31 December 1949 Wolverhampton Wanderers 3 Blackpool 0
Battling Blackpool defence fail to save point
LATE GOALS
Wolverhampton Wanderers 3, Blackpool 0
By “Clifford Greenwood”
THIS DYING YEAR OF GRACE HAS BEEN WOLVERHAMPTON WANDERERS’ CUP YEAR, BUT THEY SAID “GOODBYE” TO 1949 TODAY WITHOUT TEARS.
Since October 8 one game only had been won in the First Division - the match at Villa Park four days ago - and for this game with Blackpool, who were without a postwar victory on this spacious Molineux ground, they had to take the field with three reserves in the half-back line.
Among them was Angus McLean, a Welshman with a Scottish name, who has made his reputation as a full-back.
“Everything has happened to us in the last three months,” I was told by a Wolverhampton director, who has watched his team fall from the first to the sixth position in the table in one of football’s biggest landslides of the season.
Blackpool, who have now met the League champions and the Cupholders within a week, were able to play the men who beat Burnley last Tuesday.
Nearly all of them have been in the team that has created a club record in the last two months by playing 10 games without defeat.
It was cold but fine in the Midlands today, with a threat of the fog which when Blackpool Were last in these parts caused the famous Hawthorns fiasco.
PACKED GROUND
Football’s highest Spion Kop was packed to the last inch half an hour before the kick-off, and 60 early in the afternoon the ambulance squads were lifting casualties out of paddocks almost as thickly populated.
A preliminary inspection of the pitch ended with a verdict that for the time of the year it was in an uncommonly fine state, with both goal areas tolerably firm.
There were between 40.000 and 50,000 people inside the ground, with rumours of long queues still outside it when the teams appeared.
Teams:
WOLVERHAMPTON W: Williams; Kelly, Pritchard; Crook (W.), Chatham, McLean; Hancocks, Swinbourne, Pye, Smyth, Mullen.
BLACKPOOL: Farm, Shimwell, Garrett; Johnston, Hayward, Kelly; Matthews, McCall, Mortensen, McIntosh. Wardle.
Referee: Mr. H. T. Wright (Macclesfield),
THE GAME
First Half
Blackpool, who played in white, won the toss. That made little difference with no wind blowing.
In the first 10 seconds the Wanderers raced away on the left, and when Mullen crossed low centre Swinboume lashed over a bouncing ball and missed it within scoring distance.
Nor had that raid been repelled before Hayward conceded corner to halt Pye as the leader went after another pass rolling towards Blackpool’s goal.
It was a fast, tempestuous opening by the Wanderers.
Blackpool’s retaliation, however, was immediate, Matthews taking his partner’s long forward pass on one wing and opening a raid on the other, where Wardle crossed a ball which McIntosh almost shepherded over the line.
He did this under the impression that Mr. Wright would give a corner, and registered considerable protest when instead he gave a goal kick.
It was fast open football by both front lines in these opening skirmishes. .
George Farm made one superb acrobatic clearance as he leaped out to a right wing centre and held it high above a swarm of men only a couple of yards inside the penalty area.
LIVELY HANCOCKS
A minute later, too, little Johnny Hancocks, who, a week or two ago was asking for a transfer, tore past Garrett and was preparing to tear past Hayward, too, as the centre-half calmly dispossessed him.
There were no signs in these early minutes of the Wanderers being under the weather. There was, instead, the old familiar Wolverhampton punch and pace and the long pass to the wings in every raid.
One of those passes put Mullen in a position which gave this aggressive wing forward a chance to cut inside Shimwell before shooting a ball which Farm parried brilliantly and beat out for a comer—the second the Wanderers had won in the first six minutes.
The game was so fast that it might have been a Cuptie being played a week too soon.
McLean shot over the bar with Farm composedly watching the ball sail away into the packed stand behind him as the Wanderers’ pressure continued.
OUTPLAYED
Blackpool still on the retreat
Except when Matthews crossed a centre to which Mortensen was moving as he fell under one of those tackles which invite penalties, Blackpool were outplayed as I have not seen a Blackpool team outplayed for a long-time.
McCall once shot over the bar after force of numbers had repelled McIntosh and the ball had rolled out loose to the inside-right.
There were one or two raids afterwards, too, which had a lot of class in them in the open but seldom crossed the penalty area line.
TWO ESCAPES
In the meantime, the Wolves had been swooping on the Blackpool goal almost uninterruptedly in a raging pack, with both wingmen constantly taking long forward passes and careering fast inside with them.
Hancocks shot one of his familiar thunderbolts over the bar, and in another raid I noticed Tom Garrett make a great headed clearance.
With nearly 25 minutes of the half gone, Blackpool were still in almost nonstop retreat.
With 25 minutes gone, the total of corners for the Wanderers had reached three, and three times this raiding forward line ran full tilt into Blackpool’s offside trap.
In the 26th minute all this pressure might have been rewarded with a goal, too, as Swinbourne took a loose ball which had cannoned to him in an offside position and instead of racing in with it shot a long way wide from an unmarked position nearly 30 yards out.
Immediately, as is so often the case when one team is raiding and the other retreating, the retreating team nearly snatched the lead.
McIntosh shoots
Williams rocked by ball’s pace
Mortensen moved so fast to a short, hazardous back pass by Pritchard to his unprepared goalkeeper that both the Wanderers were sprawling as the Blackpool leader hooked the ball between them and watched it bounce across the face of an open goal where there was no forward in position to walk it over the line.
After that little episode the Wanderers began to go back at last.
McIntosh went away fast after one long forward pass, revealed sufficient speed to outpace two men, and shot a ball which Williams beat forward to one of his waiting full-backs as he was rocked backwards under the shot’s pace.
Blackpool forced their first corner within the next two minutes, and in the raid which followed it required a great leap by Chatham to intercept a high lobbed centre crossed by Matthews, with Mortensen waiting for it in a position where a goal would have been about 100 to 1 on.
The Wolverhampton forwards still played, whenever the chance offered itself, the five-men-in-a-line formation, and in one of these raids Farm had to dive desperately at Pye’s feet, with the centre-forward chasing those downfield passes in which the Wanderers always specialise.
COMMAND WANES
Still, with the first half-hour gone, the Wanderers were no longer in as complete a command of the game as they had been, were betraying, in fact, a few signs of a team that stakes everything on an early goal.
Another corner for Blackpool came in an attack in which Kelly appeared unexpectedly as a wing forward. The corner was repelled, and immediately after it Johnston starred in a raid in which he put first one Blackpool wing and then another into the game.
McIntosh in the end sent across the face of the Wolverhampton goal a ball which hovered about in the shooting zone for a longer time than the Wolverhampton public liked.
The Wolverhampton defence was tall in every position, took nearly every ball in the air, but still was in retreat for a long time till Pye escaped in a breakaway, raced past Hayward for the first time in the afternoon as the centre-half fell, and shot a ball which skidded out by the far post as its pace on the mud beat the falling Farm.
UNDER FIRE AGAIN
In the last five minutes before the interval the Blackpool goal was under fire again - a relentless fire.
Pye headed high over the bar from an unmarked position after Mullen had crossed a high centre to him from the line, and in the last two minutes Farm held Smyth’s long-range shot with all his familiar poker face composure before Kelly headed barely wide of a post of his own goal for the Wanderers’ fourth corner of the half.
Blackpool, I think, would be content and, I think, should have been - to be level at the interval.
Half-time: Wolverhampton 0, Blackpool 0.
SECOND HALF
The football was curiously quiet and without incident early in the second half until in one Wolverhampton assault Johnston had to make a great tackle in the goalmouth after Mullen had crossed another of his textbook centres and Smyth had darted in fast to it.
Blackpool’s only shot for time was by wing half Kelly in a random raid which was merely an interruption of massed Wolverhampton pressure.
This pressure nearly produced the elusive goal in the fifth minute of the half, Smyth taking a rebounding ball after a full-scale foray had hammered on the Blackpool defence and shooting in a ball which from close range hit Farm who beat it out instinctively, with 45,000 people hailing a goal a split second too soon.
That was about as near as either team had been to a goal in 53 minutes’ football which was still as fast as ever.
BLACKPOOL’S TURN
But attack has not the Wolves’ punch
Nobody was resting for the Cupties!
It had been nearly all the Wanderers in the first 10 minutes of this half, and afterwards it was as nearly all Blackpool, but a Blackpool whose attack had not the punch at close quarters of the Wolves.
Once, however, there was a raid which had the authentic promise of a goal in it, Wardle taking Mortensen’s pass, giving it back to the leader, and watching him race in to slice a shot wide of the post, with Bert Williams on his line leaping about as apprehensively as a cat on hot bricks.
With only 15 minutes of the half gone, a mist was beginning to fall so thick that there were times when the men on the far side of the field were barely visible.
Still, one could see sufficient of the game to appreciate that both Blackpool’s wings were in it a lot and that the Wanderers were as often in retreat as Blackpool.
Yet, with 18 minutes of the half gone, Pye, the Wolves and England leader, who had been missing too many chances today, missed another which should have given his team the lead.
SHOT WIDE
This time the Blackpool defence asked for offside once too often, stood for a half second, and then were left in a vain chase of the Wanderers’ centre-forward as he raced on all alone, forced Farm to leave his goal, and from a yard inside the penalty area shot wide of a post.
With 20 minutes of the game left and nothing particular happening Blackpool still had a chance.
Raids were coming faster on the Wanderers’ goal. One was a perfect example of the triangular advance, with McCall sending Matthews away and a do-or-die tackle alone halting Mortensen as the leader tore in to meet the centre.
Another minute, and with the ball moving constantly on the Wolverhampton goal Johnston called Williams into action with a fast rising shot from 30 yards.
Everywhere Blackpool were moving faster to the ball, repetition of the Burnley finish was threatening, with the Wanderers penned in their own half and at times even in their own penalty area.
SNAP GOAL
Pye scores with only 18 minutes left
Then, with only 18 minutes left, the Wanderers broke away and went in front with a snap goal.
It was Johnny Hancocks who made it, the little man on the Wolverhampton right wing taking a long pass, swerving past Kelly, and cutting fast inside.
Before the Blackpool defence could position itself the ball came across. To it PYE hurled himself in a dramatic nosedive, reached the ball a foot off the ground, and headed it fast past the deserted Farm.
That released a mighty hullabaloo and a storming series of raids in which Pye, a couple of minutes later, shot over the line again, but offered no protest when a goal was disallowed.
With 11 minutes left, Blackpool were raiding again desperately to retrieve a record which every second was being lost.
Ten minutes from time it was lost, as the Wanderers in an all-out assault made it 3-0 and settled it.
Again the man who a fortnight ago had been vanquished to the Central League was the man of the goal. This time, too, he scored it.
There was a down-the-middle raid. The ball was lost to view as it soared out to the left wing.
Abruptly out of the mist appeared Mullen. He put the ball inside, and there waiting for it in the inside-left position was JOHNNY HANCOCKS who, in the next split second, shot it past Farm, who could never have seen the ball in all the encircling gloom.
Three minutes only were left when the Blackpool goal fell for the third time in a quarter of an hour.
This goal was for all practical purposes invisible from the main stand, but later reports confirmed that MULLEN, with the defence in a tangle in front of him, darted between two Blackpool men and shot the ball again past the goalkeeper who could have had only a fragmentary view of it.
Result:
WOLVERHAMPTON W. 3 (Pye 72, Hancocks 80, Mullen 87)
BLACKPOOL 0
COMMENTS ON THE GAME
BLACKPOOL cannot win at Wolverhampton. This was the team’s first defeat since October 22, and only the second time since the beginning of September.
Nobody could dispute that the Wanderers were entitled to the points. Blackpool defence had to achieve heroic deeds in the first half-hour to hold a line of Wolverhampton forwards as fast on the ball as they were aggressive in the tackle.
There was, in fact, a time even late in the game when it seemed almost certain that this rearguard action had won a point.
Then, in three tearaway breakaways by a line which had been mastered in all its full - scale assaults earlier, Blackpool’s defence surrendered three times in 15 minutes.
If this game had been worth a point to Blackpool it would have been the defence which earned it by hard labour before half-time.
Hayward had another great match in the centre, and Shim- well was as resolute as ever.
FEW SHOTS
This was one of those days when the forwards, after the first half- hour, had plenty of the match but could do little about It when they were in it.
There was scarcely a shot all the afternoon calculated to beat goalkeeper of Williams’ class, and in spite of the tireless industry of the inside men and now and again a glittering raid on the wings there was no punch comparable with that which was packed in the Wolverhampton line from one wing to the other.
No, this was a defeat about which Blackpool could have no reasonable complaint.
Manager is old Blackpool player
From Our Southend Football Correspondent
NOBODY IN SOUTHEND WILL BE MORE THRILLED THAN UNITED MANAGER, HARRY WARREN, IF HIS TEAM BRING OFF A SURPRISE IN THEIR FA CUP- TIE WITH BLACKPOOL NEXT SATURDAY.
Blackpool was his first professional club, and Southend are the first League club he has managed. Wary of committing himself on prospects, Manager Warren would only say “I spent several happy years at Blackpool when Major Buckley was there, and nothing would give me greater pleasure than to see my boys put up a good show.” But if Mr. Warren was cautious, United chairman Mr. Nevil Newitt, was confident of Southend's ability at least to force a replay.
“There are 11 on each side,” he said, “and our boys will fight to the last."
The team themselves face the match in the same mood. Several have had experience of higher- grade football, and are of opinion that the different style may tell in Southend’s favour.
Irish international skipper McAlinden. who came to Southend from Stoke City, is United’s “brain.”
Defence stiffened
The defence, stiffened by signings this year of Loughran, ex- Burnley fuU-back, and Wall- banks, half-back from Fulham, point to recent performances.
Unbeaten at home, the United have not conceded goal in their last five matches there. Runaway Notts County, the division leaders, were defeated 2-0 in a game in which centre-half Sheacd. once with Leicester City, held Lawton completely.
The team are having only a little extra training.
Home training
“We are not going away,” said Manager Warren, “for there is no better place to train than Southend.”
They will play golf on Monday, take brine baths - to which many London clubs make journeys - on Tuesday, and train at the Stadium on Wednesday.
They will travel to Blackpool on Thursday in readiness for the game - and hope to provide at least one sensation in Round Three.
THE MORTENSEN STORY - No. 7
"The Blackpool slowcoach," they called him
THE FIRST REAL SETBACK
By Stanley Mortensen
Jottings from all parts
BY "CLIFFORD GREENWOOD" 31 December 1949
ALL-TIME RECORD HAS SENT BLACKPOOL SOARING
AS BLACKPOOL AND BURNLEY WALKED WEARILY OFF THE FIELD ON TUESDAY FEW PEOPLE KNEW THAT ANOTHER RECORD HAD BEEN WRITTEN INTO BLACKPOOL’S HISTORY THIS SEASON.
It was the tenth successive game that Blackpool had played undefeated. No other Blackpool team has ever achieved such a sequence.
Never since the dawn of Blackpool football, way back in the reign of Victoria, had the club fielded a team that had played in so many games without losing one of them.
Incredible it may seem, but the record books establish it beyond dispute.
Nearest approach to it was in the last promotion season of 1936-37 when nine games were played in succession and every one of them was won.
This conquering progress ended in the tenth game, in London, where, at Upton Park, a Blackpool team that had won at Bury on New Year’s Day, 1937, could scarcely raise a gallop against 11 men of West Ham United who had been without a fixture the previous day.
On the heights
BLACKPOOL’S climb during recent weeks to the unfamiliar peaks of the First Division table is not in these circumstances surprising.
It is, I think, premature to be talking yet about the First Division championship, but, obviously, playing as this team have been playing since defeat was encountered for the last time at Highbury on October 22, it must come into the realm of practical politics.
The defensive record is amazing. Such a word is permissible in this context, for Blackpool have always been a club able to find scoring forwards - and one might express the pious hope, in parenthesis, that another one these days would be mighty useful - but, apparently incapable of recruiting a. defence through which a coach and four could not now and again
Best in League
THERE was one period during this season when this defence played 11 games for the loss of only two goals. Its last six have cost only four goals. It is on paper - and obviously must also be on the field - the best defence in the First Division, and, therefore, in the country.
And for every position - convincing testimony to the team building policy which has been pursued since the war - there is an efficient understudy.
Yet I find nobody at Blackpool’s headquarters sitting back complacently and asking “Aren’t we wonderful?”
They know, I think, that too often it’s a case of up one day and down the next in football, and that the wise club takes out an insurance against the unpredictable future by encouraging and cultivating its young talent.
Player exchange?
NO transfers make news at present.
A Blackpool forward is interesting a First Division club, who sent a scout to watch him at Bloomfield-road on Tuesday on the assumption that he was to be drafted into the front line for the match.
I question whether Blackpool will talk business, however, unless there is an attractive player- exchange clause in the contemplated contract. The club in question certainly has plenty of surplus and good material to offer.
***
CHRISTMAS! CLARET
BRIGHT boys at the Blackpool Publicity Office.
The Christmas card issued this year for circulation all over the land contained a number of coloured photographs.
One was of a football match, and one of the teams playing in the match were in claret and blue jerseys, the colours of Burnley, who were Blackpool's Christmas visitors this year.
Such fidelity in publicity compels admiration.
***
13 years ago - and lucky
IT was good to meet Manager Frank Hill again before the Burnley-Blackpool games, writes Clifford Greenwood.
He must have recalled another Christmas - 13 years ago - which, as events worked out, won promotion for Blackpool at a time when he was Blackpool’s left - half and outside - left alternately.
During that holiday Blackpool achieved a double over Fulham and routed Leicester City, the club’s chief challengers and ultimate Second Division champions, in one of the finest games a Blackpool team has ever played.
Frank scored one of the goals in a 6-2 stampede which was watched by 31,783 people, a record attendance which remained a record until the Arsenal match in 1948.
***
MET two of the old brigade - and not so old, either - before the Burnley match at Blackpool.
One of them, Louis Cardwell, has played his last game - or so he said. The other, Bob Finan, who had decided to call it a day, was persuaded by Wigan Athletic to have another season, and has been playing for the Lancashire Combination club since September.
“I've had a good innings,” says Louis. He may have had, but it has not been the golden innings it might have been, and would have been if his lot during the war had not been cast in distant regions.
Not that the former Blackpool and Manchester City centre-half is complaining. ‘‘It’s all in the luck of the draw,” he says.
ARTHUR LIKES TO BE LAST
THEY say that Arthur Woodruff, the Burnley full-back, is 38. He may be older. He may be younger. Footballers are as coy about their birth certificates as a prima donna.
But he has been so long in the game - 23 years at Turf Moor alone - that the question which I heard several people asking at Blackpool on Tuesday was understandable.
“Why,” I was asked, “isn’t he Burnley’s captain.?”
The answer is simple.
For Mr. Woodruff is superstitious. He always insists on being the last Burnley player out of the dressing room when the Turf Moor team take the field. He even comes out last after the interval.
And as captains have to come out first this full-back refuses to be a captain. Strange, but true.
***
ALWAYS as modest in his hopes as in his opinions, Mr. Harry Evans, the Blackpool FC chairman, writes as his New Year message on Blackpool football:
“Without looking into any crystal or being a super-optimist, I am looking forward to the future with a wish that the team will keep clear of injury and with every confidence that in such circumstances it will do something which will live in memory for a long time ”
And so say all of us.
***
MR. GEORGE SHEARD, the Blackpool Press steward, introduced a new sort of census at the Turf Moor game on Boxing Day. He noted the number of direct shots fielded by each goalkeeper.
George Farm held or parried or otherwise repelled eight in the first half and six in the second. His opposite number in the Bum- ley goal was in similar action six times in each half.
That made a total of 13 shots by Burnley and 12 by Blackpool, and indicated (a) that a draw was about a fair result and (b) that there was not such a lot of shooting.
***
Back with a bang
So George Dick has not played his last game for Carlisle.
All sorts of rumours were circulating in the town after he had been unexpectedly left out of the Third Division club’s cup team. I ignored them.
I could not forget that only p a few days earlier I had been told by the 1 ex-Blackpool forward that he was content at Carlisle, that his treatment by Manager Shankly had always been considerate.
When I met him last week en route to the St. Annes-road greyhound track, where he still trains, George said “I must keep fit-even if I’m not in the team.”
Now he is in it, scored three goals in Carlisle’s 4-3 defeat of York City on Tuesday.
There’s been a storm in an egg-cup - and now, I am glad to report, it’s all over.
***
When Don Revie, Hull’s £20,000 signing from Leicester, arrived at Filbert-street, he was only 9st. 81b., but they built him up into a broad-shouldered 12st
***
Well played, boys!
THIS was Blackpool’s forward line for the Boxing Day Central League match with Newcastle United: John Taylor, Ken Smith, Jackie Mudie, Geoffrey Cookson, and Bill Perry.
The inside-left is an amateur. The others, with the exception of the centre-forward, have seldom played outside the Lancashire Combination. They did not score, but to field such an attack and still to make a draw was one of the big achievements of the Christmas holidays which passed unheralded and unsung.
So, however belatedly, here’s a pat on the back for a team that did not win.
***
I AM being taken to task this week because I have not X-ray eyes, writes “C. G.”
“Be fair,’’ I am exhorted by "Sand Grown Un,” who complains that I never reported that Andy McCall handled the ball before he shot the winning goal against Portsmouth a week ago.
I never reported it because from the Press box the offence, which, I have since learned, definitely was committed, was invisible, with the forward masked from view by a pack of players.
“I was within 10 yards and so were hundreds of others - and I saw it,” reports this correspondent, But he wouldn’t have seen it if he had been in the centre stand - and the referee didn’t see it, either.
***
Leave a Comment