21 January 1950 Charlton Athletic 1 Blackpool 2
Grim second-half struggle after Johnston injury
THE LEAD HELD
Charlton Athletic 1, Blackpool 2
By “Clifford Greenwood”
CHARLIE VAUGHAN, Charlton Athletics centre-forward, one of the country’s leading marksmen and among the men selected for the Canadian tour, had to watch the match at the Valley this afternoon, after being taken ill at noon.
That increased the Athletic’s casualty list to 11, and caused a perceptible depression down in this particular valley as soon as it was announced.
A player whose name is unfamiliar in First Division football, an Irishman called D’Arcy, led the London team’s front line, and Purves was introduced into the vacancy at inside- left.
Blackpool were able to field the team selected in midweek, with Billy Wardle back among the forwards after a fort night’s absence, and Rex Adams on the line as 12th man.
With two other First Division matches and the Rugby international in the capital, there were not this time the queues which seem inseparable from Blackpool’s visits to London.
FINE, BUT COLD
Yet, with the sun shining again, and in spite of the coldest wind I have had to endure in football this season, the attendance was approaching 35000 when the teams appeared on a field so denuded of grass that nobody could say how green was this valley in South-East London.
The Blackpool team, its chairman (Mr Harry Evans), and trainer (Johnny Lynas) sent telegrams of good wishes to Bill Slater, who was playing for England against Wales at Bangor, to celebrate his first appearance in an amateur international game.
Teams:
CHARLTON ATHLETIC: Bartram; Croker (P), Shreeve; Fenton, Phipps, Ufton; Hurst, O’Linn, D’Arcy, Purves, Kieman.
BLACKPOOL: Farm; Shimwell, Garrett; Johnston, Hayward, Kelly; Matthews, McCall, Mortensen, McIntosh, Wardle.
Referee: Mr. H. Trenholm (Stockton-on-Tees).
Blackpool, who played in white shirts, were given the sporting reception Blackpool teams are always given in a city which has hundreds of Blackpool exiles in it.
Harry Johnston won the toss. That gave Blackpool the aid of the wind not as strong as it was cold.
Wing-half Kelly halted Charlton’s first advance on the right flank by heading out a centre which Purves was crossing to the three waiting forwards.
That raid was never anywhere near a goal. The next by the Athletic’s forwards was perilously near one.
It was so menacing that Farm had to race out half' a dozen yards, dive at the feet of D’Arcy, and in the end make a desperate clearance.
Nor was that the end of Charlton’s bid for an early goal.
Within another minute - and only a couple of minutes of the game had gone - Purves escaped, outpaced a pursuing half-back, shot a ball which the Blackpool goalkeeper held as it came fast at him as he crouched on his line.
There had scarcely been a sign of the Blackpool forward line, and yet when a raid was built on the right the Charlton defence was a rare old tangle for half a minute.
And when another raid followed it, this defence lost goal.
BLACKPOOL LEAD
Mortensen goal from Matthews’ centre
It happened in the fifth minute. His full-back refused to tackle Matthews, as he had refused to tackle him in the first advance.
This time the wing forward took the ball to the line, and crossed it high, and MORTENSEN, waiting for it, headed it inches inside the near post as big man Bartram hurled himself a split second late to it.
It was only the second time the Blackpool attack had got over the half way line - and a goal had come.
And others were threatening for a minute or two afterwards.
GREAT LEAP
Phipps had to make a great leap to reach another centre from the right to which Mortensen was rising, and within another minute, Shreeve had to slide in a desperate tackle at McCall’s feet as the inside-right was moving in to take a bouncing ball.
There was panic every time Blackpool’s forwards descended on this Charlton’s defence, Phipps once heading a centre out of Bartram’s hands for the first comer of the match while the goalkeeper registered righteous indignation at all this excitement in front of him.
Yet in the eighth minute the Athletic might have made it 1-1.
FLYING BALL
There was a raid down the centre, and right-half Fenton, swooping on to a loose ball, shot fast, so fast that Farm could only just jerk up both arms and watch the flying ball cannon off them on to the face of the bar and bounce out.
This was an escape for Blackpool who, however, were still playing good direct football with 10 minutes gone.
Yet in the next five minutes Blackpool went into complete and unexpected retreat again I counted three corners in that time.
CLOSE CALL
Hayward heads out with Farm beaten
One of those corners might have produced a goal, too, as Hayward headed out a ball which had escaped Farm, with the Blackpool goal almost wide open.
And before another had been cleared the South African O’Linn took a loose pass, found himself all alone in front of a deserted goalkeeper, and was so surprised by this gift opening that he shot high and wide.
EQUALISER
Not that it made any particular difference.
Five minutes later, in the 20th minute of the half, the Athletic were level, as, to be quite frank, they deserved to be.
It was almost a duplicate of the Blackpool goal. Again it was the right wing forward who escaped.
This time, Hurst’s high, falling centre, was met close to the far post by D’ARCY, who headed it wide of the falling Farm as the goalkeeper dived sideways at it a fraction late.
It was nearly all the Athletic afterwards, with the Blackpool defence - which in losing the lead had lost its first goal of 1950 - being constantly raced out of position by an attack as fast to a pass as I have seen any forward line since I was at Wolverhampton three weeks ago.
BLACKPOOL AGAIN
There were signs afterwards that this Blackpool defence was beginning to settle down. Three or four Charlton raids broke on a barrier which had not a gap in it.
And while this was happening the forwards came into the game again. One advance ended as Mortensen squared a pass which missed Kelly as the wing half was racing into a shooting position.
Another ended with Matthews slicing a centre on to the roof of the net.
Then, with Charlton losing their grip again on this curious game, Blackpool went in front again, snatched a goal, and made it look so simple.
McIntosh scores
Ball skids away from diving Bartram
Johnston made it with a squared pass out to the left wing after two other forward masses had cannoned back off a massed defence.
Wardle squared it back. On to it ran McINTOSH, swerved one man, and was outpacing another as he shot a ball which skidded away from the diving Bartram inches inside the far post.
Eddie Shimwell made a great clearance, halting two raiding forwards on his own, in the next minute, and in another Charlton advance Purves shot a ball which bounced awkwardly into the hands of the waiting Farm.
JOHNSTON HURT
Ten minutes of the half were left and Blackpool were left with 10 men as Harry Johnston fell in a lone raid on the Blackpool goal and ultimately limped to the dressing room.
Yet, even with these depleted forces, Blackpool nearly went further in front in the 32nd minute of the half.
Matthews won a corner from a full-back still disinclined to go in and tackle him, and, after it had been repelled, crossed to Wardle a short pass which the outside-left shot barely wide „of the far post from the inside- right position.
Even against 10 men and with Stan Mortensen playing as a wing half, Charlton could make little progress.
CHANCE MISSED
In one raid D’Arcy missed a big chance, ran on as Blackpool's offside demand was ignored, lost the ball in front of Farm, and in the end could only hook it into the goalkeeper’s hands.
Several raids followed this one, but Blackpool’s defence was firm, and not a vestige of a chance offered itself to the Athletic’s front line until O’Linn ran into the path of a loose ball and shot it into Farm’s arms.
Blackpool were in front at the interval because their forwards had taken the chances which the Charlton front line squad had neglected.
That, I think, was a fair summing up of the first 45 minutes.
Half-time: Charlton Athletic 1, Blackpool 2.
SECOND HALF
Reports from Blackpool’s dressing-room at half-time indicated that the team would have to play the rest of the game with 10 men. Harry Johnston had torn a ligament in a shoulder and was forbidden to take the field.
That left Blackpool with an attack of four men led by McIntosh, with Mortensen still at right-half, the position where he once played a heroic game for England against Wales.
Raid followed raid on Blackpool’s goal.
George Farm made an aerobatic dive to hold a thunderbolt of a shot by Hurst, and in the next half minute Purves hooked the ball over the bar from one of these scoring positions which the Athletic’s forwards had been rejecting all the afternoon.
IN RETREAT
Blackpool face strong pressure
That Blackpool would be in retreat I expected. And a retreat it was almost without cessation in the opening minutes of the half, except when McCall shot wide from long range, with Mortensen racing out of the halfback line into the centre-forward position and calling for a pass.
Blackpool’s four-man attack was never in the game during the half’s first 10 minutes, which were monopolised by a Charlton attack either careering into an offside trap or making one pass too many.
Farm fielded a succession of centres or watched them drift wide in the wind. Otherwise, all the Athletic’s fast attacks were vain.
CHASING PASSES
In the meantime, in the other half of the field, McIntosh was engaged in pursuits of passes which the fastest greyhound on earth could never have reached.
This procedure was varied once when Shimwell thundered wide a free-kick which nearly decapitated a Press photographer, and for a time afterwards, in fact, the Charlton front line was out of the game as an active force. Fifteen minutes of the half gone and Blackpool’s 10 men were still leading.
In the next couple of minutes Farm was in action.
Once he held a centre which curled under his bar, with two forwards galloping in fast on him, and half a minute later he hurled himself into a pack of men and lurched out of it, with the ball clutched to his chest.
SAVE OF THE MATCH
Another minute and this goalkeeper had made the save of the match, diving to his right and reaching and punching out for a comer a ball shot in fast and low by full-back Shreeve, who had advanced to the aid of his forwards.
There were times afterwards when Charlton had 10 men in Blackpool’s half of the field, when Sam Bartram watched, all on his own, a battle raging within shooting distance of his opposite number in the Blackpool goal.
In this siege, as often it became, Farm and the men in front of him were superb.
One raid was repulsed after another by their decision and speed in the tackle.
Then came Farm to another pass, snatched it up, fell, and, as another forward catapulted over him, took the count.
He was out for only half a minute, however, and within a minute, in fact, was racing out to the penalty area edge to make a full-back’s clearance off Hurst’s feet.
Result:
CHARLTON ATHLETIC 1 (D'Arcy 20 mins)
BLACKPOOL 2 (Mortensen 5 mins, McIntosh 28 mins)
COMMENTS ON THE GAME
It was gallant show against odds by Blackpool at Charlton. Not for long time shall I forget great retreat which, second half became and how 10 men held lead.
One could nearly call it George Farm’s match. He was magnificent.
Every man in front of him was resolute. Shimwell and Hayward played heroic part.
Forward line disarmed criticism. It was. scarcely in the game after halftime, when for all practical purposes, there were only two men in it Stanley Matthews and Willie McIntosh - engaged in forlorn pursuits of too fast passes.
When at full strength line snatched two goals from bare minimum of chances.
Charlton missed too many chances.
DESPITE the disappointment which was felt at the news that the Blackpool v. Doncaster Rovers FA Cup fourth round tie would not be an all-ticket match, there are indications that Cuptie interest in the Doncaster district will rise to fever pitch before the day, writes Hughie Goodall, “The Green’s” Doncaster football correspondent.
The allocation of 2,500 tickets for the Rovers has arrived, and the Supporters’ Club has announced, that members will be allowed only one ticket. As the Supporters’ Club is over 2,000 strong, there is likely to be keen competition for the supporters 1500 tickets.
The Rovers’ headquarters have also stated that each season ticket holder with seat will be entitled to one stand ticket. These tickets are likely to be distributed from Belle Vue this weekend.
The Rovers realise the immensity of the task that lies before them, but they are quietly confident and heartened, too, by the recent performances of other Third Division clubs against the “big men."
Player - manager Peter Doherty, a warm favourite at Belle Vue, and who is in brilliant form, is being very cautious. All he can be induced to say at the moment is “We shall give them a jolly good fight.”
Training
IF he has a plan of campaign (and it is likely that he has) he refuses to disclose it, although he does say that it is unlikely that his team will depart from the usual form of training which includes a practice match on Tuesday, golf on Wednesday and ball practice on Thursday.
The Rovers’ official party will leave Doncaster next Friday afternoon, visit a show in Blackpool on Friday night and return to Doncaster after the game, win, lose or draw.
An aircraft charter company is doing good business in Doncaster. One 32-seater and two 24-seater planes have already been booked for the match at an all-in cost (including a ticket for the game) of £4 17s. 6d.
A Doncaster booking office states that two more 24-seater planes would probably leave Doncaster on Saturday morning to stay the weekend at Blackpool.
Turnstiles
IT has been impossible for the charter company to acquire any more tickets, so that the passengers in these two planes would have to gain admission to the ground through the turnstiles.
The fare in these cases has been reduced to £4 9s. 6d., which includes a show in Blackpool on Friday night and accommodation at Stanley Matthews’s hotel for two nights.
AND THESE ARE THE MEN YOU WILL SEE
FOLLOWING are details about the players who are expected to be in the Doncaster Rovers Cup team:
KEN HARDWICK, goalkeeper.—Was understudy to Archie Ferguson, and when the Scot went to Wrexham Hardwick took his place and has kept It, apart from injury. Cool, confident and brilliant. Rightly regarded as one of Northern Section’s outstanding ’keepers Born at Rossington, near Doncaster. 5ft. 9in.; list. 71b.
LEN HAINSWORTH, right back.—One of Doncaster’s “discoveries,” for he joined them from Rotherham United three seasons ago as an inside forward or left winger. Tried at fullback and made a great success of his new position. A South Yorkshireman. 5ft. 10in.; list. 71b.
JACK HODGSON, left back.—A veteran, but still a stumbling-block to wingmen. Had a long spell of loyal service with Grimsby Town before Jackie Bestall (now manager of Blackburn Rovers) induced him to go to Belle Vue. Can turn defence into attack very quickly. 6ft. liin.; 13st.
SYD GOODFELLOW right half.— Rightly described by Peter Doherty as one of the best club men in the country. Constructive, tenacious and keen tackier.” Goodfellow has given the Rovers good service since he left Chesterfield 5ft. 9in.; list 101b.
SYD BYCROFT, centre half.—One of the best-known players in Northern Section and without doubt one of the finest centre-halves. Started as a centre-forward in 1936 but found centre-half his true position. Few centre-forwards have scored goals this season with Bycroft defending. A fully-qualified F A coach.
DAVID MILLER, left half.—Regular member of senior side until displaced bv Goodfellow. Often played well at centre half for Midland League team. Formerly with Derby County. Clever positional player, at his best when attacking.
HERBERT TINDILL, outside-right.— The “baby” of the team, although he has experienced Second Division football. Well up in the goal-scoring list, as he can shoot with either foot. Not afraid to cut in or change positions 5ft. 81in.; l1st. 81b.
PAUL TODD, inside-right.—Rated in the £15,000 class, this big, powerful Middlesbrough-born player is showing great form. Was spotted when playing with R A F in Ceylon. Wonderful ball control. 5ft. ll in.; 13st. 71b.
RAY HARRISON, centre-forward.—The Rovers’ most expensive signing. reported to have cost a £10,000 fee when he left Burnley a few weeks ago. A product of BAOR football, played his first game for Burnley on trial against Blackpool during Easter, 1946, and led the Burnley forwards at Wembley against Charlton a year later.
PETER DOHERTY, inside-left.—Player- manager, appointed in June. Said to have cost Rovers £8,000 from Huddersfield Town, but worth every penny and more. A brilliant strategist, schemer and goal-getter, too. The idol of Belle Vue supporters. 5ft. l0 in.; 12st. 51b.
ALF CALVERLEY, outside-left—In poor form earlier in season, but showing skill and ability in recent games. Previously had experience with Mansfield, Arsenal and Preston. 5ft. 7in.; l1st 7lb.
THE MORTENSEN STORY — No. 9
THE - “WELSHMAN” WAS AN ENGLISHMAN
Last-minute call from touchline
By Stanley Mortensen
Jottings from all parts
BY "CLIFFORD GREENWOOD" 21 January 1950
Refs, can stop rough-house football, and -
IT’S TIME THERE WAS ACTION
THERE are times when despair of a few present- day referees.
I am not - as I have written during recent weeks - one of those chroniclers who think there is a crime wave in football this season.
But there is still crime, and, unlike Mr. Gilbert’s Mikado, the referees of this present day and age seem curiously reluctant to administer the punishment to fit it.
THERE were passages in the Aston Villa match at Blackpool, some undetectable from the Press box but about which I have since had reports from impartial sources, which were a disgrace to football.
One is not pretending that the Villa were all black and Blackpool all white. One Blackpool man retaliated. Others were not content to turn the other cheek.
The result was that for several minutes of the second half there were times when the field bore less resemblance to a football pitch than to the Tower Circus at a Jack Pye festival.
Handshakes but -
I KNOW that in the pace and excitement of a present-day League match or Cuptie tempers are often frayed and men are guilty of behaviour which afterwards they regret.
One or two of the players in this match who had apparently been intent on putting each other out of circulation a few minutes earlier walked off the field shaking hands as if they were at a Band of Hope meeting.
And, for all I know, everybody was soon prepared to forgive and forget.
But one is not inclined to write a happy-ever-after ending to it. That has been too often written.
For the truth is that this sort of rough-house should never have been allowed to happen, and would not happen as often as unfortunately it seems to be happening, if the referees possessed as they are of almost dictatorial authority, exercised that authority as they should do.
Without censure
REPEATEDLY this season I have seen referees content to give a free-kick and not even a word of rebuke to an offender for tackles which were positively lethal.
Spurts of bad temper culminating in exhibitions of intolerably bad manners have been allowed to pass Without censure.
Blows were exchanged in one affray last weekend. I saw them. Twenty-six thousand other people saw them. The referee must have seen them.
Yet if a man was cautioned nobody noticed it. But if s player, whatever the provocation, hits another player on a football field there is only one punishment for it, and that is dismissal from the field.
No such action was taken in this match. It is taken too seldom. It’s about time that referees began to crack whip.
Unwise
CLUBS are as intent as international selectors on sending their players on these excursions all over the globe. The clubs I think, are being unwise. The international selectors are being, probably without intending or realising it, extortionate in their demands.
The day may come when it is realised, however belatedly, that too much football is being played. The public’s appetite for it is, apparently, as insatiable as ever. They think they would never tire of it if it were played from January to December.
All in first three
HERE is a nice 1 2 3:
After last weekend’s matches -
The first team in the Lancashire Combination (second division) was Blackpool “B.”
The second team in the Central League was Blackpool Reserve.
The third team in the First Division was Blackpool.
Tommy was impressed
TOMMY BROWELL, the former Blackpool forward - how long ago it seems since he was “Boy Browell a Hull, watched his son-in-law Ivor Powell, play for the Villa at Blackpool last weekend, writes “C. G.”
With the best will in the world, Tommy 1 s convinced that football is not what it used to be. So the older generation always talk, and not only about football, but this time I am inclined to agree with them.
Yet there is one Blackpool player who impressed Tommy a lot “He’s a shade slow yet, but he reminds you of Charlie Buchan,” says Tommy.
Who’s he talking about? Why, Bill Slater, who played his first game - but not his last - as an England amateur at Bangor this afternoon.
***
WHAT a few of them are writing:
Thanks for your articles praising the various reserves who are helping to maintain the prestige of the first team.........Barrackers or no barrackers, Quigleys or no Quigleys, we are certainly on top of the world this season. It is a fine reflection on Joe Smith and the directors.
J. CROSSLEY.
Newcastle-avenue, Blackpool.
***
DOZENS of letters in the mail since the selection of the England teams for the summer tours criticise the omission of Eric Hayward.
It is, I agree, inexplicable.
Only four centre-forwards have scored against Blackpool all the season. There is not another centre - half in the country with such a record.
And still the Blackpool centre - half escapes the selectors’ notice.
Yet the lamentations may be premature. All the men to go to Canada have not yet been chosen. He may yet go there.
***
YES, IT HAPPENED AGAINST DONCASTER
NEXT weekend's Cup- tie should awaken a few memories for Mr. Joe Smith, the Blackpool manager.
It was against a Doncaster Rovers team that Blackpool’s first match was played under his management.
The date was August 31, 1935. and the major experiment in the match was the fielding as a centre-forward of Bob Finan who had come to Blackpool two years earlier as a front-line leader but seldom played in the position.
The Scot scored two goals, and the, other three in a 5-2 defeat of the Yorkshire team came from Dai Oram, the little Welsh outside-left, T. W. Jones - and Peter Doherty, the present manager of the Rovers,
***
Statistics
THE Blackpool defence before this afternoon’s match at Charlton had played in 14 games this season without conceding a goal.
All four games lost by Aston Villa at Blackpool since the war have ended 1-0. And in three of the four the deciding goal has been scored by Stanley Mortensen.
Blackpool’s four ever-presents this season are George Farm, Harry Johnston, Eric Hayward and Stanley Matthews.
(You can win a bet on Matthews. He was not in the fog-abandoned match at the Hawthorns on November 19 but that match is out of the records as if it had never been).
***
Evening Gazette 27 January 1950
TOMORROW'S FA CUPTIE
Out: Johnston; In Wardle, Slater
HARRY JOHNSTON, the Blackpool captain, Is out of the Doncaster Rovers Cuptie at Blackpool tomorrow, and George McKnight is in as his understudy, writes Clifford Greenwood.
Billy Wardle, the left-wing forward, passed a fitness test at noon today, and retains his position in a line in which he will be partnered by Bill Slater, the amateur inter- national, with Willie McIntosh crossing to inside-right to the exclusion of the other Scot, Andy McCall
Farm; Shimwell, Garrett: McKnight, Hayward, Kelly, Mathews, McIintosh, Mortensen, W J Slater, Wardle.
From the second he fell to earth on his left shoulder after a mid-air collision in the game at Charlton last weekend, it was always 100 to 1 against Harry Johnston being fit for the key mission of the match - shadowing of elusive, tireless, sharpshooting Peter Doherty
***
IT MAY BE DANGEROUS TO LET DONCASTER
SET THE PACE
IT'S CUP DAY TOMORROW.
Strictly, if there is a big gulf between First and Second Division football - and there is a big wide chasm - a Third Division team visiting a First Division team that has not lost a home match for nearly five months should have a little less chance than the famous snowball in Hades.
Doncaster Rovers, in fact, should be out of this game before ever it begins.
That is the theory.
But because, in the Cup, theory and practice are so often unrelated, because in every round an unsuspected Jack the Giant Killer, whose name in this case might be Peter, arises and lays a giant low, there will be all the tumult and ferment about the game common to every Cuptie everywhere.
Blackpool should win - and win by a goal or two. But it would, I think, be a little indiscreet this time to permit the Rovers to set the pace for the first half-hour.
For the Rovers, on all the evidence, are not a Southend or Colchester or a Chester.
No forecast
THE men from Yorkshire will not come to town until today, are not expected at their headquarters at the Clifton Hotel until five o’clock. After dinner they go to the Tower Circus boxing show.
Mr. Joe Smith, the Blackpool manager, who watched the Doncaster team defeat their Rotherham neighbours last weekend, is not committing himself to any dogmatic opinions about the Rovers.
Nor do I blame him.
Football is such an up-and- down game and form is so variable that the man who thinks he can assess the worth of a team after seeing it once - or even the worth of one player in it - merely condemns himself as one who knows little about the game.
And nobody could accuse Mr. Smith of that. He contents himself with the comment he made as soon as he learned the draw “If a First Division team on its own ground can’t beat a Third Division team, it deserves to b£ out of the Cup.”
Which is both logic and good sense.
His last game ?
FOOTBALL has its unrecorded x tragedies no less than any other game.
I hear today that a young inside forward who lives in Cleveleys and who was promising to make a big name for himself in League football may never play again.
Jack Cutting, who was signed by Accrington Stanley from Fleetwood at the beginning of last season, has asked the Third Division club to cancel his contract, and reluctantly the Stanley have taken his name off the list. It may never again go on a club’s roll.
Jack Cutting was one of the men who ensured a year ago that the Stanley should not have to apply for re-election to the Third Division when in one sequence in the latter half of last season he scored four goals in six games and immediately attracted the attention of a few of the big battalions.
In the summer he was taken ill with tonsillitis, spent several weeks in hospital, went last week to a doctor after a long convalescence, and was told that he would be unwise to play again.
Now they bounce
THEY have begun to bounce now in the Tower Circus wrestling ring.
Latest innovation is a ring floor composed entirely of rubber. That it is the type of rubber employed for operating theatres is in this case entirely coincidental.
It should, at least, add to the gaiety which the characters introduce into our present-day austerities, and as it is now conceivable that one of these evenings Mr. Pye or one of his contemporaries may hit the floor and off it rise high over the ropes into the pit stalls, which even Mr. Pye has not yet contrived to do, the public for this pastime in these parts will probably be increased.
That there still is a big public for wrestling the attendances at the Circus establish. And it is curious, too - or is it? - that for fast authentic wrestling there is sufficient applause to indicate that this public, fond as it may be of the frolics of the comedians, knows good wrestling when it sees it.
Still winning
FOOTNOTE - They must have been wrong - all those people who said that Jackie Ryan was finished.
I reported earlier in the week that this game little boxer had won his first two fights up in Scotland. Now he has won a third.
“I came up here to make good - and it looks as if I’m doing it,” he writes from over the Border. Good luck, Jackie!
Doncaster’s biggest following
Doncaster rovers will have their biggest away support in their history when they take the field at Bloomfield-road tomorrow, writes a Doncaster football correspondent.
Provisional arrangements have been made for five special trains carrying nearly 3,000.
Scores have booked by bus, and there will be at least three plane parties, each with about a score of passengers, some of whom plan to spend Saturday night at Stanley Matthews* hotel.
The Rovers players are travelling to Blackpool today.
PEAK ENTHUSIASM
It is many years since football enthusiasm touched such a peak in Doncaster. Most of the supporters are railway employees living in the town or colliery workers from the populous surrounding district.
The Supporters’ Club has about 2,500 members, and there has been keen disappointment among many of these at being unable to buy an admission ticket before travelling.
The Rovers have not done any special training for the Cuptie, but there have been talks from the captain and manager, Peter Doherty, who needs no introduction to Blackpool fans.
DOHERTY PLAYING
Doherty was injured in last Saturday’s needle game with Rotherham, and until yesterday there was doubt whether he would be in the side for Saturday.
Even now the team has not been definitely selected, but have good reason to believe that Doherty will be playing.
There is a doubt who will be at outside-left. Calverley has been playing there all this season, but he has been down with cold, and it is possible that one of the young reserves may come in here.
It is unlikely that there will be changes in the defence, but there is support locally for the return to the half-back line of Lowes, who revels in attack.
SONG FOR TOMORROW
HUNTING among his souvenirs, Mr. J. F. Wright, of Peter-street, Blackpool, unearthed today a copy of a parody of ‘Tipperary” which he wrote years ago for one of the Blackpool teams of the ’20’s.
“What about it,” he asks, "as a theme song for tomorrow?”
Here is the chorus set to the “Tipperary” melody.
“It’s a long, long way to Wembley,
It's a long way to go;
It's a long way to Wembley
All our supporters know. Good-bye, Bloomfield- road,
Farewell, Talbot-square! With a bit of luck in the English Cup We'll be right there ! ”
It’s still a long way to the Stadium, but you can still sing it.
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