A GREAT AFTERNOON FOR THE SHADOW TEAM
Fast wings, stem defence beat United
HEROES ALL
Manchester United 1, Blackpool 2
By “Clifford Greenwood”
WHO SAYS IT ALWAYS RAINS IN MANCHESTER? It was pouring when I left Blackpool today, and half an hour before this top-of-the-table match opened the afternoon was fine, with only a bare threat of rain In the windswept winter sky.
All of which was good news for the tens of thousands who these days, on this ground which was laid waste by German bombs during the war, have to stand or sit out in the open whatever the weather.
It was pitiable to see Old Trafford again for the first time since the prewar years.
Two corner terraces and one opposite the only remaining stand are roofed, but except for the three or four thousands who can huddle under these shelters the rest are at the mercy of the famous Manchester climate.
There were 50,000 present 15 minutes before the teams appeared on a field bare of turf in one broad stretch from goal area to goal area, and before 3 o’clock the loudspeakers were announcing the closing of several gates.
Scattered among the red and white of the United were the tangerine and white of Blackpool.
FROM THE COAST
It was estimated that nearly 2,000 people, in spite of the morning rain on the coast, came to Manchester today for a meeting between the clubs whose Cup Final two years ago is still talked about as a Wembley classic.
The United, who had Jimmy (“Brittle Legs”) Delaney as leader of the forwards in the absence of Jack Rowley, fielded eight of the men who played in the 1948 match at the stadium.
Blackpool played another of those shadow teams that are becoming almost an institution these days when fresh casualties are being reported after nearly every match.
PERRY’S TASK
For the first time the club presented a South African in First Division football, playing on the left wing of one of the youngest attacks ever selected by Blackpool, 19-year-old Bill Perry, who came to this country from Johannesburg during the autumn.
His baptism of fire in bigtime football was to face the famous Jack Carey, who is still ranked, even in his middle 30’s, as one of the classic fullbacks of his generation.
Teams:
MANCHESTER UNITED: Crompton; Carey, Aston, Warner, Chilton. Cockburn, Bogan, Downie, Delaney, Pearson, Mitten.
BLACKPOOL: Farm; Shimwell, Wright, McKnight, Johnston, Kelly, Hobson, Mortensen, Mudie W. Slater, Perry.
Referee: Mr. F. Walton (Goole).
THE GAME
First half
The sun was actually shining When the teams appeared.
Blackpool again wore their new White jerseys with tangerine collars and cuffs. It was a crossfield wind, and the winning of the toss by the United threatened to make no great difference.
An official report to the Press box a minute before the kick-off announced that all the gates were closed, with 55,000 inside them.
This multitude watched an opening which was unexpectedly quiet, Wright and Johnston in succession making clearances a Manchester forward line not pressing them at all closely.
Yet in the 90th second the United won a comer after a nonstop heading match which ended in Delaney chasing the last pass out on to the left and winning a corner off Shimwell.
Nor had that comer been cleared before another was surrendered. This time Shimwell and Johnston lost a bouncing ball between them, and it was ultimately stabbed back towards Farm, who reached it at full length as he fell to his right and made a finger-tip clearance at the foot of a post.
SHIMWELL CLEARS
It was nearly all the United afterwards.
Shimwell raced across fast to thunder the ball away from Pearson as the inside-left was racing in to take a fast low pass - the sort of pass which was building all the United’s direct raids.
Yet, after this pressure had subsided, it was, Blackpool who nearly took the lead in the fifth minute.
Perry created position for Kelly to make fast progress with an elusive bouncing ball past two men before crossing it out to Hobson.
On to the ball the wing forward raced, and flighted over a centre, Crompton leaped to it and missed it, but by its pace the ball beat Mortensen and Mudie as they hurled themselves at it in front of an open goal.
After being hit at close range by a pass as fast as a clearance, Bill Slater played for a few minutes on the left wing.
WING RAID
Gap opens in United defence
This reshuffled flank was in Blackpool’s next raid of any consequence, and again it was a raid which revealed that there were gaps - and big gaps, too - in the United defence, Slater in the end taking from Mudie a perfect pass and slicing a centre on to the roof of the net.
This skeleton Blackpool team were not being outplayed to the degree I had expected. The plan and the purpose were in the Manchester front line, but when the Blackpool forwards employed the short or long forward pass they were finding open spaces everywhere in Manchester’s curiously laboured defence.
In front of the Blackpool goal Farm had to fall on both knees to hold Downie’s low pass as half a dozen men tumbled on or about him.
Yet always a goal seemed to threaten whenever Blackpool’s brisk forwards were on the ball. One should have come in the 15th minute as Mudie’s pace enabled him to pass Chilton to race on and to shoot a bouncing ball which cannoned out to Slater,
BIGGEST CHANCE
For a fraction of a second, with the ball bouncing in front of him. Slater hesitated, veered across to find another position, and in the end lost the biggest chance the half had yet offered.
Within a couple of minutes too, McKnight took a ball away into a wing position before crossing a centre which Crompton held brilliantly under the bar, with three of Blackpool’s lightweight forwards all about him like terriers on a big bone.
Except when Wright handled on the penalty area edge and Bogan shot the free-kick barely wide of the angle of post and bar the United’s forwards were for a time unexpectedly subdued.
BLACKPOOL AHEAD
And young Perry makes the goal
It was not even a minor sensation when this attack put Blackpool in front in the 20th minute, even if a chapter of accidents, or at least a couple of them in the Manchester defence, contributed to it.
The South African, Bill Perry, playing with remarkable assurance in his first big game, made the goal.
He raced after a pass. As the ball bounced high over Carey’s head he was past the Irish back before he could move, on to the ball again, and crossing it.
In the next half-second the ball bounced high again eluded Aston, and MORTENSEN raced round this other fullback to shoot past the deserted Crompton for his 21st goal of the season and his 101st in League and Cup for Blackpool since the war.
UNITED PRESSURE
There was a lot to admire afterwards in the resolution of the Blackpool defence. It had to be resolute. Raids beat on it for a time from all quarters.
I saw McKnight make one magnificent clearance and Johnston in the centre make half a dozen before at the end of a series of storming assaults Pearson crossed a ball which escaped every man waiting for it and with Farm on his knees beneath the bar curved out by the far post, missing it by inches.
That was in the 30th minute. Three minutes later the Blackpool goal fell in circumstances such as I have seldom seen on a football field.
DISPUTED GOAL
At first the referee says “No”
There was another mass raid. DELANEY searching for passes everywhere, swooped on to one on the left wing, and lobbed across a centre at which Farm fell and held on his knees on the line
An avalanche of men fell on him. What exactly happened in this raging pack could not be detected from the Press box, but, Whatever it was, three Manchester men appealed like one man that the ball had been over the line.
The referee said “No,” but a linesman nearly a dozen yards from the corner flag lifted a flag, and, when Mr. Walton was persuaded to cross to him for a conference, must have said that the ball had been over the line.
For a goal was given, in spite of such protests by three Blackpool men, that the referee had to lecture them for their brief rebellion before the game was resumed, with the United still pressing desperately and by this time almost madly.
MORTY DEFENDS
A corner was given which again Blackpool disputed while this pressure raged, pressure so sustained that twice I saw Mortensen make clearances in a full-back position and once almost under the bar of his own goal.
Hobson shot over the bar at a great pace in one of Blackpool raids, and in another outwitted Aston twice before crossing a centre which Perry shot so fast at Crompton that the goalkeeper beat out the ball less by design than instinct.
This was, in all the circumstances, a grand show against the League leaders by a Blackpool team that might have been overwhelmed.
There was desperation at times in the Blackpool defence against a line of forwards moving as only a Manchester United front line can move.
KELLY'S PASSES
Yet repeatedly Johnston was beating Delaney to the ball in the air, and repeatedly I noticed Kelly beating his man before gliding passes forward to one of his own front line division.
In the last minute of the half Bogan crossed from the flag a perfect comer - the United’s fourth of the half - which Farm fielded magnificently.
As the teams left the field I saw one or two Blackpool players in conference with the linesman whose signal had given the goal, apparently still disputing that George Farm had taken it with him over the line.
Half-time: Manchester Utd. 1, Blackpool 1.
SECOND HALF
The rain was falling - and I knew I was in Manchester - as the second half opened. Shimwell, after being beaten by Bogan, was back in position to clear the wing forwards centre as this raider raced on to the wrong wing before crossing the ball.
That was in the first 10 seconds of the half.
Within another half minute, with the United raging to the attack as intently as ever, Farm snatched a bouncing ball brilliantly off Delaney's head as this assertive forward chased it.
Another half-minute, with all the United’s guns firing, Warner missed a pass in the goalmouth and as the ball spun out to Pearson. Farm beat down the inside forward’s shot, fell on it, and cleared it, with another man in a red jersey challenging him.
This football by the United in the opening minutes of the half was the sort that wins championships - fast, direct and aggressive
PENALTY GOAL
United protest against award
Yet, after all this, Blackpool, in their forwards’ first raid of the half, went in front. This was another goal prefaced and followed by an indignation meeting by the team losing the goal.
Hobson took Mortensen’s pass, swerved away from Aston, and crossed a low centre which, as I saw it, hit the full-back without the full-back having any deliberate intent in the action.
Yet, without hesitation, Mr. Walton gave a penalty, and after all the United’s protests had been waved aside MORTENSEN shot from the “spot” a ball so fast and wide of Crompton’s left hand that it lodged in the net, trapped between the mesh and the metal standard.
This was admittedly a travesty of all that had been happening since half-time, and yet again it revealed this Manchester defence’s tendency to panic under pressure.
TOO FAST
On thundered the United forward barrage, but it was notice able that whenever the Blackpool forwards escaped both Perry and Mudie invariably seemed too fast and too elusive for the men marking them.
The Blackpool defence was often in straits bordering on the desperate, and yet its positioning and its decision in the tackle were constantly halting raids as a forward raced up to the last pass.
With 20 minutes of the half gone and Manchester still pressing, but pressing in vain, there was a shuffle in the Manchester forward line, with Delaney at outside-right, Bogan as his partner, and Downie at centre- forward.
FARM SAVES
Immediately McKnight hurled himself into the path of a Pearson thunderbolt and Farm held under the bar a falling centre from Mitten as Bogan and Downie catapulted past him into the net.
It was still nearly one-way traffic on this oppressed Blackpool defence, but the pace was beginning to take its toll and the Manchester forwards were obviously weary of casting themselves on a barrier which the roaming Mortensen was constantly reinforcing.
Yet as the game entered on its last quarter hour the elusive goal nearly came for the United, and probably without intention.
Delaney put a long forward pass across the centre for which no man was waiting, and as it hit the earth it bounced higher than the crossbar, escaped Farm’s clutch at it, and in the end was stabbed into the side net by Mitten.
Yet in two raids Blackpool nearly made it 3-1. Each time Perry was in the raid, beating Carey as he had often beaten him before crossing a pass which Mudie shot so fast at Crompton that the ball seemed to cannon back off the goalkeeper’s chest.
A minute later, too, the South African forward was in the game again, shooting as it reached him a ball which skidded out fast by the far post, with Crompton yards out of position.
Afterwards the United resumed their desperate all out attack, with Mr. Walton once refusing a penalty amid a hullabaloo of protests.
A minute later, too, Farm made a glorious save as Aston shot from 40 yards out.
With five minutes left and all design gone from the Manchester front line, but with the ball still moving relentlessly on the Blackpool goal, McKnight took the count, but was soon fit again for the fray.
Three minutes left and Shimwell made a great clearance almost in the jaws of his own goal.
Result:
MANCHESTER U. 1, (Delaney 33)
BLACKPOOL 2 (Mortensen 20, 49 pen)
COMMENTS ON THE GAME
BLACKPOOL were a team with a big heart today. That is what won this game against all the odds - that refusing to surrender which is in the team’s football in every match these days.
For threequarters of the afternoon it was the case of a stonewall defence facing a brilliant forward line and repelling it repeatedly by stark resolution.
There was not a man in this defence who at one minute or another did not retrieve his goal from downfall.
Johnston made himself into a centre-half for the day, remained with his two grand full-backs, and halted everything that was hurled at him.
The wing halves, too, were equally resolute. All this is familiar in times when Blackpool defences are stronger than they have ever been.
BRISK FORWARDS
The revelation was the football of the forwards.
Denuded of passes on a day when Mortensen was a sort of semi-half-back, running himself into the ground in defence of his goal, this front line in breakaways often had the Manchester defence scattered.
Nineteen-year-old Perry had a match of great promise, his long raking stride constantly taking him away from Johnny Carey and his opportunism in front of goal revealing the possession of a shot which will assuredly give him many goals in English football.
Mudie and Hobson, too, proved that even in contemporary football the little man can be a menace.
Both, on this showing, are authentically good footballers.
This was Blackpool’s greatest triumph for years. It was watched by 53,688 people. The couple of thousand who came from Blackpool must have been proud of their team.
NEXT WEEK: The top and bottom of it
MANCHESTER UNITED No. 1 team in the First Division this afternoon - Birmingham City, the last team in the table, at Blackpool next week.
Nobody can complain that there is not variety in Blackpool football these days.
A walkover for Blackpool? Not necessarily. It is never that at a time of the season when these teams in the relegation quicksands begin to make a last desperate fight for survival. ,
There are signs, too, that
Birmingham are coining up a little. The forwards are still scoring too few goals, have still an average of less than a goal a game, and away from home have actually scored only eight in 16 matches, which is only half a goal an afternoon.
Not, as a result, have Birmingham yet won a match away from St. Andrew’s this season.
Yet the City are still sufficiently close to other companions in distress to make a late escape from the Second Division sentence which has been menacing them ah the season, and Birmingham, therefore, are certain to make a match of it next weekend.
Three times the clubs have met since Birmingham rose to the First Division. Blackpool won last year’s home game 1-0, when little Walter Rickett scored a late goal, and a IT draw was played in the return match in the Midlands.
Last December a couple of Stan Mortensen goals won the St Andrew’s match 2-0.
It looks a good “1” for the coupons - and definitely it ought to be that.
SCORERS ARE HARD TO FIND
No signings - and why
By Clifford Greenwood
THE TRANSFER MARKET HAS BEEN AS PLACID AS A MILLPOND THIS WEEK.
There has been scarcely a ripple on the surface since the day last weekend when the reports began to circulate that Mr. Joe Smith had been to Bolton to make another bid for Nat Lofthouse, the Wanderers’ centre-forward.
Now it’s the last lap, and Blackpool have either decided or been compelled by circumstances to enter it with the men who have served the club all the season, and, when the 'position is viewed in clear perspective, given good service, too.
It is beyond dispute that Blackpool require at least another scoring forward for a line whose total of goals before this afternoon’s key match at Old Trafford was fewer, with one exception, than the total of any other front line playing for a top-of-the-table club, actually fewer than the Charlton forwards have scored - and Charlton are in the relegation sector.
One from wing
ONE goal only has come from a wing position all season - and little Walter Rickett scored it on the first day of the season.
The team have been in six goalless draws, and four of the $ix have been at home. In five successive games since the end of January the forwards in the First division have scored only four goals, and three of the four came in 14 minutes last weekend.
Such is the indictment, and no platitudes will talk it out bf court.
Is it any wonder that they call it a goal famine, that the line is criticised? Is it any wonder that Blackpool have been all over the kingdom seeking men to end the famine, only to be told wherever they have gone either “We’re not parting,” or, “But that’s what we’re wanting, too - men who can score goals.”
Everybody’s doing it, or, at least, not doing it - not scoring goals as once they were scored.
Points record?
YET this fact apart, while admitting that it is not an unimportant fact, Blackpool as a club have no cause for self-reproach about the quality of the team’s football this season.
The first team defence has wrought wonders in the land, had conceded fewer goals than any other defence in the First Division, and at the present time, whatever the team’s fate in the championship, it is a reasonable assumption that Blackpool will finish the season with a total of points higher than the club’s 1946-47 First Division record of 50.
The Reserve are still after the Central League title. The “B” team are already virtual champions of the Lancashire Combination’s second division. It is conceivable, even if improbable, that the “hat-trick” in championships may be won.
No depression
OBVIOUSLY, therefore, there is no cause for depression and infinite cause for celebration, and obviously, too, there has been no particular reason for Blackpool to go stampeding into the transfer mart this week when the zero hour on unrestricted transfers chimed.
Blackpool will not be the complete team until the forwards achieve a higher fire-power, and, if necessary, new men will have to be signed during the summer to give the line the punch it requires in front of goal.
But, for the rest, it would be almost ungracious to complain about all that has happened during a season which opened with threequarters of the community predicting all sorts of miseries.
Scorers list
THE men who have scored the goals up to today are:
First Division: S. Mortensen 17, W. McIntosh 7, A. McCall 5. W. J. Slater 3, E. Shimwell 3 (penalties), H. Johnston 2, W. Rickett and J. Mudie 1 each.
FA Cap: S. Mortensen 3 (1 p.), W. J. Slater 3 (1 p.). W. McIntosh and G. McKnight 1 each.
Central League: J. Mudie 18, G. McKnight and R. Adams 3 each. W. J. Slater. D Davidson, G. Falconer 6 each, W McIntosh and A. Hobson 4 each, W. Perry 3, K. Smith 2. E. Fenton (p.), W. Rickett and W. Ormond 1 each.
They seem to be able to score them in the Central League - 70 in 34 games, an average of about two a match.
CHEQUES NOT NEEDED
So £ s. d. in football is everything, is it? Not always.
The Blackpool team that defeated West Bromwich Albion last week had a full-back, three half-backs, and four forwards who did not cost the club a farthing - seven out of the eleven signed without a fee.
This is not the first time it has happened, either. The only transfer men in last week’s team were George Farm, Eddie Shimwell and Willie McIntosh.
And in the Reserve team at Sheffield there were only George McKnight and Douglas Davidson for whom a fee had to be paid when they were signed.
That’s good team-building.
***
THE Central League match of the season is approaching. Or, to be exact, a couple of matches.
If the league championship continues to be, as it is threatening to be at present, a two-club race, the Easter meetings of Burnley and Blackpool - at Bloomfield-road on Good Friday and at Turf Moor on Easter Monday - may settle the title, may decide whether Mr. Frank Hill’s recruits shall retain it for the second successive year or whether Blackpool shall win it for the first time for exactly 30 years.
Both matches should pack them in as Central League games seldom do.
Remember, by the way, the famous end-of-the-season match which ensured the Central League championship for Blackpool in 1920? A team containing the first-team forward line went to Nelson to win the deciding match. And what a hullabaloo there was afterwards.
***
WELL, IT’S ONE WAY
ONE way of breaking the ticket racket at football is to have no ticket matches.
Obvious, my dear Watson? I agree, and yet one correspondent this week thinks it is the only remedy and advocates it in a letter of two pages.
There is, at times, I think, something to be said for it, too. I am not as old as all that and yet I can recall the days when if people wanted to watch a football match they were prepared to stand in queues and endure considerable discomfort and never expected everything to be laid on for them.
One could, at least, be certain when the big matches were played in those days that the spectators were the folk who watched football because they were fond of it and not merely because it happened to be fashionable on that particular day to be at one particular match.
The ticket system has created a class of spectator who is a mere drone in the game, who selects his fixtures and has sufficient influence in sufficient influential quarters to ensure that he shall be at them, and in the best seats, too.
Wembley has long been a national scandaI for this reason.
So to Albion he went
SEVERAL people I have met during the week - people who were impressed as I was by the football of Ron Allen, the West Bromwich Albion forward in last weekend’s game - have asked “Why couldn’t Blackpool sign him?"
It is a reasonable question, writes “C G.”, for the £15,000 the Albion paid Port Vale for Allen a fortnight ago was not an excessive figure if often he plays a she played in the first half- hour at Blackpool.
The answer, however, is simple. I understand that he was prepared to leave the Vale, and for a long time, in fact, has aspired to play in the First Division, but he always made the condition that he should remain in football within reasonable distance of his home in the Potteries.
So if Blackpool wanted him - and Blackpool, I think, were interested at one time - Blackpool could not have had him.
There’s always something - as Sam Costa nearly says.
***
FLASHBACK to the Liverpool Cuptie:
Ivor Powell, the Aston Villa captain, who was one of Blackpool’s guests, saw the famous one-flank-to-the-other transfer of the Liverpool wing forwards and the winning goal by one of them, Billy Liddell, which followed it.
I saw him after the match, was told by him, “If they do that against us next week I’ll send the full-backs after them, will switch them over, too.”
Which is precisely what happened at Villa Park on Saturday, and this time, the full-backs who had been playing close on the Liverpool wingmen moved over with them and the gamble was a failure.
There was no goal for Liddell or for Payne.
All of which, I have no doubt, pleased Ivor Powell no end, knowing that as a result Blackpool’s championship prospects had been enhanced.
All that went wrong with his promise to upset the applecart of Blackpool's chief challengers was the Villa’s 7-0 defeat at Old Trafford three days earlier.
Yes, they'ed all be glad to help
WHAT about a game on behalf of the Andy Curran testimonial fund between Past and Present Blackpool players? asks Clifford Greenwood.
It would make a good end-of-the-season attraction, and it would be for a good cause, for one of the biggest-hearted players who ever wore a Blackpool jersey.
Or, as an alternative, there could be the fielding of 22 men who were among his contemporaries.
Twenty-two could soon be traced, and, once they knew the purpose of the match, would consent immediately to appear.
The Blackpool public has not been as generous as I expected, and as its reputation led other people to expect in its response to this fund.
Such a match as this would augment the exchequer considerably. What about it?
THERE has been nothing demonstrative or grandiloquent about it, but, whatever’s happened, it has cultivated among the players- an affection for the club which has meant such a lot on the field.
Blackpool may have lost at Liverpool this afternoon. I am making only one prophecy. And that is that if Blackpool have gone down they have gone down with the guns still firing.
THE MORTENSEN STORY — No. 17
'PROBLEM CHILD’ OF THE ENGLAND XI
DAYS WHEN HE WAS CALLED “ENGLAND’S PROBLEM CHILD” BECAUSE THE SELECTORS CHOSE HIM, REJECTED HIM, AND CHOSE HIM AGAIN ARE RECALLED BY STANLEY MORTENSEN IN THIS LATEST INSTALMENT OF HIS BOOK “FOOTBALL IS MY GAME.”
"Whether I have played well or not, whether or not I have justified the selectors’ choice, I can say that no player has ever been more jealous of the honour, for I like playing for England,” he says.
Writing of the days when he was climbing the international ladder, he describes one of the greatest goals he ever saw scored - and the marksman was Albert Stubbins, the centre-forward who played for Liverpool against Blackpool in the Cuptie a fortnight ago.
Left out - then in again
By Stanley Mortensen
Five weeks later England met Wales at West Bromwich, and I awaited the announcement of the teams with rather less anxiety after that winning goal against Ireland.
I looked forward confidently to being asked to play again, But no. For the second time I was left out.
Possibly a player is not the best judge as to how he has played, although I think he should be a pretty good judge.
Perhaps the selectors wished to give other players a chance, for they overhauled the forward line, keeping only Stanley Matthews on the right wing.
Mickey Fenton, of Middlesbrough usually a centre-forward, was his partner, Bert Stubbins was at centre, the young Bolton all-rounder, Barrass, was at inside-left, and Watson of Huddersfield (now of Sunderland and a Yorkshire cricketer of note) was on the left wing.
So that was that. Twice I had been in the national side, and twice discarded. There was nothing for it but to keep pegging away, thinking by day and by night to try to find something that was wrong with my game, and to try to win my way back.
Hard road
IT was to be a hard and long road, but once again I was encouraged by the newspapers. Of course, there is always a gentle little bit of sniping between critics and selectors, some of it more friendly than it appears on the surface.
One writer described me as England’s "problem child,” going On: “It is beginning to emerge that he is too good an individualist to leave out of internationals, though keeping him in seems to upset the smooth running of the whole line . .
“The story of the week is of the bright lad of the England team when the Irish party broke lip at Stranraer suggesting that they should all sing ‘Auld Lang Syne’ just in case they didn’t meet again.”
Selectors' fate
HEARD the singing, which reminded me that it is the fate of team selectors - international and otherwise - to be Shot at.
There are many Blackpool Supporters quite convinced that they could choose a better side than the club manager. And they can carry on with this conviction - because their selections tire never tried out on the field.
So we came to the 1946-47 season, the first full postwar season of real League football and real international matches. Football, in fact, was back to normal.
I played 38 games for Blackpool, scored 28 goals in the League and one in our only Cup-tie, when we were beaten by Sheffield Wednesday.
HEREABOUTS I gained one consolation honour - a match for the Football League against the League of Ireland at Dublin.
This time I was chosen as inside-right to partner Matthews and once again I had the good fortune to get among the goals in a big game. With Bert Stubbins holding and controlling the ball brilliantly and Stan Matthews at his best on the wing I found plenty of open space! and two goals of the three we scored went against my name.
One of the best goals of its kind I have ever seen was scored in this game. Phil Taylor, of Liverpool, hit a screaming pass to Stan Matthews, a long low ball at top speed which would have been too hot for most men to gather.
Lovely flick
BUT Stan killed it stone dead, beat two men in a style which made the crowd first gasp and then laugh, and finally looked up to see what was happening in the goalmouth.
Yes, Bert Stubbins was there all right. Stan dropped the ball right on his head as though placing such a centre at 35 yards’ range was as simple as shelling peas.
The centre-forward glided it past the goalkeeper with a lovely flick. So easy - when it is perfectly done.
Having been in and out of the England side - more out than in literally - I had the up-in-the-clouds feeling when I learned that I had been chosen to play for England against Belgium at Brussels in September of 1947.
Fortune's smile
FORTUNE was smiling again, and in this season I found myself established as partner to Stan Matthews, not only at Blackpool but in the England team.
And whether I have played well or not, whether I have justified the selectors’ choice, I can say this: no player has ever been more jealous of the honour. I like playing for England.
When I began first to mix with the great ones of Soccer, the men who could reasonably be certain of being in the next big match,, I discovered that it was a point of honour among them not to take things for granted.
DEBT TO GRAND CHAPS
GEORGE HARDWICK, Raich Carter, Wilf Mannion, Tommy Lawton, Laurie Scott, Frank Swift, Stan Matthews, Neil Franklin and Billy Wright - the men who formed the nucleus of the great English side of the immediate postwar period -all had the same approach.
If you discussed a coming match with one of them, he was always certain to say “if selected.”
All along I have tried to imitate these fellows, and even after three or four successive international games I haye recalled their words, and made up my mind that each game was a vital one for me, and to play as though I were on trial.
If I Have done well in international games in the goalscoring line, I owe much to the example of those grand chaps and grand players I have named, and a few others like them.
Next week
TWO GOALS AGAINST SCOTLAND . . . WINNING THE INTERNATIONAL TITLE.
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