28 January 1950 Blackpool 2 Doncaster Rovers 1
Great Doncaster bid for replay only just fails
STORMING FINISH
Blackpool 2, Doncaster Rovers 1
By “Clifford Greenwood”
IN spite of 8-0 a.m. queues outside the Blackpool ground for the Doncaster Rovers Cuptie, the gates were still open and people drifting through them in twos and threes an hour before the kick-off this afternoon.
Packing by remote control from a microphone near the half-way line was introduced, and early in the afternoon appeared to be serving its purpose, for there were no signs of the customary congestion in the corners, and on the Kop - a soaring mountain of humanity before two o’clock - scarcely a trace of movement.
It was the familiar pre-cuptie scene. Rival mascots paraded the cinder track and now and again invaded the field, the Rovers’ half-dozen, with a red and white flag, outnumbered by the "Atomic Boys” in masks and costumes which recalled the between-the-wars carnivals.
This time there was community singing, too, with “ Ilkla Moor ” introduced as the Rovers’ theme song, and the planting of Stanley the duck on the centre circle, territory from which he soon fled in a tumult raging .of rattles, bells and hunting horns.
- AND A MONKEY
Today he trailed a toy tangerine and white cart - an accomplished duck, this Stanley - and was pursued to the field’s edge by a monkey in the Rovers’ red and white colours, a little interlude which I suspect was not in the rehearsed programme.
I saw Peter Doherty before the match. “Yes, I’m playing,” he said, confirming my opinion that he always intended to play, even if there were a few in the Doncaster camp who considered that he was not 100 per cent fit.
Nothing on earth would have persuaded Peter today to miss this match.
The Rovers fielded their regular half-back line in the end, and George McKnight made his first appearance as a wing half for Blackpool in this class of football.
Three tons of Cumberland ground peat on the frozen pitch had left only a bare brown trace, but it had definitely given some sort of grip for the studs on turf which before had resembled a skating rink.
A bitterly cold wind blew on to the Kop, but it was not as cold as it had been, and the sun was shining when the following teams appeared to a tumultuous reception:
BLACKPOOL: Farm; Shimwell, Garrett; McKnight, Hayward, Kelly; Matthews, McIntosh, Mortensen, W. Slater, Wardle.
DONCASTER ROVERS: Hardwick; Hainsworth, Hodgson; Goodfellow, Bycroft, Miller; Tindill, Doherty, Harrison, Todd, Calverley.
Referee: Mr. J. H. Parker (Macclesfield).
THE GAME
First Half
There were no reports of the gates being dosed, but the attendance bordered on a 32,000 capacity and was probably the biggest at a Cuptie in Blackpool since the war.
Eric Hayward captained Blackpool and won the toss.
The Rovers, in unfamiliar white with red collars because of a colour clash, defended the north goal, with Peter Doherty unexpectedly at inside-right and big Paul Todd at inside-left. What this exactly portended one was not prepared to say.
It stood out a mile in the opening passages that in spite of the peat it was still a surface off which both ball and man were often going to skid.
The Rovers were menacing once or twice in these opening skirmishes, once when the ball escaped Hayward and Harrison, racing on to it, had to be halted by Shimwell far out near the corner flag.
PENALTY CLAIM
The first pass with a purpose in it from a half-back was released by McKnight. It split the Rovers defence, but was too fast for the chasing McIntosh.
Afterwards the raid continued on this wing against a Doncaster defence unable to clear a ball which either shot low at them or bounced high up at a variety of angles.
There was a clamour for a penalty -utterly unwarranted as I saw it - as this ball rose and hit Bycroft, and before the raid ended Mortensen moved to a loose ball and shot it so fast that Hardwick had to fall full length to his left to reach it near a post.
Afterwards, however, the Rovers made the pace everywhere for a time and made, too, a succession of raids all built on fast crisp passes.
FARM’S SAVES
Farm held the ball superbly as Tindill crossed it from an unmarked position on the line, and then fell bravely at Doherty’s feet as the Irishman raced in fast to a fast low cross from the Other wing.
Constantly in the succeeding minutes the game moved at a raging pace on the Blackpool goal, which might have been near downfall in the tenth minute if a forward had been in position to accept a pass stabbed back into an open space by Doherty.
Football which the Rovers were playing as the end of the first quarter hour approached. Peter Doherty was in every raid, wandering from one flank to the other directing the plan of action with continual signals There were no signs yet of a walkover for Blackpool. But who had ever expected that there would be one, anyway?
ROVERS PRESS
Matthews races hack to defence
Such, in fact, was Doncaster’s pressure at this time that even Stanley Matthews went racing back to his defence’s aid and in the end stabbed back a pass to which Farm had to dive full length to reach as it bounced away from him.
Immediately, too, Harrison shot wide after he had stormed a shooting position for himself, and inside another minute only a great but desperate tackle by Shimwell halted the Rovers' left wing.
In the first 15 minutes it had been almost a repetition of the Southend tie of three weeks ago.
Both defences were so unsettled, deceived as often by the ball as by the men racing on them with it, that it was a wonder that there was still not a goal on the score sheet with the 20th minute near.
Fast as terriers on a bone were these Doncaster forwards 'and half-backs on the ball.
Not that Blackpool were completely out of the game as an attacking force.
SKIDDING PASSES Mortensen won a corner by himself off a full-back who never suspected his presence until the Blackpool leader was on top of him.
Constantly, too, Bill Slater and McKnight were making passes which had a good intention in them but which skidded away from the men for whom they were intended.
Still the Doncaster raids continued, upsetting completely all calculations of what was going to happen in this match between First and Third Division teams.
Kelly had to dart fast across the path of Doherty to clear at the cost of a corner as the Rovers' captain was full-tilt after a ball inside the shooting zone.
A couple of minutes later in a full-line advance Calverley chose to shoot across the face of Blackpool’s goal, with three forwards waiting for a pass inside with Farm almost at their mercy.
SLATER SHOOTS
It continued to be nearly all the Rovers, too, Blackpool’s advances being confined to pursuits by Mortensen of McKnight’s long, low forward passes until in one full-strength raid Slater took a squared pass and shot a ball which Hardwick fielded with complete confidence.
Yet after all that and after Doncaster had been almost in command of the game for 20 of the first 30 minutes, Blackpool went in front exactly on the first half-hour.
It was a goal won, or to be exact stampeded, by one man’s refusal to be intimidated either by a defence massing on him or by a bare chance, however forlorn.
THE LEAD
McIntosh keeps on going, scores
Wardle and Matthews created the opening with an exchange of lobbed passes. In the end, a high ball soared down the centre.
WILLIE McINTOSH went after in. lost it, still pursued it, darted to it as it bounced off the man in front of him, and almost from the line hooked it slowly outside the reach of Hardwick.
Across and in front of this stationary goalkeeper the ball bounced, almost in slow motion, crossed the line, and came to rest gently against the side net.
That released at last the full fury of a Blackpool offensive, with the Rovers in complete retreat for the first time and not too compact as a series of hammering raids hit their defence.
While this pressure was raging the Rovers’ goal might have fallen again.
In fact, there was for a long time not a semblance of a Rovers’ raid until Doherty, a forlorn figure out on his own, had a little passage of arms with Farm, was rebuked by the referee, and had the south stand in a state of excitable indignation.
GARRETT'S TACKLE
Still, it all began to follow its earlier course for a time afterwards, with Harrison escaping once from a position which had a suspicion of offside about it before being halted in his tracks only by a superb tackle by Garrett.
Yet, with two minutes of the half left, it was nearly 2-0.
This was the best raid of the half, and all in two moves. George McKnight opened it, as he had opened so many other raids, with a perfect low pass down the centre.
Mortensen chased it, fast as a greyhound, outpaced Bycroft, and as he was passing the centre-half, shot a ball that hit the top of the bar and bounced high over,
Blackpool went to the dressing- room with McIntosh limping badly, one arm draped over Mortensen’s shoulder. The Rovers should never have been losing at half-time.
Half-time: Blackpool 1, Doncaster Rovers 0.
SECOND HALF
Willie McIntosh still had a limp, but not as pronounced, when the teams reappeared.
Blackpool, in the opening minutes, played football which the front line had seldom approached before the interval.
The ‘‘two M’s” were in the first raid which had a lot of class about it. Mortensen took a pass from Matthews, steered it out to the wing again and left his partner to cut inside and to shoot a ball which hit Hainsworth as the full-back galloped pellmell into its path.
Still it required a great tackle by Hayward out on one wing and another by Kelly on the other to put the brake on the Doncaster front line.
In another raid by the Rovers Tindill lashed the ball wide excitedly when a definite chance had been made for him.
Immediately, however, Matthews gave McIntosh a perfect position, and with a desperate tackle Bycroft brought the forward to his knees a yard outside the penalty area.
BIG LEAP
The free-kick by Matthews menaced the Rovers’ goal, and was cleared only in an acrobatic leap by Hardwick as the ball was flying away in front of him.
Within the next three minutes either goal might have fallen.
In the first move Doherty took a pass, swerved away from Kelly, hooked the ball over the wing half’s head, and shot a ball which Farm held superbly.
In the next minute Blackpool raided on the left, and Wardle, taking his partner's perfect pass in an open space, shot a ball which Hardwick punched out brilliantly as he fell full length almost on to the near post,
Another minute, and Harrison, chasng a Doherty pass, reached shotting range and shot - shot so fast that Farm seemed to be almost in mid-air as he reached and clutched the ball before tumbling head over heels.
GOAL No. 2
McKnight scores, leaps with joy
That was in the 13th minute of the half.
In the 15th minute Blackpool were 2-0 in front. It was a goal which completed for George McKnight a match which in its first hour had been a triumph for him.
Two centres had raked the Rovers’ goal and been repelled when a loose ball came to this attacking wing-half.
McKNIGHT moved a yard to it, shot it, and leaped high in the air in joy as the ball apparently deflected by the pack of men who jumped at it, sailed far away out of the reach of the unsighted and stationary Hardwick.
That was the second time in the match that a goalkeeper who had never committed one error all the afternoon had been fated to watch a ball pass him as he stood powerless watching it.
Within a minute Farm had made an amazing clearance as Tindill shot in a ball slow but bouncing all the time away from a goalkeeper, who reached it with a sideways leap which would have graced a star acrobat.
STILL FIGHTING
These Rovers were refusing even now, two goals in arrears, to call it a day, were still raiding often and revealing football of real quality.
Yet it was significant that even in fewer raids, and even with McIntosh limping out to the left wing, Blackpool repeatedly had the Rovers’ defence in a tangle nearly every time the two. forces clashed Slater, in one off these raids, headed down Matthews’ centre almost studiously past Hardwiek. who reached it only with another of those flying dives in which both goalkeepers were specialising.
The Rovers were all out for a goal whatever the cost. Winning one corner, they had eight men almost inside the penalty box.
All of which may have been almost suicidal and yet was correct; tactics for a team still losing 2-0 with the last 20 minutes ticking away.
PENALTY GOAL
Doherty shows the way to score
It was a policy which in the end paid. Nineteen minutes were left when there was another raid, one of a succession which had been following each other nonstop on the Blackpool goal.
Goodfellow, a wing half, was in a position where inside forwards play, and fell as two men pinned him between them.
Without hesitation and without a protest from Blackpool Mr. Parker gave a penalty, and DOHERTY, who seldom misses a penalty, converted this one with one of his famous slow-motion shots which glided the ball away from Farm's left hand inches inside the post.
That released a tumult among the Doncaster legions, and released, too, a positive fury of Doncaster attacks, with Blackpool’s defence reeling back in re-
McINTOSH SHOOTS
Immediately, too, McIntosh decided that he had been out of action on a wing too long, came limping back into the inside berth and within a minute nearly scored with a shot which Hardwick was content to punch out anywhere in a great leap.
That, however, was merely an interruption in the Rovers’ great assault for a goal to force a replay.
Doherty, who was still in this game every minute, must have been within inches of the equalising goal as in one raid he darted inside, mastered a bouncing ball and shot it barely wide of the far post from the centre-forward position.
A minute later, too. the Rovers forced a corner, and before it was taken there was the remarkable spectacle of a First Division team with nine of its men massed in the penalty area to repulse a Third Division team which had packed nearly all its armament into this confined space.
A minute from time, when a freekick was crossed into the jaws of Blackpool’s goal. Miller rose to it and headed down a ball which Farm reached before disappearing into a ruck of men and with the ground in a tumult
When everything sorted itself out the referee gave a free-kick, and that ended as gallant a bid as I have seen a Third Division team ever make on a First Division ground.
Result:
BLACKPOOL 2 (McIntosh 30, McKnight 60)
DONCASTER ROVERS 1 (Doherty pen 71)
COMMENTS ON THE GAME
IT was a magnificent show which a Third Division team presented at Blackpool this afternoon.
And it was not merely Peter Doherty and 10 other Doncaster Rovers who for long periods in this dramatic match outplayed First Division Blackpool, had about, two-thirds of the match and played football which was not harem scarem stuff but had class in it.
Captain Doherty, as I expected, had a game and a half against his old team. But these Rovers all down the front line and at wing half were fast and direct in every move.
The Blackpool defence had an unenviable task on such a surface against such an attack. That it reduced all the Rovers’ raiding to one penalty goal was its greatest achievement.
It had in it all the resolution which the day demanded, and it had, too, a goalkeeper, George Farm, whose game was again in a heroic mould, and another man, George McKnight, the best wing half on the field.
RIGHT WING STRENGTH
The front line had nearly all its strength on the right flank, where Stanley Matthews would always seem to be an artist in whatever company he played and where Willie McIntosh, hammered and battered, nearly ran himself into the ground.
The left wing was not comparably assertive, and Mortensen too often was left to pursue the sort of chances of which even he could make nothing.
Peter Doherty said before the match “It’s not always the favourites who win Cupties." The outsiders came near to winning this one.
FIRST all - Lancashire match of 1950 in Blackpool will be played next week.
A great match it could be, too. Which would be a bit of a change from the two other Manchester City games I have seen at Blackpool since the war.
Blackpool are out these days alter every point, with the First Division championship, for the first time in the club’s history, entering seriously into the present team’s calculations, long as the trail may yet be to the season’s end.
The City are after every point for another reason, for these days the Maine-road men are closer to the Second Division than a First Division team is fond of being.
Blackpool won 3=0 in Manchester in the first meeting of the clubs this season, and the City, who have yet to win a match away from home, will scarcely enter on this game in great confidence, playing on a ground where no visiting team has won a First Division match for nearly five months.
There could be an upset, but the odds are against it, even if the City have a good record at Blackpool, where they have played a couple of 1-1 draws since their 1946-47 promotion.
Interesting personality on view for the first time in these parts will be Frank Swift’s successor in the City goal, the ex-German POW Burt Trautmann.
And making his bow for the City, will be the Channel Islander Billy Spurdle, signed from Oldham Athletic last night at a five figure fee.
THE MORTENSEN STORY — No. 10
There was comedy as well as drama in wartime football
LOST - A GUEST PLAYER
By Stanley Mortensen
Jottings from all parts
BY "CLIFFORD GREENWOOD" 28 January 1950
THIS TALK OF THE DOUBLE
I OFTEN wonder these days what all those people are saying who went about Blackpool last summer prophesying the decline and fall of this Blackpool team that today is third in the table and closer to a First Division title than a Blackpool team has ever been.
It seems sueh a short time ago that Manager Joe Smith stood up in front of 200 or 300 sceptical shareholders at the annual meeting, and said, “Gentlemen, I’m sticking out my chin and telling you that in my opinion the team will have a good season.”
It’s early yet
EVERYBODY was too polite to say “Sez you!” but a lot of them were, I suspect, thinking it.
And now public opinion, as is the habit of public opinion, has swung to the other extreme of the pendulum.
Wherever I go I hear people saying “They could make a double of it - Cup and League.”
Somebody made this observation in the boardroom at Charlton after Blackpool’s defeat of the Athletic last weekend, and Mr. Harry Evans, the Blackpool chairman, a realist if ever there was one, heard him.
“A double event” said this man who has watched Blackpool teams down in the depths and up on the heights during the quarter-century he has served the club.
“To win one’s a man-size job,” he said. “To win them both is ----.” He shrugged his shoulders and implied, I think, that even to be talking about one or the other with three months of the season still left was a little premature.
A long way
AND, of course, it is.
Blackpool could go a long way this season, have gone a long way already. Never has such a defence been fielded by the club. It played 14 games without losing a goal. It has lost only seven in 20 of its last 22 games.
When a Blackpool defence can put such an achievement to its name - the defence of a club which had become almost notorious for its failure to produce an ironclad rearguard - I am prepared to concede that Blackpool could win the League, the Cup, and, if they entered for it, even the Boat Race!
And this proud record has been accomplished, too, without resorting to the defence-in-depth plan which has taken a lot of colour and glamour out of present-day football.
Attacking halves
IT has been accomplished with the presence in the half-back line of two attacking wingmen, Harry Johnston and Hugh Kelly, who, assertive as both may be in the tackle, are not content to play as extra full-backs, and never have been.
The forwards have had sufficient service of the ball from them to content any front line, and, in fact, if only the forwards had been scoring a few more goals from those passes, the League or the Cup, or even both, might today be more nearly within Blackpool’s compass.
Still, as comparative records reveal, Blackpool are 10 points in front of their total at the corresponding period of last season, and in those games the defence has conceded exactly half as many goals - 21 against 42 - as it lost a year ago.
Worth cheering
THAT is obviously something to cheer and something worth cheering. But I still think these are early days yet to be discussing championships or FA Cups and I think those in authority at Blackpool are inclined to agree.
You live from day to day in football and never stake too much on tomorrow.
***
THEY TOOK IT WELL
A WORD or two about the good sportsmen of Charlton, writes Clifford Greenwood.
Too often in football the directors and other backroom personalities of a professional club so resent a home defeat that they can scarcely be civil to the visitors who have defeated them.
There was the time a month or two ago - We'll mention no names, but the atmosphere in the boardroom after Blackpool had won was about as Arctic as the inside of a refrigerator.
Now at Charlton last week they accepted without a whisper of complaint a defeat which was scarcely deserved and in their case about as serious as a defeat could be. They were concerned only in congratulating the team that had won and making solicitous inquiries about the Blackpool captain who had been hurt.
Now if all clubs were like this . . . But, of course, the millennium hasn’t come yet, and now and again there are times in this game when I think there’s precious little sign of it.
***
THE Andy Curran Testimonial Fund, which was launched last week for the Blackpool centre-half of the mid-20’s, who recently returned to his Blackpool home after a serious illness in a Liverpool hospital, is still open.
Donations should be sent to the manager, Williams Deacon’s Bank, Talbot Square, Blackpool.
“Purpose of the fund,” says Coun. George Peeks, who is administering it, “is to show appreciation of one of Blackpool’s greatest-hearted players who has been shadowed by sickness and adversity in recent times.”
Those who knew Andy as a player and a younger generation who have only been told about him should be generous in their response. He deserves a big “Thank you.”
***
I WAS talking the other day to Mr. Cliff Broome, the St. Annes referee, who has recently had a holiday in East Anglia and while there met Bill Lewis and watched the full-back play in a game for Norwich City.
Mr. Broome says the man from Blackpool has rung the bell down Norwich way, where! they think the £9,500 fee which Norwich paid for him - a record for the City - was not in days of sky-high prices all that excessive.
It is a fact that since Bill Lewis went to the City only two games have been lost and few goals conceded, and impartial critics agree that the City’s defence has been immeasurably strengthened by the acquisition of the man from Blackpool.
I am glad to hear it.
***
I LIKED the text of the telegrams sent from London by the Blackpool team and its trainer and by chairman Harry Evans to Bill Slater before the amateur took the field in the first of his internationals at Bangor last weekend.
Wrote Harry Johnston, the team captain, on Telegram No. 1: “Play your normal game and you can’t go wrong.”
Wrote the chairman: “What you think you can do we know you can do well.”
That last line is a perfect commentary on football’s most modest star. W. J. Slater is still not persuaded that he is as good as nearly everybody else seems to think he is.
***
MET a man I had nearly forgotten in London. George Ayres the name. Remember him?
He was the forward who came from Sheffield Wednesday, after serving with Charlton, where now he has his abode, to fill the vacancy left in the Blackpool front line of the mid-20’s after the transfer of Matt Barrass.
They converted George into a centre-half at Blackpool, and a few great games he played there, notably in a match at Darlington when Blackpool were on the Third Division brink.
George talked about Syd Binks and Andy Curran and Georgia Mee and a few other of his contemporaries.
***
WELL PLAYED, GEORGE!
GEORGE FARM played his 64th successive game for Blackpool at Charlton a week ago - and what a game it was, writes “C.G.”
I can think of only one display by this Scot to compare with it - the Cuptie a t Barnsley last season.
The man from the Hibernians has not missed a match for Blackpool - First Division or Cup - since he came into the team at Bolton on September 18, 1948.
Sixty-four games in succession are already a postwar record for a Blackpool player.
Keep it up, George!
***
XV questions answered
WHAT’S all this nonsense I hear at times about the Rugby Union thinking professional footballers are outside the pale? It is nonsense now, whatever it may have been in the past.
The Blackpool team in London last weekend were in the hotel selected as headquarters for the Welsh RU XV that went to Twickenham and smote the English.
I found these men as interested in the Blackpool team - and in Stanley Matthews in particular - as a squad of young autograph hunters. They were, in fact, after autographs all the time and were constantly asking questions: How many hours a week did professional players train? What were they paid? What did they have for lunch before a match?
All sorts of questions they asked - and of Mr. Matthews one of the few professionals whose names were familiar to them, they spoke in the reverential tones of idolatry. Nothing condescending or superior about these young men.
***
Villa are fond of Blackpool
THE Villa may have lost the League match at Blackpool and the Cup replay with Middlesbrough after a few days in the famous dustless breezes.
But they still think at Villa Park that there is no seaside resort to equal Blackpool when a team is a bit jaded in midseason.
They returned after the defeat by Middlesbrough, were at the Clifton Hotel for the remainder of last week, went back to the Midlands, and must have been like giants refreshed considering what happened to Middlesbrough in the First Division match at the weekend.
Strange how certain towns attract certain clubs. In the long ago Barnsley were often at Lytham in days when they were the Cup’s greatest giant-killers, and at Lytham Burnley spent weeks while the Turf Moor men were creating their League record of undefeated games shortly after the 1914-18 war.
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