WEEKEND.
It's a distance yet to the tape, and a lot can happen over that distance and during the four months it takes to traverse it.
But on the eve of the four-matches-in-a-week sequence, which is the footballers’' Christmas and New Year’s Eve holiday,. Blackpool have a chance of the title such as no Blackpool team has ever possessed while the club have held First Division status.
A consultation of the files reveals that no team in the First Division has made such progress during the last two months.
Won 12 points
SINCE the end of October, Liverpool, among the leaders, have won 10 points, the Arsenal and Burnley nine each, Manchester United eight and the Wolves six.
Blackpool during that time have won 12, and, as the West Bromwich Albion fog fiasco is out of the records, have played one fewer match.
If, in fact, the game at the Hawthorns had been allowed to finish and Blackpool during the few remaining minutes had retained their 2-1, lead and won a couple of points, the team would have taken the field against last season’s League champions this afternoon with only one point fewer than the leaders.
Which, when you recall how nine out of 10 folk were predicting a relegation season for Blackpool when the club’s prospects were being discussed during the summer, would have bordered on the miraculous.
***
Four months yet
MOT that there is any particular disposition in Blackpool to begin even the counting of championship chickens yet while the eggs have still to be another four months in the incubator.
The only opinion to which Manager Joe Smith would commit himself this week was “Give us six points out of the eight this Christmas, and we’ll still be in the hunt at the New Year.”
The truth is that the forwards are still not scoring the goals which a team now seriously ranking among the championship challengers should score.
The football out in the open is as good as ever, but, as the Huddersfield game revealed during its first half-hour, there is not yet the punch which can tear a crumpling and rattled defence to shreds once this defence has been forced into a wholesale retreat.
If only---------
“If only we could play Bill Slater every week” is the lament I hear so often at Blackpool’s H.Q.
That is out of the question.
The amateur, who, by the way, took an examination at Leeds on the morning of the day when he scored his first goals in the First Division at Blackpool a fortnight ago, has been ill with tonsilitis.
But, fit or unfit, his course at the Leeds Training College and his almost inevitable commitments for the England amateur team, will necessarily limit his appearances for Blackpool in the New Year.
***
May be free agent
LATEST news of him is that he may decide not to enter on a third year’s course at Leeds after he has graduated - as there is every reasonable prospect that he will graduate - before the end of 1950.
Then he may be a comparatively free agent, and Blackpool may command his services less intermittently. In the meantime, however, he will, I think, be as often out as in the Blackpool team.
Still, even without this best of all Blackpool’s amateur prospects, the Blackpool team that has rocketed to unexpected fame during the first four months of 1949-50 could finish as near the top of the table as its close- season critics said it would finish near the foot.
And, in fact, it has only to continue to collect points at the rate it has been collecting them since it was last beaten - at Highbury on October 22 - to win a title.
***
All a gamble
IT’S all, of course, such a gamble. A few casualties and, good as Blackpool reserves may be, all calculations can be upset.
That will be the test of the Christmas marathon. If Blackpool can play the Christmas fixtures without a queue waiting for treatment outside the dressing stations between the games it could be a Happy Christmas and an even Happier New Year.
They took no chance of men being disabled at practice this week. The Tuesday’s game behind closed doors was, for the first time this season, called off.
That, I think, was a wise precaution; indicated, too, how seriously this club is treating its present unexpected assignment as championship chasers.
Let them sing
“LET the people sing!” is to be the pre-match order at Blackpool for the Burnley game on Tuesday. And what else should they sing but Christmas carols?
Mr. J Harris, who promoted a similar enterprise last season, has offered his services as community song leader, and with the Fylde Ex-Service Band as accompanists - and leaflets supplied containing the words - 20,000 to 30,000 are to be invited to sing the songs of the Nativity.
“They seemed a little shy last year,” confesses Mr. Harris, “but. given a little encouragement, 1 think they’ll sing carols ”
Well, if they won't sing them at Christmas they’ll never sing them at all.
***
AS nearly certain as a selection can be is Bill Slater’s for the England amateur team in the New Year.
He could not play at Ipswich in the trial a week ago, but, according to all reports, there were few men on view seriously to challenge his inclusion in the England forward line, writes Clifford Greenwood.
Strange to think that when Blackpool signed him on the day when Jack Cross, the Bournemouth forward, was also recruited for the amateur staff, he was undecided whether to take football seriously.
Even today he is not yet persuaded that he is up to First Division class. Whatever this talented footballer's future in the game may be he will never have to order a new size in hats.
***
THEY GO TO WATCH
THEY also serve who only go and watch the Reserve and “A” and “B” graduates.
It was good to meet Mr. James Haslam, one of the Blackpool board, and Mr. V. McKenna, the “A” team chief, at Blackpool’s match at Huddersfield.
Their lot is invariably cast in less exalted places. There are few Central League games on tour that Jimmy Haslam has missed this season - and “You watch these men in a season or two once they’re in the first team,” he says.
“Mac” - as everybody outside his classroom calls Mr. McKenna - has been with Blackpool “A” in all three postwar conquests, and during this little odyssey has seldom been in a First Division ground, but instead has too often been condemned to watch his football in the remoter outposts where often there is not even a stand.
Such men deserve a First Division match now and again.
***
Heading far fame?
YOUNG player I am interested in watching in Blackpool’s two Christmas games is Tommy Cummings, one of the youngest centre-half-backs in the First Division
When I met Manager Frank Hill not long after the ex-Blackpool forward’s appointment to the Burnley managership, he was talking about this recruit who, in those days, was playing in Burnley "A.”
“A star of the future,” said Frank. So soon have his words come true.
***
County player
IT is not often that Ernest Rigby’s name is in the news. The stars crowd such men as this 21-year-old Blackpool full-back out of the sports pages.
Yet he deserves a paragraph or two, for the other weekend he played his eighth successive game for Lancashire, which is no inconsiderable achievement, and is, in fact, an honour of which he is entitled to be proud.
He has played twice, too, for an FA XI, could obviously, if he consented to sign a professional contract, have a big future in the game. Like Bill Slater, however, he prefers to remain among the Great Unpaid.
***
Nice gesture
WHERE is the fairest public in football? I listed Chelsea and Portsmouth on this page the other week.
The selection of the Fratton Park audience has been greatly appreciated down Bognor Regis way by Mr. E. J. Davis, who writes a “ Thank you ” and adds - and this was written before last weekend’s match “We were discussing the results the other day, and one of my friends said ‘ I tip Blackpool for the championship this year,’ and we all agreed that if 'Pompey' did not win it again, there was no other team we should be as pleased to see take the title from us.”
Now, I suppose, I write "Thank you” on Blackpool’s behalf.
***
Bill Lewis is happy
LETTER from Bill Lewis in the mail this week.
He has left his Blackpool home - Mr. and and Mrs. Billy Wardle entered into possession of it in time for Christmas - and is, he writes happy and content in the house two miles outside the city of Norwich which his new club promised him.
The City have not lost a match - and not a goal in the League - since this Black- pool fullback was recruited for the defence at a fee of £9,500 nearly two months ago.
So if Bill is content so ought the City to be - and the City, I know, are, for they have a full-back who gives all he has to give in every match and who has years left in the game yet.
The City's big test will be at Portsmouth in the Cup a fortnight today.
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Blackpool and the Cup
“AREN'T they lucky?” says everybody when Blackpool's home Cup-tie with Southend United on January 7 is being discussed.
Are Blackpool as lucky as all that? They were in 1948, when there were three successive ties at Blackpool, one against a Second Division team, another against a Third Division, and another against a team Colchester United, not in the League at all.
But statistics reveal that Blackpool have been in the Cup draw 39 times since the first world war and came out first as a home team only 16 times.
And lucky to meet a Third Division (Southern) club? People are forgetting Luton Town, Watford, Gillingham, Plymouth Argyle, and one or two other southern clubs who in their time have dismissed Blackpool.
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Want more support
THE Supporters’ Club again ask for increased membership and support during the coming year.
Subscriptions are due in January.
To all you good people„ where'er you may be
Renew your support and surely we'll see
The “Pool” win the Cup so worthily ought -
On present day form they obviously ought.
Top of the League is our wish sincere
Now, you supporters, let's hear that cheer!
It has not been possible to obtain tickets for the Burnley match on Boxing Day, as the ticket system is not in operation.
National Federation
THE National Federation of Football Supporters’ Clubs now comprises over 300 clubs and has recently reorganised its administration, which will be on a, regional basis.
Elections have taken place for representation on the Executive Committee of the Federation, and in the North Area the clubs who will provide members are Blackpool, Hull City, Manchester City and Accrington Stanley, the Voting being in that order.
The honorary secretary will represent Blackpool Supporters’ Club on the Federation’s Executive Committee.
Broadcast
THE National Federation have also been successful in persuading the BBC to broadcast the Amateur Cup results on January 14, and the subsequent rounds.
The Supporters’ Club extend the season’s greetings to all.
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