22 April 1950 Blackpool 0 Chelsea 0

ATTACK WITHOUT “BITE” LET CHELSEA ESCAPE

Home season ends with another goalless draw

MISSED PENALTY  

Blackpool 0, Chelsea 0

By “Clifford Greenwood”

IT WAS CURTAIN FALL ON FIRST DIVISION FOOTBALL AT BLACKPOOL THIS AFTERNOON, WHEN CHELSEA CAME TO TOWN.

And an afternoon fit for a cricket match instead of a game of football it was, too, with the sun shining and the temperature high.

Stanley Matthews was back in circulation after an absence of 13 weeks, and Blackpool, with Eddie Shimwell fit again, had in the field the strongest team to play in the club’s colours since early in the year.

Chelsea, whose forwards were led by Roy Bentley, the unorthodox centre - forward who scored the winning goal for England at Hampden Park a week ago, gave a first game in the First Division to wing half William Dickson, who went to Stamford Bridge from Nottingham on the day Tommy Lawton left for the County.

The "Atomic Boys” were present in force, collecting for the Andy Curran testimonial fund - a parade with huge canvas sheets which was prefaced by a little speech over the loudspeakers by Harry Johnston, a star of today asking the public not to forget a star of yesterday.

CHELSEA SUPPORTERS

The attendance was approaching 30,000 shortly before the kick-off, including unexpectedly a few hundred people who had come north from London by road and rail.

Teams:

BLACKPOOL: Farm; Shimwell, Wright; Johnston, Crosland, Kelly; Matthews, Falconer, Mortensen, McIntosh, Perry.

CHELSEA: Medhurst; Bathgate, Willemse; Armstrong, Harris, Dickson ; Gray, Williams, Bentley, Billington, Campbell.

Referee: Mr, G. Tedds (Nottingham).

THE GAME

First half

Blackpool lost the toss, defended the north goal, and, after Stanley Matthews had been given a little reception by the centre stand as he positioned himself on the line, nearly lost a goal in the first two minutes- In the first minute, Shimwell chased by Billington, lobbed back a ball to Farm which the goalkeeper could only fingertip away over the line for a corner.

The corner was partly cleared, but another raid was built from it, and in this raid Chelsea almost snatched the lead.

Over came a flying ball. Farm called for it, and could have taken it.

Instead, Wright leaped in front of him and headed it down to a Chelsea forward who glided it half a dozen yards downfield to the fairhaired Bentley.

With his back to the goal, Bentley backheeled it wide of Farm on to Shimwell, who cleared it, with the goalkeeper a couple of yards out of position.

JOHNSTON HURT 

The Blackpool defence seemed to be suspiciously wide open under these advances, and so did the Chelsea defence as soon as the Blackpool forwards raided.

The football, which had opened at a leisurely pace, had soon gone into high gear, and within six minutes this unfortunate Blackpool team found itself playing with a passenger again.

Again it was Harry Johnston who was hurt, the right half pursuing a bouncing ball into a packed defence and falling in a heap under a desperate tackle.

Out he went on to the left flank after he had been given attention, and for a time it; resembled Burnden Park of a week ago with a formation shuffled until in the end McIntosh retired into the vacant right half position.

Twice afterwards Chelsea raided and threatened a goal.

The first time Campbell eluded Crosland after the centre-half had crossed over to an exposed wing, and then flighted over a ball which passed out by the far post, with no other Chelsea forward in position to reach it.

The next time a centre was crossed from the other flank, to be held superbly under the bar by Farm as two men in blue jerseys raced in on him.

Again, too, with the London team’s forwards still moving to an immaculate plan on the Blackpool goal it required an intelligent back pass by McIntosh to deprive Bentley of a shooting position.

NEARLY A GOAL

Mortensen hooks the ball just wide

Attacks were being built, and in one of them, in fact, the lead was nearly taken, Mortensen from a nearly impossible position hooking a shot barely wide of a post after Perry had crossed a free kick into a sparsely-protected goal area.

Chelsea continued to play crisp, progressive football, but seldom built a shooting position, and when one was made shot too soon or from too I6ng range.

Passes were still not coming to Matthews, and, in fact, the centre stand was beginning to chant the old familiar “What about the right wing?” when, after 18 minutes had gone, Johnston went back into the half-back line.

The massing on Mortensen was as perceptible as ever. Four men were on him once inside the penalty area as he went on one lone foray after the loose passes which Blackpool were playing downfield to him too often.

INCONCLUSIVE

There was a greater variety in Chelsea’s football, and yet after that promising opening it was leading nowhere.

The first time for minutes that a goalkeeper was in the game was when Farm parried and cleared a centre by Gray after the wing forward had been put in position by a neat exchange of passes by tile Chelsea inside forwards.

Blackpool’s front line plan was still almost exclusively based on a pursuit by Mortensen of forward passes into closed positions.

Yet once McIntosh found him with a headed pass in an open space and left the leader to chase the ball out almost to a post before lashing at it and missing it entirely.

PACKED GOAL

Matthews free-kick is headed away

Willemse’s tackles on Matthews whenever the right wing forward was given the ball appeared to please nobody in the west paddocks except the London people there.

The referee punished one with a freekick which Matthews took and crossed with the old precision into a packed goalmouth, where a dozen men leaped at it and a Chelsea man was the one to reach it and head it away.

Immediately, too, Bentley, who had raced back to post a closer guard on Matthews, was reprimanded by the referee for his treatment of Shimwell an offence, I think, less deliberate than accidental - and from this free-kick Johnston shot fast and low but wide of a post.

IN RETREAT

It had not yet been the football which these teams usually play when they meet each other, but with half an hour gone it was Chelsea’s defence that was in retreat and under such pressure that from nearly 20 yards out Armstrong gave a corner to hold off the challenging Mortensen.

The corner was worthwhile, as comers so often are to Blackpool, but the Blackpool pressure continued and if only by sheer persistence was beginning to promise something.

After 35 minutes there was a remarkable incident. Crosland made a great tackle and followed it with a long clearance.

Three Blackpool forwards chased it. Mortensen inevitably was one of them in the forefront of the pack, was racing full tilt at the bouncing ball as Harris appeared to pull it down.

It was an offence not detectable from the Press box, but a linesman’s flag was lifted and Mr. Tedds, after leisurely walking towards him, consulted him and took his word for it, and gave a penalty.

PENALTY MISS

Mortensen shot hits a post

This caused such agitation among the Chelsea men that one of them was taken over the line for a lecture before the ball was put in position.

Up to it Mortensen walked, and shot it fast and high and hit a post.

Blackpool’s pressure was fast and furious afterwards.

One centre from the right was snatched from under the bar by Medhurst, and Perry made one great raid down the left wing, before, in a breakaway, Crosland chased Bentley, halted the forward and dispossessed him brilliantly in a scoring position.

FARM’S LEAP

Within a minute, to show that they could still enter this game with something except a retreating force, the debutante Chelsea wing-half, Dickson, shot from 40 yards a ball to which Farm had to leap high to punch it over the bar.

Afterwards, however, it was still nearly all Blackpool, with Matthews racing after one perfect downfield pass by Johnston and losing it inside shooting distance as the nonstop Dickson crossed his path.

Half - time: Blackpool 0, Chelsea 0

Second half

They were saying at half-time that Mortensen would discard his Rio boots during the interval. They were all wrong. He was still wearing them when the second half opened, and Blackpool were soon attacking again with the game revealing a temper unfamiliar in matches between these teams.

A lot of Blackpool pressure produced nothing material, and there was a greater menace in one open Chelsea breakaway until Crosland’s speed enabled him to halt Bentley again.

I counted four free-kicks against Chelsea in a couple of minutes before Mortensen made another position for himself and from it scraped a shot slowly wide.

KELLY STARS

Kelly’s football at this time was magnificent.

Three times in succession he won a tackle against a Chelsea forward, came out of it with the ball, and opened another of those raids which were still constantly hammering on a Chelsea defence too often inclined under pressure to take the man instead of the ball.

Yet once Matthews was given one of those passes for which so often he has to wait too long, whipped past his full-back with it, and crossed a ball which McIntosh shot back fast for Medhurst to reach and parry.

Chelsea were completely outplayed for a time afterwards, had, in fact, scarcely been in the game at all except as a team in a desperate retreat with 15 minutes of the half gone.

And in this retreat these Chelsea men were constantly being guilty of the sort of conduct which is not often countenanced by the Stamford Bridge management.

ALL ONE WAY

Game moves on the Chelsea goal

Farm for a time was merely a spectator of another of those interminable offensives so familiar in Blackpool football this season and yet so unproductive of goals.

Bentley once shot wide of a post after at last he had won the ball from Crosland, but for the rest the game was surging all one way, reaching the penalty area and then coming unexpectedly to a standstill.

Even Shimwell went galloping into the penalty area to aid a forward line pressing relentlessly but still unable to score.

In the end, Chelsea made a random breakaway and nearly went in front. Wright in the end cleared off his own line, with the defence all about him in confusion.

MISSED BALL

A minute afterwards, too, Bentley, beginning to roam according to his habit, crossed a ball which Billington missed completely in a scoring position.

For a time in this unexpected spurt it was, in fact, as nearly all Chelsea as earlier it had been all Blackpool.

And in the middle of it Mortensen and McIntosh changed positions, with the new inside- left repeatedly going back to give his defence the aid which it so unexpectedly required.

McIntosh hit a rising cross shot over the bar in one Blackpool raid which interrupted this Chelsea pressure, but with the game near to its last quarter hour Blackpool’s grip on it had for a time been lost.

SHOT WIDE

A draw was beginning to seem inevitable. One chance came - a chance out of the blue - and McIntosh, back at inside-left again, shot wide of a post as he fell, with Medhurst out of position.

In the end, with only five minutes left, it was a full-back who nearly scored the elusive goal, Shimwell shooting a free- kick from 25 yards which, I think, cannoned off the pack of men in front of him and was spinning wide of Medhurst as the goalkeeper fell to his right, reached it, and beat it out for a corner.

From the corner, too, a centre-half nearly gave Blackpool the lead which the forwards could not win.

PUNCHED AWAY

Crosland leaped at a high ball as it came rising out to him from the milling men in front of him, and headed it so fast that Medhurst, in brilliant action again, had to punch it away with nearly the entire Blackpool forward line swarming about him.

So it continued to the end, with Blackpool raiding, raiding nonstop but in vain.

Two corners were won, but there was no profit in them.

Result:

BLACKPOOL 0

CHELSEA 0

COMMENTS ON THE GAME

IT was the old familiar story again at Blackpool - the story of a Blackpool forward line attacking, attacking and attacking and again not scoring.

The last hour of this game was almost completely in Blackpool’s possession, but a massed Chelsea defence - not so particular as recent Chelsea defences I have seen - sufficed to hold at bay a forward division which could not make shooting positions, or when it made them could not shoot goals from them.

It was, I suppose, the perfect commentary on this season that the last home game should finish in a goalless draw.

The forwards played to a pattern which in midfield had little wrong with it. All that was wrong was that too often there was only one man, Stan Mortensen, in the centre to take the through pass or the centre when it arrived.

That, too, in spite of the tireless game which McIntosh played and the constant raiding of two wing forwards, Matthews and Perry, who stormed repeatedly into the game in the last half-hour.

FIRM DEFENCE

The defence, after earlier uncertainties on its left flank, was as firm as ever against a Chelsea forward line which was ultimately almost played out of the match.

The restoration of Shimwell strengthened this division, and the halfback line had little if anything wrong with it on a day when Crosland was again always a yard too fast for his centre- forward and Kelly was a wing- half without an equal on the field.

It was, in brief, another of those games which Blackpool should have won by a goal or two but which in the end cost a point that a championship-challenging team cannot afford to lose.

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NEXT WEEK: Blackpool season is going out with a kick

THERE is to be the familiar end of the season stampede of fixtures for the Blackpool public. Nobody ever seems to tire of football.

Excluding the minor matches. Blackpool’s two top teams will be concerned in three games next week for which the stakes will probably be high.

Both are to be in action on Wednesday evening.

Back to the Hawthorns the First Division team go to replay the match which the fog terminated 17 minutes from time last November with Blackpool leading 2-1. Not counting that fiasco, it will be the first match Blackpool have played on the West Bromwich Albion ground since the days before the Second World War.

Five visiting teams have won

at the Hawthorns this season and six others drawn. Blackpool may require to do one or the other to remain in the championship chase.

As this match is being played the Reserve will be ending their season in the Central League with a home match against Liverpool Reserve (6.15) which has been advanced from Cup Final day to enable the Anfield club’s playing staff to go to Wembley.

The Central League title may have been won at Leeds this afternoon. If it has not Blackpool may require a point from this midweek match to ensure the title for the first time for 39 years.

Three days later the First Division team will be at Stoke, where, by a coincidence, Blackpool

played last season on the day" when everybody thinks chiefly about Wembley.

Blackpool were beaten 3-2 last year, will not be able to afford this time to lose again.

You would think that after nearly eight months football would be content to pass to a quiet and peaceful end. You would think so - if you didn’t know anything about football.

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SCORING FORWARDS ARE CLOSE-SEASON

PRIORITY NO. 1

Blackpool will sign them if—

By Clifford Greenwood

THREE WEEKS OF THE SEASON LEFT, AND BLACKPOOL CAN STILL WIN THE FIRST DIVISION CHAMPIONSHIP.

That in itself, whether the title is won or lost, shows that the men who govern Blackpool football are not as ignorant of the game as a few of their critics affirm, and that the men who play football for Blackpool are footballers of a higher class than those critics are often prepared to allow.

This position as championship challengers has been achieved, too, without paying one big fee all the season.

It has been retained until this last lap also in spite of the loss of the services during the last two and a quarter months of two such key men as Stanley Matthews and Eric Hayward and a casualty list which at one time or another has contained a few other notable names.

Obviously, therefore, if ever there was a time to praise the club, its management - and Blackpool have one of the best managers in the country - its board and its playing staff that time is the present.

Plain fact

YET, obviously, too, however promising the strength of the club’s reserve resources, one or two priorities will require attention during the approaching close season.

For, standing out as high as the Tower over the landscape of Blackpool, is the fact that the team’s triumphs in the First Division team this season have been won primarily by the defence and could never have been achieved if this defence had not played the great football it has played from the season’s opening day.

NO Blackpool defence in the club’s half-century history has conceded so few goals. Today it has a record unequalled in the three Divisions of the Football League.

So the defence can take a bow and all the bouquets which can be offered it.

The truth is that if the attack had been only half as efficient the title of First Division champions would be held by Blackpool already, so profligately have the other challengers for the championship been losing points during the last month.

But the attack has been Blackpool’s problem child all the time.

Too few goals

TOO few goals have come from the wings - one only all the season, and that forlorn goal in the first match - and, except when Stanley Mortensen has been playing there, too few from the centre-forward position.

It all adds up to the fact that prospecting during the coming summer will have to concern itself to the exclusion of nearly everything else with the signing of forwards who can shoot, head, or otherwise propel a ball past a goalkeeper. And if they can also be big forwards it would be advantageous.

One is not saying that the quest has not been pursued this season. It has and with an unremitting patience, for long ago I think it was realised at Blackpool that however good a source of supply the magnificent reserve team might be for a First Division defence few of its forwards have ever threatened to set the Ribble or the Wyre on fire when they have gone into the first team.

In the money

NEW scoring forwards will be the first priority of the close-season programme. That, I think, is certain.

If you ask me where they are to come from I can only answer “Search me!” but Blackpool have the money to pay for them, and Blackpool, I am convinced, will sign them if the selling clubs can only be persuaded to sell.

SWITCH TO SAFETY

ONE insurance against a repetition of the Burnden Park disaster of 1946 is the installation behind the scenes at the Bolton ground of one of those automatic recorders which flash on a central control panel the number of people passing through every one of the enclosure's turnstiles.

I watched it operating before the Blackpool match last weekend.

Derby County were the first club to have this equipment. Now there are similar installations, I was told, at Wolverhampton, Old Trafford and Millwall.

The pressing of a switch on the panel immediately the maximum permitted in a paddock or on a terrace is reached signals an order to close a turnstile.

At a glance the aggregate attendance can be seen in a maze of flashing figures which resembles a microscopic Piccadilly circus.

***

THE aggregate reached an all- season low for the Blackpool match of 26,843. Never before had so few people watched Blackpool in an away game this season.

The reason for it? The absence of several famous names from the programme may have been a contributing factor. So, too, may the Holcombe point-to-point races a few miles away.

But my opinion is slat the Scotland-England broadcast had more to do with it than anything else.

The Cup Final on the air next weekend will cut attendances to the bone everywhere.

Blackpool were at Stoke on Wembley Day last season - as by a coincidence, Blackpool will be there again next Saturday - and there were not many more than 20.000 on a ground into which

47.000 had been packed for the Cuptie between the clubs earlier in the season.

***

"X" marks the spot

BLACKPOOL are a good 13 “X” for the coupons whenever they play at Bolton.

Last weekend's draw was Blackpool's third in four postwar visits to Burnden Park. It was, too, the eighth 0-0 game for Blackpool this season.

And that, if it interests you, is an all-time record for the Blackpool club.

***

Cash with points

THERE is one record Blackpool can break this season - championship or no championship, writes Clifford Greenwood.

Four points from the last four games, including this afternoon’s match with Chelsea, would give the team 51 points in the First Division.

Prospects are, too, that this year the First Division team may qualify for talent money as one of the first four teams in the Division. If that happens it will be for the first time in Blackpool's history.

The bonuses are £550 for the top team, £440 for the second, £330 for the third, and £220 for the fourth.

***

STRANGE how often players come to Blackpool from Scotland, return over the Border, and make good there.

There is the classic case of Ken Dawson, who scored goals by the dozen for Falkirk, was signed by Blackpool after creating a record as a wing-forward marksman, could not score goals in English football, but went back to Falkirk and began hitting nets all over again.

That happened nearly 12 years ago.

Now there is the case of Bob Gilfillan, who is often among the Cowdenbeath goals these days after being released by Blackpool, and another free-transfer - from Blackpool man, Jimmy Sunter, who is in the Forfar Athletic attack.

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“ATOMIC" GUESTS 

The Blackpool “Atomic Boys" are to be guests of the Blackpool Hippodrome management for the premiere of the football comedy Up for the Cup” on Monday evening.

***

Rio boots

STANLEY MORTENSEN played today in the Chelsea match at Blackpool in a pair of the special hoots in thin leather which have been prepared for the England team on the playing fields of Rio this summer.

Three other England players were wearing these boots in various parts of the country today as a test to find the best model.

***

Reserve are champions

BLACKFOOL Reserve are Central League champions for the first time.

They made certain of finishing on top of the table by their win at Leeds this afternoon.

***

THE MORTENSEN STORY — No. 22

RECALLING THOSE PRE - WEMBLEY DAYS

THE end of his famous “hat trick” match against the ’Spurs in the 1948 Cup semi-final and the tribulations which beset the team during the weeks before Wembley two years ago are narrated in this instalment of “Football Is My Game,” the Stanley Mortensen autobiography.

The clamour for Final tickets - the fantastic offers for them - “We heard of a refrigerator offered for a dozen,” Mortensen writes - are recalled, and the critics answered who complained of the allotment made to the players.

A goal famine beset Blackpool as the Final approached. “It may have been some kind of ‘Cup- final-itis’ says Stan. But whatever it was it caused serious concern behind the scenes. Then, not a fortnight before Wembley, Ronnie Suart was hurt.

GOALS, TICKETS IN SHORT SUPPLY

By Stanley Mortensen

WHAT AN ESCAPE FOR BLACKPOOL = THAT EQUALISING GOAL FOUR MINUTES FROM TIME!

In all the excitement I remember thinking “That makes up for the miss,” and then I saw Stan. Matthews’ face. Talk about Cinderella when the fairy godmother arrived! I have never seen a human being whose countenance showed such a picture of surprise or happiness.

Extra time had to be played, and we trooped to the sidelines to have a wet sponge dabbed over our faces before the captains tossed again and the game was restarted.

The scene during this brief interval must have been an amazing one for those able to spare time to appreciate it. Blackpool supporters were jubilant, and favours were being waved and rattles whirled around.

And on the field - read how one journalist described the scene:

“That goal, coming so near to the finish, coming so close to what had seemed victory and Wembley, depressed and dispirited the 'Spurs. 

"They moved towards the touch-line for the sponge with their heads down and their shoulders hunched, while the Blackpool lads skipped and danced towards the centre all eager for extra time.

"Hat trick"

BLACKPOOL were on top of the world. That last-period goal was a marvellous tonic. It was as if one team had already won and the other had lost. Blackpool could have scored six goals in extra time and no one would have begrudged them their due. Ditchburn alone saved ’Spurs from a rout.”

We didn’t get six, but we did get two more; and I had the personal thrill of completing a “hat trick.”

Both my extra-time goals were headers, taken on the half-turn from Wally Rickett. One was from a comer-kick, the other from a centre, and in each case the ball came along just fast enough for me to flick it.

One header I half-saw go into the net, but the other I only knew had counted because of the shout. I was charged as I headed the ball and was flat on the ground as the ball went in.

Confidence

IN extra time we played really well.

Stanley Matthews put over a rain of centres, and for half an hour we gave, I think, an exhibition of attacking play which we rarely equalled all season. With the added confidence that came to us we realised that Tottenham were a tired team, we held the ball, moved slickly into our places, and found each other with passes.

After the game the crowd raced across the pitch, and instead of walking off a compact XI, the Blackpool players were soon split into little groups, fighting their way to the dressing rooms.

I was half-carried, half-lifted off the ground, and the rest of the Blackpool players came in for same good-hearted treatment in the way of back-slapping, handshakes and embraces.

Showpiece

IT was almost worthwhile to have left the effort so late, but don’t do it. Go for the lead in a Cuptie or any other match.

There was a long interval between the semi-final and the Final of the Cup - too long, in my opinion. 

As it happened, the quality of the football was not affected, and Blackpool and Manchester United served up at Wembley the kind of play to fit the showpiece of the football year.

Six goals were scored, the lead changed hands in a way which kept the supporters of both sides dizzy. There was some magnificent football, fast, clean, intelligent, and attractive in its design.

But the unfortunate players, the club officials, and above all those players’ and officials’ wives, suffered quite a lot between March 13 and April 24. The clamour for tickets was incessant, and it was nothing for complete strangers to knock at the front door of players’ houses or to telephone.

Fantastic

TN Blackpool, where we have a “cosmopolitan” population, there were fantastic offers for tickets - if one believed half one heard. Usually the stories reached one at second or third hand so that it was impossible to test of the truth of them, but players heard that a new refrigerator was offered for a dozen tickets, and so on.

Of course, the players had an allotment of tickets from the club. Even this was criticised in some quarters, but surely it is fair on two grounds: Firstly, the players make the Cup Final; secondly, aren’t the tickets distributed by players more likely to get into the hands of genuine supporters and enthusiasts than those shared out by any other means?

As for the team in action during the weeks of waiting, we had our troubles.

Worrying

SHORTLY before the biggest of all days for footballers directly concerned, we became completely unable to score goals consistently.

We were still a good team, often dominating midfield play, with young Kelly improving with every game, but in front of goal we were helpless.

Against Manchester United’s defence we would have to be at our best to have any chance at all. and it was worrying for every one that for the time being we had lost the knack of getting the ball into the net.

It may have been some kind of Cup-finalitis which attacked us, although the signs of such were not obvious. In the dressing- room we were quite happy and free from nerves, and no one seemed to be holding back. But the goals would not come.

Injury

AND then Ronnie Suart damaged his ankle.

This was serious, because Ronnie had been in smashing form all season and was one of the strong links in our defence. So, as Final day drew nearer, we hoped for the best and watched poor Ronnie undergoing treatment for a swollen ankle which didn’t seem to want to get better.

It was obstinate - and nine or 10 months later I was to realise just how awkward a turned ankle could prove. This injury, I do believe, is worse than a cartilage case. A fairly simple operation will take out a cartilage, but a twisted ankle seems to call for a too-long rest.

Sea front

A FEW days before we  journeyed South for the Final Manager Joe Smith decided that our own ground was too bare of grass to give us proper appreciation of Wembley conditions.

So we went on to the seafront at Lytham, where there is a stretch of thick turf, for a kick-about to get accustomed to the different bounce of the ball.

So before a crowd of a few hundred people - almost all carrying autograph albums - we had an enjoyable morning on the seafront - at least all of us save one.

While photographers snapped the unusual scene, 100 yards or so away. Ron Suart was dangling his ankle in the sea, hoping to strengthen it in time for the Big Day.

Next week

The forward line change ... Was it justified?

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