INJURY-HIT BLACKPOOL FORCE GOALLESS DRAW
Slater, Johnston in the wars
BLUNTED ATTACKS
Bolton Wanderers 0, Blackpool 0
By “Clifford Greenwood”
IT may have been the Scotland-England broadcast from Hampden Park, or it may have been the Holcombe point- to-point races. Or it may have been the absence of a few famous personalities from the cast.
Whatever the reason, there were not 20,000 people inside Burnden Park a quarter of an hour before the kick-off this afternoon for a Blackpool match which usually attracts its 40.000.
When the spectators arrived they learned that another of the big names was out of the game, for shortly before noon Nat Lofthouse, the Wanderers’ centre - forward, in whom Blackpool have been interested for a long time, reported unfit.
Vincent Dillon, who has been playing nearly all his recent football in the Central League, was called in to lead a Bolton front line which had two 18-year-old part-time professionals on the right wing.
CALM DAY
It was a fine afternoon, and .after last weekend’s gales sufficiently calm to make good football, or something resembling it, a reasonable expectation
Teams:
BOLTON WANDERERS Hanson; Roberts, Banks (R.) Barrass, Gillies, Howe; Hughes, Webster, Dillon, Hernon, McShane.
BLACKPOOL: Farm; Garrett, Wright; Johnston, Crosland, Kelly; Perry, Falconer, McIntosh, W. J. Slater, Wardle.
Referee: Mr. G. Salmon (Stoke-on-Trent).
THE GAME
First half
Blackpool lost the toss and the Wanderers defended the goal in front of the railway embankment. Unexpectedly in the early raids both teams were falling about everywhere on a pitch which appeared firm but which in patches was as soft as a sponge.
It was a curiously quiet opening. There was nothing whatever to excite an almost silent assembly until Howe headed forward a pass which Farm snatched away from Dillon with the centre-forward after it full tilt.
JUST TOO LATE
For a time afterwards scarcely one pass went where it was in- tended to go. Crosland once had to cross out to the right flank of his defence to halt Dillon, and in front of the other goal Barrass made a last-second clearance as Falconer raced in a fraction late to a loose ball.
The first test for the goalkeeper was delayed until the fifth minute.
Then Perry headed down Wright’s crossfield clearance, put McIntosh in an open space, and after his centre-half had fallen left the leader to race 30 yards, veering all the time out to the right before shooting a ball which Hanson beat down and cleared confidently.
SLATER HURT
Limps out bn the left wing
Immediately, Bill Slater went limping out on to the left wing, hurt presumably, in a tackle which nobody appeared to have seen.
A massed Wanderers defence repelled McIntosh in another little lone foray before the Bolton forwards came into the game again and came into it with sufficient pace and decision for Farm to be compelled to make two close-range clearances.
Within a minute there was another casualty as Banks, the Wanderers left back, fell in a heap and after attention returned to the game as a limping outside-left just as Slater went off the field altogether.
Two cripples and one of them in the dressing room - all in eight minutes of a game which had been no rough house at all.
GREAT TACKLE
Crosland ended one Bolton raid with a great running tackle which took the ball away from two forwards, and Farm another as he clutched to his chest a free-kick by Barrass, the wing-half son of the old Blackpool forward.
Blackpool’s four forwards made no comparable progress for a long time.
Yet the Wanderers, in spite of continuing pressure, were all bark and no bite at all until Dillon darted to Hernon’s perfect forward pass and lost it under the challenge of Johnston and the nonstop Crosland, a centre- half who was on overtime in the game’s first 20 minutes and convincing all the time Wright took the count in heading out Hughes’ centre for the first corner of the match in the 22nd minute.
SLATER RETURNS
Another corner followed it in the 23rd. Between the two Slater hobbled back into the match but was manifestly almost as complete a passenger as full-back Banks on the Wanderers’ wing.
Yet one of these cripples was nearer to a goal than any of the 20 fit men had been as the game approached the end of its first half-hour.
On to a loose ball Slater limped into the inside-left position, moved unexpectedly fast to it, and shot it at such a pace that it was sailing yards out of the reach of Hanson as the tall Gillies leaped at it near the far post and headed it out under the bar.
That was the first big escape there had been for either goal.
From the corner Kelly headed low into Hanson’s hands, and for minutes afterwards it was nearly all Blackpool.
McSHANE SHOOTS
But ball sails a long way wide
That these forwards could shoot McShane revealed as he darted to a pass, ran on a couple of yards with it, and hit a ball which sailed out a long way wide of a post.
Otherwise, with 35 minutes gone, the only shot with a threat of a goal in it had been made by the limping amateur Slater.
Blackpool were setting the pace with only 10 minutes of the half left. For the rest, there was little to report, except constant raids which were ending inside the Bolton penalty area and sometimes outside it.
Neither front line, with four fit men, could work to a plan until once Kelly, Falconer and McIntosh built a raid which ended in the centre - forward shooting wide - and every pass in that raid was precise and not a yard off the beam.
Often at this time the South African Falconer was every inch a football artist.
His astute passes opened two raids, and each time he lured a man out of position before making them.
Five minutes of the half were left and Johnston was hurt, dragging his way wearily on to the right wing after falling in another of those accidents which still seemed strange in a game still not excessively intense.
That left one team, the Wanderers, with 10 men and a disabled full-back, and Blackpool with a forward line which had a crippled inside-forward on one flank and a wing half reduced to half-pace on the other.
The Wanderers hammered on this denuded force almost furiously as the half neared its end.
Garrett made one fine headed clearance out of a pack in front of the Blackpool goal, and three times the fast, tireless Crosland was there again in the path of the Wanderers’ inside forwards.
Half-time: Bolton Wanderers 0, Blackpool 0.
Second half
Johnston was back in position when the second half opened, but Slater had transferred to the right wing, with a Perry-Wardle partnership on the left.
For the Wanderers Banks was still a left-wing passenger.
In the second minute Blackpool nearly went in front.
There was a raid on the left, and Perry crossed a perfect centre.
Every man in the Wanderers defence hesitated, and Falconer raced past it and as the ball bounced in front of him lashed it high over the bar.
For minutes afterwards Blackpool played with a decision which had never been revealed in the first half.
There were one or two raids by the Wanderers which were all repelled, once they had reached the centre, by the vigilant Crosland.
McIntosh shoots
And a Bolton full-back laid is out
Nearly all the time, with Perry darting about everywhere menacingly, the game moved on the Bolton goal.
In the end, given all the time in the world, Slater, obviously wracked with pain every time he moved, flighted across a gem of a centre.
Perry glided it back to McIntosh, who thundered it in so fast that when it hit Roberts, standing on the line with his goalkeeper, it laid the full-back out.
Blackpool’s football had all the order in it now.
GREAT RAID
A goal was near again as the Wardle-Perry wing made a great raid from Johnston’s pass, split the Wanderers’ defence wide open, and left Wardle to cross a centre which Hanson lost in midair in front of an open goal.
Falconer raced on to the loose ball and lost it in a pack of men, with the line empty in front of him.
As raid followed raid Slater, wandering into the centre, headed Johnston’s free-kick backwards into Hanson’s hands, and only a great leaping interception by Roberts took Wardle’s centre away from the aggressive McIntosh.
There were still raids by the Wanderers and raids with a punch in them which during the first 45 minutes had seldom been produced.
STRONG PRESSURE
Blackpool’s pressure continued almost continuously, raid after raid hammering on a Wanderers defence which was fast into the tackle, taking everything in the air but still retreating.
Farm made a glorious clearance under the bar from a Wanderers right wing centre before Slater, revealing amazing craft as he limped past two men, crossed a ball which Perry could not reach in a flying leap in front of a barely-protected goal.
Within a minute, Farm fell full length to reach a shot by Dillon after the Bolton leader had escaped Crosland for about the first time during the afternoon.
LIVELIER NOW
It was a game which had wakened up abruptly after a passive first half.
Both teams were storming into It every tackle fast and nearly every pass crisp and direct.
There was an incident a minute. Earlier there had not been one every five.
Twenty minutes to go, and the Wanderers forwards were as often in the game as Blackpool’s, nearly took the lead with 18 minutes left as Dillon darted to Banks’ lobbed pass inside, reached the ball a split second before the advancing Farm, and shot it wide of a post.
IN THE WARS
Johnston is injured again
There was another casualty as the game entered on its last 15 minutes.
This time it was Johnston in the wars again, so disabled that he had to walk out for the second time on to a wing, leaving Slater to go out on to the left flank again, with Blackpool’s inside division reduced to a centre and two wing forwards.
Inevitably, a team in such skeleton formation had to content itself with the inevitable rearguard action, forfeiting one corner in the process but standing firm otherwise to the series of smash and grab raids.
INCHES OUT
Yet even in the closing minutes Blackpool were now and again near to the elusive goal, Wardle shooting one ball which missed the far post only by inches
There was one ugly incident - the only one of the match - near the end. when McShane lifted his fist to Kelly and after peace had been restored had his name taken.
Result:
BOLTON 0
BLACKPOOL 0
COMMENTS ON THE GAME
ANOTHER name for Burnden Park this afternoon would have been “Casualty Corner.”
After the first eight minutes neither team was at full strength. Blackpool played nearly all the afternoon with W. J. Slater as a limping wing man, and at times with cripples on both flanks of the attack.
The Wanderers, after the first 10 minutes, had a full-back as a passenger on one of their wings.
The match, as a result, was no classic, but it - was at times dramatic in the second half.
The men of the day were nearly all in the defences, and one of the stars was centre-half Crosland, whose speed after a pass and decision in the tackle often halted Bolton’s inside forwards.
The men fronting him and flanking him were equally resolute, with Kelly constantly attracting notice by the class of his game.
GALLANT ACTION
If the forwards were not in the match until the second half who’s blaming them? This line for a time played grand football for 20 minutes after the interval once it began to move the ball about fast.
Perry had few chances, and yet still gave the impression that there is latent talent in him, just as there is authentic football in the other South African. Falconer.
McIntosh waged a gallant action all the afternoon against men inches taller.
Not a bad show in the circumstances for the 26,830 people who watched it, and a precious deserved point for Blackpool.
NEXT WEEK: It could be a classic curtain at Bloomfield-road
IF it’s football you’re after - as distinct from dogfights -never miss a Blackpool-Chelsea game. There have been a few classics In the postwar series, and not, by contemporary standards, a bad match among the lot.
That Chelsea have not won one of them - not one of the seven - is merely a coincidence. For Chelsea, playing the sort of football in which Stamford Bridge teams have specialised since the war, can lose a game and yet leave the field trailing a few clouds of glory.
It could, therefore, be an illustrious final curtain match in First Division football at
Blackpool this season when the London team come to town next week, with Stan Mortensen back from England service again, and his inside-left at Hampden Park today, the roaming Roy Bentley, leading the Chelsea front fine.
Last season Chelsea were
as near as any Chelsea team have been since the war to a point at Blackpool. It was a last-minute Mortensen goal which won the game 2-1.
The previous two postwar games had both been lost, and it is a fact that when Bentley scored in last year’s game it was the first Chelsea goal at Blackpool since prewar times.
First Division football could go out at Blackpool next week until August comes again in a match worth watching. If it doesn’t something will have gone wrong with the Blackpool-Chelsea works.
NOT OUT OF IT, BUT IT’LL BE TOUGH
And what a chance Blackpool had!
By Clifford Greenwood
I AM CHANTING NO REQUIEM YET OVER BLACKPOOL'S FIRST DIVISION CHAMPIONSHIP PROSPECTS.
They are not as promising as they were, or as they might have been if the chance of a lifetime had not been lost during the craziest of all Easter weekends.
I will be frank, too, and write again, as I have written so often in the past, that the odds must always have been high against a team whose forwards were scoring as few goals as Blackpool's front line has been shooting all the season.
It has made excessive demands on the defence, which has been betraying signs in recent matches of breaking under the tension. Too often this defence has virtually known that it had to lose only one goal to lose a game, and that is not good for a defence’s morale.
Still, it’s not over yet, and while Birmingham City can win at Old Trafford, and Burnley, after losing at Turf Moor, can win at Liverpool, and Everton can win, and, as I saw it, deserve to win, four points from Blackpool in three days - when all that sort of apparent lunacy can be perpetuated, anything can happen.
Manager's view
“IT’LL be tough going - four away games out of the last five fixtures” as Manager Joe Smith says. But, as he also says, "There’s still a chance - and we’ll keep hanging on if we can."
But what about another championship, the Central League title, which would have been almost literally in Blackpool’s grip if the four points in the Burnley games had been divided instead of Burnley snatching three of them?
Today, before Bolton Wanderers’ second team came to Blackpool and Burnley visited Sheffield Wednesday, Blackpool were leading by three points and a much superior goal average, and the Turf Moor team had one extra game to play.
30 years after?
BURNLEY could win a total of 59 points. To equal such a total Blackpool required five points from their last three games, which are today’s fixture with the Wanderers, the match at Leeds next week, and a Liverpool home game a week later.
So there it is: If Blackpool have won today, can win the next home game in a fortnight, and play a draw at Leeds next week, the championship is won for the first time since 1919, exactly 30 years ago.
And all that is contingent on Burnley taking 100 per cent, points from their four remaining matches.
Promotion
I THINK Blackpool should win this title, and should win, too, the second division championship of the Lancashire Combination, in spite of the “B” team’s unexpected fall from grace last weekend,
Earlestown are still chasing the leaders and could pass them, but it it questionable whether they will, and, in any case, whether Blackpool finish first or second - and one or the other is a virtual certainty - there will be promotion to the first division as a reward.
The Lancashire Combination authorities were not, I am told, all that pleased when I wrote the other day that a movement was in progress to deprive teams attached to First and Second Division clubs of a first division promotion.
That was the impression in these parts. I have since been informed that far from there being a prejudice against such clubs as Blackpool fielding apprentice teams in the Combination’s first division the majority of the first division clubs are intent on sanctioning it.
This was revealed by the ballot at the emergency meeting the other evening.
Welcome waiting
BUT if Blackpool win promotion, as Blackpool should, I am assured that everybody will be glad to find Mr. Alec Munro’s young men in these exalted circles, and there will be “Welcome” written large on the mat for them,
All of which I am very pleased to report.
So, whatever happens, it is not. presumably to go into history as such a bad season.
The Lancashire League midweek title has been won already, and three others could actually still be won. A club in such a position with the season in its last month has good reason to be proud of itself.
STILL PACKING THEM IN
THE 71,008 people who watched Blackpool lose at Goodison Park on Good Friday was the biggest attendance at a Blackpool match since the game at Chelsea last season, when 77,696 people stormed Stamford Bridge and left 20,000 more swarming outside the gates.
It was only 7,000 fewer than the Goodison Park record - a match with Liverpool last season - and the biggest of the present season at the Everton ground, writes Clifford Greenwood.
So much, then, for all those people who say that unless both ‘‘The Two Stanleys’' are playing nobody is particularly interested in Blackpool outside Blackpool.
One of them, Stanley Matthews, was not in the match at Everton and, to be fair, he would be the first to protest against the assumption that all Blackpool’s box office attraction is contained in himself and in the other England forward, Stanley Mortensen.
And the latter would be another who would call it a lot of boloney.
HALF Everton’s reserve team were in the Press box at Goodison Park when Blackpool played there this Easter.
It was a little sad to see such men as Ted Sagar, Aubrey Powell and Jim McIntosh among them. Not that any of them seemed particularly depressed.
One was glad to meet Jim McIntosh again. He has had only 17 games in the First Division this season, but he is as uncomplaining, as happy-go-lucky as ever.
I once heard Harry Johnston, the Blackpool captain, say, “Jim the finest sportsman in football.” He is, too. Few people would have accepted an omission from the Cup Final team as he accepted it when he was at Blackpool two years ago.
The salt of the game are such men as Jim McIntosh, who still holds the distinction of being the youngest professional ever fielded by Blackpool in First or Second Division football.
He was only 17 when he made his first Second Division appearance for Blackpool at Swansea on September 14, 1935.
***
I HEAR from Tom Pomfret that Walter Thorpe, the young reserve goalkeeper, who left Blackpool last summer, was in the Bacup Borough goal and played an impressive game at Lytham last weekend.
He is still only a part- time professional, but his salary as a draughtsman in a Manchester office, plus the fee the Borough pay him, at least ensures that he will not be on the bread-line.
Manchester City for a long time wanted to sign Thorpe. Several times he guested at Maine-road with Blackpool’s permission.
Then when he left Blackpool, the City made no move to sign him. It never made any sort of sense to me.
A BOLTON LEGEND
THEY will have had everything except the red carpet out for Manager Joe Smith at Bolton this afternoon. He has become almost a legend in Bolton football.
Wherever you go you are told of his scoring exploits for the Wanderers in the days of long ago.
“Now,” they tell you, “there was a man who could shoot a ball!”
The house still stands close to the ground where the young Joe Smith lived in his first apartments after leaving his home in the Potteries to go to Bolton as a professional. But his fame in this Lancashire town will endure even longer.
It's good to know that they are not all forgotten - the men who are idols for a few years - once they take off their boots for the last time.
***
Why Swindin smiled
EVEN as he climbed to his feet after falling in vain to Stan Mortensen’s winning goal-shot at Blackpool last weekend, the Arsenal goalkeeper, George Swindin. was seen to be smiling, however reluctantly.
Why? Because as the Blackpool centre-forward raced on under his own impetus and reached the goalkeeper, he said to him in a half-whisper,
“Be back in a minute, George!”
It was one of those little sallies which between two men who are good friends merely illustrates the essential goodwill among professional footballers.
There was nothing exultant - there never is, for it is not the first time that the Blackpool leader has said it to a beaten goalkeeper. It’s just one of those little on-the-field jokes which deserve to be recorded.
If Blackpool had accepted every invitation which has deluged every recent mail to play benefit matches or to go on close season tours the team would have been playing six evenings a week for the season’s last fort night, and all through the livelong summer.
They have had to say “No” politely but firmly to these requests, have accepted only one - a benefit match at Chester three days before the end of the season, but have made it clear that only the second team, whose fixtures by that time will have been completed, will take the field.
A team could have gone to Scandinavia again or across to Ireland or as far into Europe as the Iron Curtain will permit.
But with three men off for tours with England missions - Stan. Mortensen to Rio and Harry Johnston and Stanley Matthews to Canada - the official views appear to be that it would be wiser for the rest of the staff to take a summer’s rest.
And very sensible, too.
***
BLACKPOOL are to end the season with three successive away games in 10 days.
The game which came to a premature conclusion at West Bromwich last November in the fog is to be replayed on Wednesday, April 26.
Three days later the team will go to Stoke, and a week afterwards the last match will be played at Newcastle.
A forbidding prospect? Not as forbidding as all that. This Blackpool team has all season been playing its best football outside Blackpool.
A supreme irony it would be, admittedly, if the West Bromwich game were lost and those points cost the club one of the season’s honours, for Blackpool were winning 2-1 when the first match was abandoned, and, from all I could see of it through the fog screen, were seldom in danger of losing that lead.
IT is not in the official bulletins yet, but I hear on the best authority that Stanley Matthews, renouncing all the glories - if there are any - of Rio, has accepted the FA’s invitation to tour Canada this summer.
Once it was established that he was fit, he had the alternative of South America or the transatlantic tour. He has chosen the latter, which will be good news for the citizens of Canada, who for months have been speculating, “Will he come or won’t he?”
It will be news, too, that he was offered these two alternatives - but not such good news - to all those disciples of the debunking guild who have been telling each and everybody else who would listen to them during recent weeks that the reign of Stanley Matthews had ended..
THE MORTENSEN STORY — No. 21
Move by move - a goal that made history
WHEN Stanley Mortensen scored the greatest goal of his life - the equalising goal in the Blackpool -’Spurs Cup semifinal at Villa Park in 1948 - he did not know that four minutes only of the first 90 were left.
“If I had been asked,” he writes in this latest instalment of his book, “Football Is My Game,” “ I should have said about a quarter of an hour.”
He describes the unforgettable match - the gift goal which gave the ’Spurs the lead 20 minutes after the interval, the goal which made Manager Joe Smith say “Fancy losing to one like that!”
And move by move he writes of the goal which made history, the goal which caused extra time and put Blackpool on the golden road to Wembley.
THE MINUTES WERE TICKING AWAY
By Stanley Mortensen
SO THERE WE WERE, THROUGH TO THE LAST EIGHT- TWO MORE GAMES TO WIN AND WE WOULD BE AT WEMBLEY! WE BEGAN TO THINK IT WAS TO BE OUR YEAR.
In the early part of the game the ’Spurs showed up well. It was one of those days when the ball simply would not run kindly for Blackpool.
We were never overplayed, but we could not control the midfield exchanges as we had planned and hoped to do. The ’Spurs inside forwards did some clever things, and it was in this stage that George Dick showed up at his best.
Hanging back to link up with the half-backs, he often nipped in with a hefty tackle, making himself a general nuisance to the Londoners during a critical period of the game.
Had we .been anything but a good side, the ’Spurs would have got on top in this spell. Instead we held them out and kept hoping that the ball would eventually run more kindly for us.
We did not panic. We just kept trying to play our own game, which is the way to victory in League matches or Cupties - if other fellows will let you play it.
“If I had been asked,” he writes in this latest instalment of his book, “ Football Is My Game,” “ I should have said about a quarter of an hour.”
He describes the unforgettable match - the gift goal which gave the ’Spurs the lead 20 minutes after the interval, the goal which made Manager Joe Smith say “Fancy losing to one like that!”
And move by move he writes of the goal which made history, the goal which caused extra time and put Blackpool on the golden road to Wembley.
Gift goal
ANYWAY, half-time came with the score sheet blank, and during the interval we were not disheartened.
In our dressing room consultation we agreed that we were playing the right kind of game, and that if we could only keep Stan Matthews going with a nice supply of passes we must win.
Walter Rickett on the left had been shaping fairly well in his different way, too.
Twenty minutes after the interval came the shock. A free-kick on the half-way line was taken by right-back Tickridge. This boy is going places, if I am any judge of a footballer.
He hit a big kick right up to the goal area and slightly to the right of goal. Joe Robinson and Ron Suart seemed to have the ball covered, but somehow or other both left it - and it ran loose.
Duquemin was put in possession, and very coolly he placed the ball into the empty net.
Glum faces
I WAS told later on that as the minutes ticked away Manager Joe Smith, watch in hand and checking the time from the touch-line, muttered, “Fancy losing by a goal like that!”
Indeed it did seem to be hard lines to be in arrears in that fashion - especially as by now we had our grip on the game.
There were glum faces in the team as the ball was booted into the middle for the kick-off, but as soon as play was in motion again all thoughts of that sort were banished.
We went about our work with a will, and the Blackpool side played better after that reverse than they had done previously that afternoon.
For myself I kept wishing I had scored early in the game instead of banging the ball against the bar, but presently another chance came.
Over the top
“'THIS is it,” I thought, but the ball came a shade awkwardly. I raced through on the ball and timed it well, but a bad bounce as I shaped to shoot caused me to get under the ball - and over the bar it went.
This was one of those chances which look easier from the stand than they are in fact, although I do not wish to make excuses.
I had muffed it. With the minutes ticking out we were still a goal down.
Did I know the time when I scored the equaliser?
The answer is that I had not the slightest idea that the 90 minutes were nearly up. If someone had asked me I should probably have guessed that there was still a quarter of an hour to play instead of four minutes when I popped the ball into the net.
There is a clock over the stand at Villa Park, but when you are playing in a Cup semi-final you haven’t time to keep an eye on it!
Surprise move
FOUR minutes from time, Stanley Matthews moved into the inside-right position for a pass, and I ran ahead of him, about level with our centre-forward, but still to the right.
In other words, for the moment, we had no outside-right, but two inside-rights, one in the rear and one forward.
My partner ran forward a little way, ball close to his toes, of course, and drew an opponent - Burgess, I think, - out of position Then, instead of embarking on one of those long, spectacular dribbles he gave a sparkling example of how successful a surprise move can be.
He released the ball promptly, hitting a lobbed pass to me as I was moving forward in front of him. It was a peach, coming to me nicely, and I had it rolling forward and was running with it all in one action.
At top speed
I REACHED it before Burgess or Nicholson could, and made straight ahead running parallel with the touch-line but well inside it and in line with the near post, which was 40 yards or more away.
The two ’Spurs defenders tried to tackle me, but I managed to keep control of the ball, and then I came up to full-back, Vic Buckingham, whom I also held off.
I was moving at top speed, and at one moment in this gallop I overran the ball. Luckily the ball was moving quickly, too, and it overtook me again!
Then, with the three ’Spurs men still trying to dispossess me, I hit the ball diagonally across goal. I kept it on the ground and it beat Ditchburn to go into goal just inside the far post.
Next week
THE WIN IN EXTRA TIME ... AND NOW FOR THE FINAL
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