3 December 1949 Chelsea 1 Blackpool 1

BLACKPOOL LOSE THEIR GRIP-AND A POINT

On top in first half, they should have made sure

THE PUNCH GOES

Chelsea 1, Blackpool 1

By “Clifford Greenwood”

STANLEY MORTENSEN, the England and Blackpool forward, remained in London after the international at White Hart-lane on Wednesday, went for a couple of days to the Arsenal ground for treatment for the ankle he hurt against the Italians, and early last evening reported at Blackpool’s hotel fit to play against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge this afternoon.

In the meantime he contracted a chill which left him with a raven’s croak and a bit of a temperature, but not at all inclined to watch the match. 

“I’ll run it off," he said. Blackpool played the men who stormed a draw with Manchester United a week ago. Willie McIntosh retaining the inside-left position as Duggie Davidson, who was with the rest of the players, was still under treatment for a cut knee and he had been in little training during the week.

Chelsea’s defence was strengthened by the return, after several, weeks’ absence of fullback Winter and wing-half Mitchell.

THERE EARLY

Blackpool’s coach reached the ground an hour before kick-off time - a little precaution which was, I suppose, a legacy of this match last season, when 78,000 people were packed inside the ground, with another 20,000 besieging it outside the locked gates.

There were no prospects of a similar 100,000 invasion this afternoon, with the skies overcast, a cold wind blowing, and showers falling.

Nevertheless, there were nearly 50,000 waiting half an hour before the teams went into action on turf which in spite of the grease on the top promised soon to hold the balk

Teams:

CHELSEA: Medhurst; Winter, Hushes, Armstrong, Harris, Mitchell, Gray, Bowie, Bentley. Billington, Campbell. 

BLACKPOOL: Farm; Shimwell, Garrett, Johnston, Hayward, Kelly, Matthews, McCall, Mortensen, McIntosh, Wardle. 

Referee: Mr. G Tedds (Nottinghamshire).

THE GAME

First Half

Harry Johnston won the toss for Blackpool. That was a nice bit of work, for it gave his team a freshening wind at their backs, A drizzle of rain was still falling.

The game went the way of the wind in the first two or three minutes. A Matthews - McCall raid and a clearance by Harris, which the centre-half mishit, slicing it against McIntosh, who could not reach the skidding ball within shooting distance of Harry Medhurst, opened the game.

It was exactly two minutes before the Chelsea forwards crossed the halfway line. Then, in rapid succession, the goal which Blackpool surrendered twice in the last four minutes in this game last season was menaced, the second of these assaults repulsed by Kelly’s back pass to the waiting Farm.

Immediately the Blackpool forwards built two storming raids on the pattern of the attacks which shattered the Manchester United defence a week ago.

CANNONED OUT

The first surged down the centre. In the end, Medhurst, falling full length, beat out a shot in a desperate forward dive, lost the ball, was staggering erect as McIntosh lashed in a ball which cannoned out off Winter as the Chelsea full-back on his line.

Back surged this Blackpool line. Three times I saw the ball bounce backwards and forwards with the Chelsea scattered and hammered out of position.

Twice in this rapid fire bombardment, with the Blackpool front line men almost impudently taking the ball away from their men before crossing it into shooting positions, Chelsea went into utter retreat.

Mortensen had one rising shot brilliantly repelled in mid-air by Medhurst, and McIntosh watched another miss a post by an inch.

Not for weeks have I seen a goal so early in a game under such intensive fire.

BLACKPOOL LEAD

McCall heads in after a Matthews shot

That this goal would fall became almost certain - and down it toppled in the seventh minute.

Again a shot was beaten out anywhere. A centre was sliced away, too, when the ball was crossed again. Out into an open space on the right it flew.

Matthews was waiting for it, and this time the England forward shot, and shot at such a pace that again Medhurst could only punch it anywhere.

Off his fists it went to the left, McCALL was there for it, dived at it, and was almost on his knees as he headed it fast over the line for the goal which has been escaping him for weeks.

For minutes afterwards Blackpool played ducks and drakes with an unsettled Chelsea defence.

Not so many shooting positions were created by Blackpool’s fast, open football - football built on the long pass - as there had been, but one offered itself to Mortensen, who raced 20 yards before hooking a low shot fast but wide of a post from a range too distant.

NARROW ESCAPE

Slowly afterwards the storm began to subside, and it was revealed that Chelsea had a forward line, and a forward line, too, not without the little arts and graces, but with no promise of a goal in it until 15 minutes had gone.

Then there was, in fact, as nearly a goal as there had been for six or seven minutes as Gray put over a high forward centre which flew outside Farm’s reach as the tall Billington leaped at it and headed only a couple of yards wide of the post of an empty goal.

I saw Shimwell make two of his long downwind clearances afterwards and little Jimmy Bowie shoot wide at a great pace from a range where no goalkeeper of George Farm’s class would be beaten once in a season.

Otherwise, in spite of a succession of raids, the Chelsea front line seemed singularly subdued within region of the Blackpool goal, and had, in fact, none of the punch which was still revealing itself every time the Blackpool forwards crossed into Chelsea territory.

MISSED CHANCE

McCall lashes ball over bar

The pace of Mortensen and the tireless pursuit of every sort of pass by McCall were often revealed in a Blackpool game not as elegant as I have seen it, but which obviously meant business in everything it essayed.

The Chelsea goal might, in fact, have fallen for a second time in the 25th minute. The man who had scored the first goal missed this one, McCall lashing high over the bar as Matthews, after taking it away from his full-back out on the line, had cut inside and squared a perfect pass to his partner.

It was not often afterwards that Farm was in action. Once he had to field high under the bar a centre headed across by Gray, and a minute afterwards he held a ball which flew over from this wing, and in the wind pitched and dipped before he could clutch it.

WANDERING ROY

Roy Bentley was presenting his famous here, there and everywhere act without achieving anything particular with it, for when he wandered out to the left wing Shimwell was always grimly awaiting him - I did not see the right back passed once in the first 30 minutes - and on the other wing young Tom Garrett never seemed too disturbed.

With half an hour gone Blackpool were holding the lead, not so often promising to increase it, but seldom in peril of losing it. even if in the 34th minute of the half Hayward had to be fast to hook away a loose ball which had cannoned off Garrett, and which Bentley, for once in the centre-forward position, was preparing to pursue.

After the early tumultuous drama which had prefaced and produced Blackpool’s goal, major episodes were few.

As the half neared its end, McIntosh, chasing an impossible sort of pass, reached it on the line, and in the inside-right position, and hooked it into the side net.

Then, in a spurt on the Chelsea left wing, Campbell for the first time escaped from Shimwell but was halted by the full-back before he could cross his centre.

DANGER WING

Matthews and McCall chief raiders

The Matthews-McCall wing remained Blackpool’s chief armament in attack, but in the closing minutes of the half Blackpool were no longer in the same command of the game.

With two minutes of the half remaining, Matthews left his full-back standing for about the 10th time in the half, almost strolled inside, and crossed a ball which Chelsea’s defence was content to clear for a corner.

The comer, too, was not cleared until Wardle had raked the Chelsea goal with a couple of his pinpoint centres.

Whereupon Chelsea raced down to the other goal and forced a corner, too, and before this was repelled Farm had punched out two high centres magnificently and Shimwell and Kelly in rapid succession had made desperate clearances almost on the line.

Half-time: Chelsea 0, Blackpool 1.

SECOND HALF

I may have been wrong, but my opinion at half-time was that Blackpool should have scored more than one goal with the wind’s aid before half-time.

Yet, even against the wind, McCall opened a raid which ended in Chelsea conceding a corner in the first half-minute as Mortensen went chasing McIntosh’s pass and Harris sliced the ball over the line.

The corner was worthless and, in fact, its only sequel was a disputed corner forced by the roaming Bentley off Hayward - a corner about the award of which the Blackpool centre-half made an impassioned speech.

The corner came near to a goal, Shimwell in the end clearing nearly off the line as the ball was headed in wide of the goalkeeper.

But Blackpool were not - as everybody expected them to be - overplayed in the opening minutes of this half. Between the third and fourth minutes Medhurst was twice in action, punching out, as he crouched low, fast venomous shots by Mortensen and Kelly and watching McCall head barely wide of a post.

FARM IN ACTION

Greatest save of the afternoon

Farm had to race out to snatch from Bentley a ball which the wind was always blowing away from the Chelsea leader, but for a time the game was moving on the Chelsea goal, and moving, too, at the pace at which Blackpool opened the afternoon.

Blackpool had, I suspected, to be prepared for a major Chelsea assault, but there were few signs of it in the first 10 minutes of the half.

Yet in the 11th the Blackpool goal nearly fell. A loose ball came out of a pack of men, Bowie spurted to it, reached it, hooked it fast and wide of Farm’s right hand, and stood in amazement as the goalkeeper lurched sideways at it, reached it, and with his finger tips stabbed it outside the far post.

A couple of Blackpool men patted Farm on the back for that clearance, the greatest of the afternoon, but there was no time for minutes afterwards for any sort of celebration party, for Blackpool’s defence was under relentless pressure, with Kelly twice making decisive tackles on raiding forwards with a man in each case moving into a shooting position.

NEAR MISSES

Yet Blackpool were still in the match, and were twice near a goal in less than a couple of minutes The first time Wardle crossed another of his expert centres, flighted it so perfectly that it seemed from the Press box that Medhurst lifted it against the face of the bar as he was in mid-air in his late leap at it.

The second time McIntosh shot from a range where Blackpool forwards too seldom shoot, and shot so fast that the man in the Chelsea goal could only punch it on to the roof of the net as he fell backwards rocked off his balance by its force.

Whereupon, from far out, in an advanced full-back position Garrett shot - even against the wind and from 40 yards - a ball which passed the post at a great rate.

Chelsea were in retreat again, which, in all the circumstances, was entirely unexpected. Chelsea, in fact, should, I think, have lost a second goal with 20 minutes of the half gone as McIntosh tore into an open space, raced in on the unprotected Medhurst, and shot a ball which hit the crouching goalkeeper who had been left almost at the forward’s mercy.

WINGERS SHOOT

Nearly 50,000 people - the official attendance figures were 47,636 - were still shouting “Come on, Chelsea.”

And as the game entered its last quarter of an hour the Chelsea wing forwards nearly snatched a goal each.

In the first raid Gray shot - when everybody was expecting a centre - a ball which rose a fraction as it seemed to be flying under the bar, and in the next, from the other wing, Campbell crossed a high centre which Farm held superbly as he reeled backwards against the far post.

Fifteen minutes to go, and still 1-0 for Blackpool. Fourteen minutes left and it was 1-1. A grand goal it was, too. A swift interchange of positions by Chelsea’s inside forwards produced it.

EQUALISER

Bowie takes pass, shoots fast and low

Billington, the inside-left, took a pass in the inside-right position, dallied with it, nearly lost it to Hayward, brushed away from the centre-half, and crossed the ball low.

Waiting for it at inside-left was inside-right BOWIE, who hit it as it passed in front of him, and shot it fast and low into the net.

A couple of minutes after this goal, too, with Chelsea pulling out all the stops, Garrett cleared a bouncing ball off the line of an empty goal.

BLACKPOOL RAIDS

Afterwards, however, it was Blackpool who were raiding almost continuously with centres from the right wing constantly crossing Chelsea’s goal.

McIntosh, who a long time earlier had transferred to the inside-right position, was aggressive to the end, and in the last two minutes Matthews, more assertive than I have seen him for a long time, shot high over the bar.

Blackpool finished at full storm.

Result:

CHELSEA 1 (Bowie 76)

BLACKPOOL 1 (McCall 7)

COMMENTS ON THE GAME

I SHALL always think that Blackpool should have won this game in the first half. In the end it was nearly lost.

During the first half-hour the Blackpool forwards were magnificent, made shooting positions almost at will, and, in fact, for a quarter of an hour, with the wind’s aid, nearly swept Chelsea’s reeling defence out of the game.

During this time, and throughout the first half, the Matthews- McCall wing was as good as I have ever seen it, and the little inside forward better than I have seen him for a long time.

It was clear, I think, that the Italy game in midweek took its toll comparatively early in the afternoon on Mortensen, and one result was that the line’s front-of-goal punch waned even while the front line’s football still retained its direct, open formation.

The England selectors who were at the match must have been impressed by Stanley Matthews, and if the Scottish team builders had been present they would have been as impressed by Hugh Kelly.

FIRM DEFENCE

But the entire defence under the inevitable second half pressure was as firm as it always seems to be these days, with Shimwell a great full-back, and Farm at times a no less great and resourceful goalkeeper.

Blackpool deserved a point. Make no mistake about that, but it could so easily have been a couple.

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NEXT WEEK: Matthews had Stoke guessing last time

IT is the match next week at Blackpool in which Stanley Matthews will want to play - even if he can stand on only one leg.

In this Stoke City fixture last season - the match against his old club - the England and Blackpool dragon-fly played the greatest game, I think, he has ever played in a tangerine jersey.

The City defence, even Neil Franklin, never knew which way he was going - and whichever way they decided they were always wrong.

It was only 2-1 in the end, but as a masterpiece in the Stanley Matthews manner it achieved almost the status of a classic.

The City had their revenge in the replayed Cup-tie a month and a half later, won on the Blackpool ground in a Christmas Day match in 1947-48, and had a 2-0 victory a year earlier.

So, when it is all worked out, the City in four games at Blackpool since the war have won three times, Which is no mean average, and is. in fact, about the best record on the ground of any visiting team in the Division.

Obviously, therefore, on the horses for courses theory, the City must have a chance - and a big chance- next week. But as these men from the Potteries have won only once away from home this season, there would appear to be 11 good reasons, one of them Mr. Matthews, why this should not be their second success on tour.

And, somehow, I don’t think it will be, writes Clifford Greenwood.

FOOTNOTE - Freddie Steele, who nearly always scored at Blackpool for Stoke, will not be present - he has gone to Mansfield Town as player - manager- and who’s weeping about that in Blackpool? 

In the City front line may be the man from Blackpool, Verdi Godwin.

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THE MORTENSEN STORY — Second instalment

EASTER MONDAY, 1938 - THE HAPPIEST

BOY IN BLACKPOOL

HAPPIEST boy in Blackpool on Easter Monday, 1938, was Stanley Mortensen. He came to town to play for a team of South Shields recruits, and attracted the attention of the Blackpool management.

After the game, summoned to the club’s offices, he was asked by Col. William Parkinson “Would you like to become a Blackpool player?”

In this second instalment of his book “Football Is My Game” he writes of his early days with his first and only professional club.

And the slowest player!

By Stanley Mortensen

WOULD I LIKE TO BECOME A BLACKPOOL PLAYER? DOES A DUCK LIKE TO SWIM? MY ADAM’S APPLE, OR SOMETHING, CHECKED THE REPLY WHICH I WAS ACHING TO GIVE, BUT NO DOUBT MY FACE GAVE IT.

Anyway, I kept back the reply, and instead, showing what I like to think was uncommon sense for a boy of 16,1 said “I’ll have to ask my mum.”

There and then, in the Blackpool office, a letter was written to my mother, explaining what the club proposed for my future.

The letter gave definite proposals.

Within a few weeks I would be 17, and Blackpool would be able to sign me as a professional.

Mother worried

MY mother was more than a bit worried at first. I suppose no mother likes her boy to leave home.

But she did not want to stand in my way, for she knew I was determined to play football, and so, a few weeks later, I returned to Blackpool; not this time as one of a party, but accompanied by my team-mate and friend, Dick Withington, wing partner in the boys’ club which had opened for me the door of opportunity.

In the football sense, Dick, as a lad, was a smasher. There seemed nothing he could not do with a ball. He was a real artist at control; he had a good turn of speed, and a “head” for the the game.

When we signed up, one newspaper described me briefly as the ex-schoolboys’ leading scorer, and then went on with a much more enthusiastic reference to Withington “regarded as the cleverest junior product in South Shields.”

I was small

I SUSPECT, looking back, that Blackpool had higher hopes of Withington than they had of me. I was small - about two inches shorter than Dick - and by comparison with his cleverness on the wing I must have looked an inferior player.

Nothing, it seemed, could prevent him from going to the top. Yet he never made the international grade we were all prepared to forecast for him.

It isn’t easy to explain why one player goes ahead while another finds his progress checked. There is a lot of luck in it. I had the breaks; things went my way maybe, and for Dick they didn’t.

He stayed at Blackpool for some time, however, and then moved on to Rochdale and Chesterfield. Now and again our paths cross, and we are still pals as always.

Trying our luck

FOR good or ill, then, in 1938, there were in Blackpool two boys from the north-east preparing to dip their hands into the lucky bag to see what they could pull out in the way of a football prize.

We were apprenticed to joinery, trained in the evenings, and paired up on Saturdays as the right wing of the colts’ team. Colonel Parkinson had been a joiner as a boy - I wonder if that was why this particular trade was selected?

We both Soon gave up that job, but, having, given it up, time hung heavy on my hands. Soon, even in Blackpool, we Were fed up with doing nothing. So Dick and I asked to be allowed to work on the ground, and, in fact, we became full-time professionals.

Not that many people noticed it! We were still two unknown youngsters learning the art of football all over again, and outside a very small circle our names didn’t mean very much.

Dick goes ahead

SO the 1938-39 season went by. I played regularly in the colts’ side; but Dick did take one stride ahead of me - he got one game in the Blackpool second eleven.

Actually, I was at a difficult point in my career, but perhaps I was too young to realise how close I was to failure. I was in grave danger of being swamped by the mass of forward talent Blackpool possessed about that period.

A brief glance may be taken at some of the talent which was so far ahead of me.

Dai Astley, the Welsh inside forward with one of the most telling body swerves in the game; a first-class footballer in every way.

George Eastham, one of the most fascinating players to watch in all football. He could dance around with the ball and beat a man on a sixpence.

He was dangerous

THEN there was Willie Buchan, tall and thin, with a dangerous cut-through, who could swerve round an opponent with amazing ease.

And Bobby Finan, one of the most whole-hearted players any club could have. Even the Blackpool directors were said at one time to be - divided in their opinion about his worth.

But I know that the other players were always glad when he was alongside them in the team, for they recognised him as a player of great all-round ability who always pulled his weight.

Jimmy Blair; here was a genius. He was a master of ball control, had a nice swerve, and for one so young (I am speaking now of the 1938-39 season) had a rare instinct for the game.

Jock Dodds, the burly centre-forward, arrived in 1938-39 - a £10,000 signing -from Sheffield United.

Hot competition

THOSE were outstanding inside forwards on the Blackpool staff about that time, and in addition there were Jimmy Ashworth and Albert Knowles, besides youngsters like myself. The competition was pretty hot. These men were giants of the game compared to the young learners, among whom I was numbered.

So to “break through” a young player had to have ability and luck, too; and I think some of the young postwar players should realise how fortunate they are in these times to get such quick chances to show their worth.

Prewar there was plenty of talent; since the war there has been a dearth of it, and young players with only average ability have been thrust into the limelight. Some of them have got in too soon - and having got in reckon they know it all.

Slowest player

AND it was at this time - this critical time in the career of a young professional - that it became painfully apparent that something was wrong; something which threatened the whole of my football future.

I had never done any sprinting or racing as a boy apart from larking about at holiday camps.

A set race I had never taken part in, and a pair of sprinting shoes with spikes - why, I scarcely knew what they looked like. So any latent speed I had possessed had to be developed, and against better footballers, and against trained players, I began to look something like a slow coach.

I was the slowest player on Blackpool’s books!

NEXT WEEK - WHAT I LEARNED FROM BILL TREMELLING . . .BREAKING IN THE COLTS..

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Jottings from all parts

BY "CLIFFORD GREENWOOD" 3 December 1949

SOUTH END FOR GOALS!

THERE was a time when the Blackpool forwards scored about 75 per cent, of their goals in front of Spion Kop. Now it’s different, writes Clifford Greenwood.

There have been 14 goals only for Blackpool in home games this season, but 10 of the 14 have been scored in the south goal, where four of the seven conceded at home by the defence have also been lost.

That makes a return of 14 goals out of 21 presented for the close-up view of the south stand and paddock.

They’ll have to be increasing the prices at that end.

***

In the long ago

IT was not - as so many people think - Fleetwood’s first appearance in the first round of the FA Cup in the game at Valley Parade last weekend.

Mr. Ted Nuttall, 80-year-old ex-Fleetwood Ranger, writes in an interesting letter that back in 1892 or 1893 Fleetwood Rangers were drawn against Everton for a home tie in the first round, accepted an offer to transfer to the Everton ground, and there lost.

Which was quite an achievement by the Fleetwood pigmies against Everton giants who included in their ranks no fewer than three internationals.

Nearly everybody has forgotten this epic of long ago - but not Ted Nuttall.

***

Second time

IT was the second time it had happened since the war when Blackpool last Saturday snatched a point from Manchester United in the last minute.

It happened at Maine-road last season after the United a week earlier had won 3-0 at Blackpool.

Again, to continue the coincidence, it was a Billy Wardle centre that made the goal. The only differences were that Jim McIntosh headed it and that it was a winning goal in a 4-3 game.

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Blackpool and the Cup

FOURTEEN-TO-ONE in the Cup lists a week ago, Blackpool in the last call-over I saw reported were down to 12’s.

Twenty minutes’ football against Manchester United last weekend made that difference to the odds. For Blackpool, in forcing a 3-3 draw out of a match which was being lost 3-0 with 70 minutes gone, revealed qualities - the sort of qualities which count in Cupties - that not even Blackpool’s best friends suspected this team possessed.

That the present Blackpool team could at times play football of class in the open nobody has ever disputed. But that this team could play such fighting football few people had ever realised.

“Guts” they call it

THE Greeks, who seem to have had an extensive vocabulary, probably had a word for it. Nowadays it is called tersely and inelegantly “guts.”

It is worth a lot in League games. It is worth something beyond estimate in the Cup, and it is, I think, because Blackpool revealed in a crisis the possession of it that everywhere I have gone in the town this week I have heard people relating it to the club’s prospects in the Wembley march which for Blackpool opens on January 7, and for which the ties come out of the drum on Monday week at Lancaster Gate.

These are early days yet, I know, to be discussing the Cup. There is, in any case, such a packet of luck in it, in the draw which, as one illustration, gave Blackpool a succession of home games into the last eight two years ago.

Yet the fact remains that a team that can achieve its own salvation on the field of battle against almost illimitable odds as Blackpool achieved it a week ago can obviously enter the death-or-glory arena with at least a reasonable confidence.

And unquestionably with a greater confidence than would have been warranted even a week ago.

Not surprising

IT is not surprising in the circumstances that the Cup odds against Blackpool have shortened, that a match which for a long time threatened to cause a deep depression over these parts ended with everybody in a state of considerable and justifiable elation.

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Matthews was there

I WROTE a few weeks ago after the England-Eire match that Jack Carey was about the best full-back on earth. I still think so after watching him play at Blackpool last week, writes “C.G.”

His partner,

Jack Aston, is nearly in his class, nearly but not quite, for he cannot resist delaying a clearance while he tries to beat one man too many. I noticed that at Maine-road in the Ireland match.

It cost the United their second goal at Blackpool when this full-back, with all the time in the world, had the audacity to toy with the ball while Stanley Matthews was in the vicinity and in the end had it taken from him.

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