11 February 1950 Wolverhampton Wanderers 0 Blackpool 0
Goal-hungry, punch-packing Wolves held to goalless draw
PACE AND THRILLS
Wolverhampton Wanderers 0, Blackpool 0
By “Clifford Greenwood”
THIS WAS A CUPTIE WITH A CAPITAL “C” THE NEAREST APPROACH TO WEMBLEY FOR BLACKPOOL SINCE AN APRIL AFTERNOON AT THE STADIUM IN 1948.
Queues were waiting outside the gates at eight o’clock this morning, and were, I was told, half a mile in length at a few of the entrances when they were opened at noon.
Inside, 45 minutes before zero hour, there was the old familiar babel of bells, rattles and horns which went on and on above the braying of the loudspeakers playing their foxtrots, marches and polkas.
Hundreds of Blackpool people gave a great reception to the Blackpool side when the team’s coach came to a halt in the thick of a mob outside the players’ entrance.
Queues were still at all the gates and the Press box was informed before 2-30 “We shall definitely have to put up the shutters.”
If the attendance was to be limited by police orders to 56.000 that has always been inevitable.
After a few showers in the early morning the sun shone in ]?ale gleams every few minutes through the black rainclouds thick in the sky in the early afternoon.
NINE FINALISTS
The Wanderers, who half an hour before the kick-off won the toss for colours, were able to field nine of the men who won the Cup at Wembley last season. New to the cast were Roy Swinbourne, the inside-left, who played against Blackpool on this ground six weeks ago, and the full-back, Angus McLean, the Irishman with a name from the Highlands.
Blackpool had Jackie Wright on the big “Operation Hancocks,” and not at all disturbed by it, as he told me before the match.
George McKnight made his first appearance as a forward in the First Division team since his solitary appearance in the early days of the season.
PACKED TERRACES
With 15 minutes to go, there was not a trace of movement on the peaks of the terraces.
Everywhere tangerine was splashed in a violent colour clash with the Wanderers’ old gold. It was, in brief, such a scene as only Cupties can present.
Teams:
WOLVERHAMPTON WANDERERS: Williams; McLean, Pritchard, Crook, Shorthouse, Wright, Hancocks, Smyth, Pye, Swinbourne, Mullen.
BLACKPOOL: Farm; Shimwell, Wright, Johnston, Hayward, Kelly, Matthews, McKnight, Mortensen, McIntosh, Wardle.
Referee: Mr. W. Ling (Stapleford, Cambridgeshire).
THE GAME
The teams were out on time to a tempest of cheers and in front of a battery of cameramen and a newsreel squad, Blackpool in white jerseys and new stockings with tangerine tops.
The turf was soft, the studs scarring it immediately. Harry Johnston won the toss and the aid of the wind.
The Wanderers defended the goal in front of the Kop.
Both Blackpool full-backs made clearances, but neither of sufficient length, in the first halfminute.
Then, in the next 30 seconds with the Wanderers off on a full head of steam, Hancocks crossed a centre at full tilt as he raced to the line and Farm held it superbly in a big leap above the Wolves’ pack.
It was nearly all the Wanderers in the opening minutes, Blackpool crossing the halfway line only once in the first three.
Then, direct from Wright’s clearance, Mortensen stabbed back a pass to War die, took the wing forward’s long downfield pass, and crossed a ball which Billy Wright headed out in a flying leap.
AMAZING PACE
All the old aggression was back in Mortensen’s football early in the afternoon.
Twice he chased passes and lost them in a swarm of men in front of the Wanderers’ goal before Matthews took a pass from him, veered into the centre with it, and lobbed it forward for Williams to snatch it up before a Blackpool forward could reach it.
A minute later, too, in football of amazing speed, McIntosh shot barely wide of a post at a pace which tore gaps in the massed thousands behind the goal.
In the next minute, the sixth of the half, the Wanderers were near to the lead.
Hancocks took the ball away from Wright as the young fullback slid into a desperate tackle in front of him, put his partner in possession.
WOLVES DEFENCE IN PANIC
This left Swinbourne to rake Blackpool’s goal with a high ball, Smyth and Shimwell leaped to it as one man, collided in midair and crumpled to the grass as the ball flew from the Irishman’s head and was parried on the line by Farm in a desperate dive to his right.
Yet with two crisp passes Blackpool built a raid of comparable proportions a minute later.
Wright, refusing to make a clearance into far distances, put Mortensen in a position to release a pass to McIntosh on to which the inside-left raced at a great pace before shooting a ball which Williams clutched to his chest as he rocked backwards under the impact.
The Wanderers’ defence was not too sound under fast shock raids.
Once two men were in such a panic that they raced to the ball together and in the end sliced a clearance far out on to a wing.
With 10 minutes gone in a game which had fire and fury in every second of it, the early Wanderers storm was subsiding and everywhere one noticed Blackpool’s forwards moving fast and intelligently into every open space which offered itself - and with the Wolverhampton defence still not too closely ordered, there were plenty of them.
DISALLOWED GOAL
In the 13th minute - an ominous figure for Blackpool? - came a sensation.
Stanley Matthews moved to a pass, faced a bodyguard of four men, eluded two of them, and over the heads of the other two lobbed a pass inside forwards dream about.
McKnight was on to it, lashed at the bouncing ball, half hit it. and sliced it to his left. There Mortensen, in the next split second rocketed the ball high into the roof of the net
Abruptly Mr. Ling terminated the celebrations, indicated with two peremptory signals that McKnight had been onside but that Mortensen had been offside.
That released a furious retaliation by the Wanderers. Before it was launched I had the impression that Blackpool were entitled to demand a penalty as McIntosh went catapulting to earth a yard inside the area.
And afterwards it was the Wanderers - all the Wanderers - for five tempestuous minutes. As the assault opened Wright made a back pass to which Farm had to hurl himself full length before beating out in rapid succession centres from both wings and a corner from the left.
But another corner followed, and before it was cleared there was such chaos in front of Blackpool’s goal, such a raging mass of players, that in the end, with Farm out of his goal sprawling on the turf, Swinbourne shot back a ball which appeared to be crossing the empty line as it hit one man, cannoned on to another, and skidded out off a third for the Wolves’ fourth corner of the half.
The Blackpool front line was still fast and crisp in its fewer raids, but after that disallowed goal in the sinister 13th minute it had been nearly 75 per cent, the Wanderers, with Hayward as resolute as ever in Blackpool’s defence and Farm holding centres from both wings high over his head and once down at knee level.
FARM MAGNIFICENT
I gave the Wanderers 25 of the first 40 minutes, 25 minutes which had revealed the Wolves as packing a punch which few teams in these times even pretend to possess.
George Farm was magnificent again in Blackpool’s goal. Never a semblance of an error had he made as the half approached its end.
Three minutes only of this half were left when in a breakaway Blackpool almost snatched the lead. And of all men it was Stanley Matthews, who nearly snatched it.
The England forward took the ball from Billy Wright with the sort of uncompromising tackle which one seldom sees him make, brushed past his fullback, and as he cut inside shot a ball which almost grazed the whitewash off the bar.
WILLIAMS SAVES
In the next minute, too, the Wanderers’ England goalkeeper was in action, holding perfectly a ball which McIntosh released from speculative range when everybody was expecting a pass?
The Wanderers’ football had the fire and the fury, and it had nearly stormed them into the lead by half-time. Blackpool in spurts and flashes had revealed the class.
That was the story of the first half, a half which in its pace I have not seen equalled since Blackpool’s Wembley march two years ago.
Half-time: Wolverhampton 0 Blackpool 0.
SECOND HALF
A fanfare of rattles greeted Farm as he took his position in the Kop goal for the second half. He deserved the recognition, and was immediately in action again in the half’s opening seconds as he snatched up a forward pass, with half the Wolverhampton pack racing on him.
Another half-minute, and Pye, from a position yards offside. and a perceptible interval after the whistle had gone, shot past him to release a thunder of cheers for a goal which no referee on earth could have allowed.
Another minute, and Blackpool were nearer to a goal which would have counted.
Wardle was the architect of the raid, zigzagged away from his full-back, glided forward a ball which McIntosh took and shot fast across the face of the Wanderers’ goal.
Williams actually misfielded the ball, lost it, and in the end watched one of his full-backs clear it, with Mortensen beaten by the ball’s bounce?
CRISP PASSING
Blackpool menace the Wolves goal
That was illustrative of the sort of match it had been and continued to be - the Wanderers hammering away for minutes and Blackpool making progress with a few crisp passes and every time menacing the Wanderers’ goal.
After Swinbourne had thundered a shot a long way wide in another of those fast, direct Wolverhampton raids, Matthews, who was shooting today, and on the target, too, had Williams holding a ball hit high at him.
A minute later, too, the Wanderers’ goalkeeper clutched at and reached in a big leap another shot by McKnight.
For a time afterwards it was almost one-way traffic on the Wanderers’ goal, with the Wolverhampton forwards scarcely in the game and Blackpool winning a couple of comers.
From the second of those comers, too, Blackpool were near the lead, as Wardle, waiting in an unexpected position close to the near post, headed inside a ball which Williams beat out as he fell to his left.
BLACKPOOL PRESS
The pressure continued, and within two minutes, between the 15th and 17th of the half, Blackpool might have gone into a winning lead.
In the first raid the ball was beaten out twice before Johnston darted to it, and shot it low.
A Wanderers half - back hurled himself into its path and deflected it wide of the falling Willams, who, lurching forward as he sprawled on his line, reached the spinning ball and held it a foot inside the post.
Two minutes later one of the big chances of the match was lost.
Again Wardle beat his fullback, reached the line and crossed a perfect centre.
Matthews ran in to it, lobbed it back again into the jaws of a gaping goal, where the ball seemed to skid away from Mortensen, who missed it with Williams alone at his mercy.
FULL-SCALE ASSAULT
It continued to be a full-scale Blackpool assault - a duplicate of the greater part of the first half, with Blackpool this time setting the pace and playing football with a punch in it.
McKnight hammered one shot from his partner’s pass into a mass of men shielding Williams, and in another attack, with McIntosh leading the Blackpool forwards and Mortensen at inside-left, this Wolverhampton defence reeled twice under advances which had outpaced and passed a line of tiring halfbacks.
With 20 minutes of the half gone Blackpool were not only level, but threatening to go in front, even if in one Wolves raid a shot hit Wright, cannoned off him, and fell into the waiting arms of the vigilant Farm. There were signs at this time that another of those blood and thunder five-men-in-a-line assaults by the Wanderers was imminent.
Matthews was hurt and went over the line for treatment with 22 minutes left, and for once afterwards there was a brief calm in the raging storm.
But not for long.
PENALTY CLAIM
McIntosh falls under desperate tackle
With the right wing forward back again after being off only a couple of minutes, McIntosh took a pass, swerved one man, reached the penalty area, and fell writhing in pain under a do-or-die tackle, with every Blackpool man demanding a penalty in vain.
Two minutes later it was the Blackpool goal that had an escape.
This time, and for almost the first time in the match, Mullen outwitted Shimwell out on the Wanderers’ left wing, took the ball to the line, and crossed it high.
Up to it Farm and Wright leaned as one man.
From the Press box it seemed that the goalkeeper beat the flying ball against the face of a bar.
Down in any case it came to the feet of Pye who stabbed it back yards wide of Hancocks, with the little wing forward standing unmarked and calling for a pass in a position where the goal, was gaping in front of him.
That was the preface to two ugly incidents.
As the ball came loose Mortensen raced downfield 20 yards to clear it. fell under a tackle so furious that the man who made it was immediately threatened by a Blackpool man with lifted fists.
Both captains had to dart into the fray to restore peace.
A minute later, with the ground in a tumult of protest, McLean, the Wanderers right full-back, crossed Wardle’s path and felled him to earth with a tackle so desperate that as the Blackpool trainer appeared to attend to the winger the referee called the full-back to him and entered his name in the little black book.
That left Blackpool, when at last Wardle was fit again, with a forward line which had Matthews hobbling at half speed on one wing, the other wing forward moving slowly on the other, and Mortensen still limping laboriously.
STORMING FINISH
Both goals have close calls
Nine minutes were left, and the Wanderers won a corner and were repulsed.
For the next three it was all the Wanderers against a Blackpool whose forward line was limping and hobbling after the ball but unable to reach it.
Five minutes left and Blackpool nearly won.
Again Wardle, a great wing forward today, outwitted his fullback and crossed a high centre. Williams raced out to it and missed it.
For a split second that seemed to last a minute, the ball bounced in front of an open goal, inches away from McKnight, who could not reach it before a full-back hammered it out.
McIntosh shot it back inches wide of a post, with one Wolverhampton full-back lying hurt on the line and Williams also out and sprawling near him. him.
Another minute, and Mortensen raced fast to a loose ball and had it whipped off his toes by two men for the second corner the Wanderers had lost in a couple of minutes.
Two minutes left, and the Wanderers escaped on the left in a fast raid which ended in Mullen nearly grazing the far post with a fast shot across the face of an almost open Blackpool goal.
Blackpool were still raiding when the final whistle went on one of the most dramatic Cupties, in spite of the 0=0 score, I have ever seen.
Result:
WOLVERHAMPTON WANDERERS 0
BLACKPOOL 0,
COMMENTS ON THE GAME
SO it has all to begin all over again on Wednesday afternoon.
Blackpool were entitled to a replay and, in fact, nearly won this match in the second half and probably would have won it at full strength.
The Wanderers nearly stormed the game out of Blackpool’s grip with one of those old familiar rip-roaring Molineux acts in the first half-hour. Afterwards Blackpool’s crisper, faster football commanded the game at times almost without interruption throughout the second half.
Blackpool’s defence was magnificent. playing in nearly every position according to its reputation under first-half pressure.
Farm was a goalkeeper for whom I can find no new adjectives to praise him, and Hayward not only closed the centre of the field completely to the England Jesse Pye, but crossed often to the left flank to protect a young recruit.
Wright, however, had sufficient composure and sufficient pace - his greatest quality - once he had settled down, not often to require protection.
BLOTTED OUT
Shimwell had a game of great Cup-fighting full-back, and blotted out one of Blackpool’s bogey men, Jimmy Mullen.
Blackpool’s forwards employed the open space perfectly whenever the Wanderers’ defence was on the retreat, and in the second half moved as a line to an admirable plan - a plan which two wing half-backs created.
The left wing of McIntosh and Wardle was a partnership which should be fielded again.
The wing forward had the best game I have ever seen him play for Blackpool, and the Scot at inside-left hammered and battered at the Wolverhampton defence with almost a Crusader zeal until one wondered when he would drop in his tracks.
Mortensen’s early aggression waned inevitably under the punishment he took, but the right wing was often in the game too, and, in fact, the entire line had a second half which entitled it to a second match and could so easily have won this one.
Now you can begin queueing for replay tickets tomorrow. If the match at Blackpool is half as good as this one it will be worth watching.
Strangers at the Cottage
HONOURS LIST IS GROWING
And George Farm may be next
BY "CLIFFORD GREENWOOD" 11 February 1950
AFTER Eric Hayward's deserved, if belated, recognition by the Football League this week, who is next in the lengthening Blackpool queue for representative football ?
There are six men on the staff who have played or are still playing for England. There is a seventh, Hugh Kelly, who has been nominated as a Scottish reserve.
No. 8 may be, from all I hear, George Farm, the goalkeeper from Hibernians, who at Wolverhampton this afternoon played in his 67th successive League game and Cuptie for Blackpool, who, in fact, has never been out of the team since he had his baptism in English football at Bolton on September 18, 1948.
As the goalkeeper who has bad fewer goals past him than $ny other goalkeeper in the first two divisions of the League, this man from Hibernians, who cost Blackpool a £2,700 fee, which is as a bargain basement price for such a purchase, his name must already have entered into the Scottish selectors' counsels.
Farm’s time may not come yet, but it must be approaching.
Day after day
ALL of which is good to report for when George Farm came to Blackpool, after being one of no fewer than four reserves for the first team position on the Hibernians staff, he had his limitations and had so little conceit of himself - as he Still has - that he frankly admitted them and applied himself day after day to their correction.
There was a time early in his days in Blackpool when he #vas out on the field afternoon after afternoon if only he could persuade one of the others to put On a pair of boots after hours and shoot at him.
During those voluntary sessions - a self-imposed hard labour - he learned a lot, and he is still learning and still coming nearer and nearer to the perfection which alone will content him.
What a change!
SUCH a serious approach to his profession warrants a rich reward, and I think that soon it may be won by a goalkeeper as modest as ever in spite of the unsolicited fame he is winning these days wherever he plays.
It is a remarkable development in Blackpool football - almost a revolution in the career of a club which was once among the game’s ignored Cinderellas - that the time should come when there would be on the staff seven men - and now a possible eighth - who have achieved international status while in the club’s service
It must be, I suppose, that Manager Joe Smith and his directors are blessed with a greater wisdom than a few of their critics will even now allow.
Then there’s Mudie
THERE is an up-and-coming forward among the up-and- coming recruits in the Central League team who is entitled to mention this week, too.
Nobody is saying that he is qualified for the representative game or even for the First Division yet. It may be that Jackie Mudie will always be too small - even, anticipating the inevitable comment, if Hughie Gallacher wasn’t - to make an immortal name in the game.
Yet, small as he may be, he is still scoring goals, and this at a time when the forwards in the first team are scoring too few of them.
Mudie’s four at Villa Park last week-end made his total 14 in the Central League this season, and it was not until mid-October that he had his first game with the championship-hunting Reserve.
Best average
HE has. as my records reveal, scored his 14 goals in 17 games, which is an average not approached by any other first or second team forward at Blackpool.
I always prefer the big ’uns to the little ’uns as football is played these days when the ball is less often on the grass than in the high firmament. But here's a little ’un who obviously may go a long, long way.
Puts his club first
A PAT on the back for George McKnight, Blackpool’s Irishman,
During the last couple of months his career has entered on a new phase. From a centre - forward who now and again was bar racked he has bees o m e a wing - half of such class that everybody has been praising him, and when he went into the Doncaster Rovers Cuptie he had a triumph.
Yet a week later, back in the second team, he volunteered to play in a forward line, where he has more or less decided that he has no particular inclination ever to play again.
This was because his manager. Mr. Joe Smith, found himself unexpectedly with too many half-backs and too few forwards for the Central League game at Villa Park.
When a man puts a club before himself he’s a good club man.
George was a forward again today = in the Cuptie with Wolves.
Fastest on staff
CURIOSITY of the Wolverhampton team Blackpool have met in the Cup this afternoon is that England goalkeeper, Bert Williams, is the fastest man on the Molineux ground staff.
It’s a fact.
The one man who has not to run about can run about faster than any other player who wears the Wanderers' old gold. As a goalkeeper, a s distinct from a potential Powderhall champion,
Williams had the best tutor in the world.
Harry Hibbs, who at Walsall, before the Wolves signed him, told him all he knew about goalkeeping, which was nearly all there is to know.
AND ALL IN TWO YEARS
STRANGE to think that when Blackpool go to Fulham next weekend the team will scarcely be recognisable as the eleven that won there in the Cup quarter-finals less than two years ago, writes Clifford Greenwood.
In the 1948 Cuptie Joe Robinson was in goal - and now he is playing for Hull City's second team.
Ronnie Suart was at left-back - and now he’s a Blackburn Rover and not in the Ewood Park club’s first team, either.
The half-back line remains, but three of the five forwards - Jim McIntosh (Everton), George Dick (Carlisle United) and Walter Rickett (Sheffield Wednesday) have since gone to those famous fields and pastures new.
Moral appears to be that there’s no security of tenure in a professional footballer’s life.
***
BILL ORMOND, the wing forward who left Blackpool for Oldham Athletic a few weeks ago, scored his first goal for the Athletic in the Third Division in the match with Darlington last weekend.
Watched i n Army football by Mr. Sam Jones and on his report signed for Blackpool!
Ormond never! fulfilled his! early promise.
Yet he was always content?! at Bloomfield-road, and it can now be disclosed that when another club made Blackpool an approach for his signature last season with a promise of first- team football he said he would prefer to remain beside the seaside.
“I’m happy enough here,” he said. Which was a nice compliment to the club which in his own interests he had to leave in the end.
***
NOTE for the superstitious: Today’s was Blackpool’s 13th Cup-tie since the war.
***
THEY were saying during the recent Cup-tie at Blackpool that Peter Doherty at 35 or 36 was the oldest player on the field.
But was he?
What about Jack Hodgson, the Doncaster full-back, who played Stanley Matthews about as competently as he has been played this season.
Hodgson had his first game for Grimsby - and as a centre - J. Hodgson half - in the 1932-33 season, which is 17 years ago, and as he was no immature recruit then he could be nearer 40 than 30
But he still remains a good fullback, as that grand sportsman, Stanley Matthews, was the first to acknowledge after the game.
***
Eye of the expert
IT takes a good goalkeeper to recognise how good - or bad - another goalkeeper may be.
Frank Swift, one of the greatest goalkeepers ever to wear a jersey for England was in the press box at Blackpool last week.
He said nothing about the man who has succeeded him in the City’s goal, but his approval of the game played by the blonde German, Burt Trautmann, was eloquent even in the judicial silence he has now to preserve as one of the best critics ever to come out of the professional playing school.
This German is good, too. The City found him playing for St. Helens, and learned that before he became a paratrooper and later a prisoner of war he had been making his name in prewar football in Bremen.
***
I HEAR that over in Ireland they have soon come to the conclusion that Mr. James Houston, of St. Annes, is one of England’s best referees. We could have told them that in these parts some time ago.
Mr. Houston had an early- season appointment for one of Ireland’s star fixtures, and gave such complete satisfaction - and not only to one team but to both teams - that ever since he has been in demand on the other side of the Irish Sea. In recent times he has had two big games there - and they want him for others.
***
Stanley Duck was there
STANLEY the duck, football’s craziest mascot, broke the blockade at Wolverhampton this afternoon.
Fifteen minutes before the kick-off in the Cuptie at the Molineux Ground, in spite of the Wanderers’ ban, 6ft. Syd Bevers, the chief of the “Atom Boys,” climbed a paddock wall and raced to the centre circle, clad in a brown track suit, a tangerine scarf flying from his neck and the duck tucked underneath his arm.
Police swooped on him from every corner, but the ritual was observed of leaving the duck in the centre circle.
Once there, too, Syd Bevers tore off his scarf, waved it high in the air, and Incited the hundreds of Blackpool people packed on the Spion Kop behind one goal to a remarkable demonstration, with rattles clattering and the tangerine ribbons on them fluttering in a madcap dance.
A dozen Press photographers entered the revels, crouching in front of the waddling duck as it took sanctuary over one of the lines and was ultimately restored to the “Atoms,” congregated in one of the paddocks.
***
THE MORTENSEN STORY — No. 12
MA TTHEWS - SUPREME SPORTSMAN
THE MAN AND THE PLAYER
Even his ties are quiet
By Stanley Mortensen
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