8 April 1950 Blackpool 2 Arsenal 1
Direct - action attack, unyielding defence bring team victory
CHANGES A SUCCESS
Blackpool 2, Arsenal 1
By “Clifford Greenwood”
STANLEY MATTHEWS, THE ENGLAND AND BLACKPOOL FORWARD, IS NOT YET FIT, COULD NOT PLAY AGAINST ARSENAL AT BLACKPOOL THIS AFTERNOON.
He went to the ground for a test at noon, reported at the end of it, “I'm not yet 100 per cent and Manager Joe Smith, accepting the decision, immediately began shuffling the forward line which was in the Everton defeat at Goodison Park yesterday.
A big-scale shuffle it was, too. Two men only who played at Everton - Stan Mortensen and Bill Perry -were left in the line when it was completed, and they were not in the positions in which they had appeared 24 hours earlier.
The attack was led by Mortensen - a dress rehearsal for the Hampden Park match next week in which he will lead the England forwards - with Perry crossing to outside- right.
Introduced as Perry’s partner in his First Division baptism was the other South African, 24-year-old Gordon Falconer.
It was the first time Blackpool had fielded an all-South African wing in big-time football.
Recalled as the left wing were Andv McCall, the little Scot whose last game in the First Division was on February 25 and Billy Wardle, who last played for the first team at Liverpool in the League match on March 8.
GARRETT BACK
With Eddie Shimwell, who was hurt yesterday, out of the defence, Tom Garrett came back to it after an absence of two months.
Arsenal, who came trailing extra clouds of glory as one of the teams with a date at Wembley, on April 29, had no engagement yesterday, spent the night in Manchester, and came to town in time for lunch at the County Hotel.
Joe Mercer, the ex-Everton and England wing half who watched Blackpool’s defeat at Goodison Park yesterday, was in an Arsenal team which included 10 men who will probably be playing in the Final three weeks today, among them the famous Brothers Compton, Denis and Leslie.
PACKED GROUND
The gale was still blowing in gusts from the south-west corner flag but had subsided appreciably since the early morning, and, in fact, the sun was shining early in the afternoon on a ground packed to capacity with 32,000 inside gates which half an hour before kick-off time were being closed in rapid succession.
First half
Blackpool won the toss, and Harry Johnston took the wind’s aid.
Taller in nearly every position, pounds heavier almost everywhere, Arsenal played studied, precise football in the early minutes without ever building a raid which progressed many yards beyond the halfway line.
Both forward lines, in fact, were held completely for a time or constantly deceived by the pall’s pounce.
There was not a raid with the threat of a goal in it until Forbes, almost in slow motion, lobbed forward speculatively a ball which Farm snatched off Lishman’s head as the inside-left chased it.
FORBES CLEARS
Forbes was soon in the game again, won the first big cheer of the afternoon with an almost theatrical clearance inside his own penalty area.
Within a minute Johnston won another cheer as he took a loose bouncing ball and shot it back so fast that Swindin had to dive to his right to beat it out by a post.
Within the next minute, too, with Blackpool raiding continuously, Wardle crossed a centre so perfectly that Mortensen, in a big leap at it near the far post, missed it only by the width of the famous cat’s whisker.
IN COMMAND
Defences show their strength
There were early signs that these two defences were capable of commanding this game and blotting out the forwards.
Only the long pass threatened to open them out, and long passes, for a time, were conspicuous by their absence.
It was curiously quiet and at times almost leisurely football in the first 10 minutes, during which neither goalkeeper was on anything approaching overtime.
Falconer created one raid with a sinuous swerving run halfway across the field, but it was a raid which ended as so many had been ending before it on the massed ranks of the Arsenal defence.
MORTENSEN’S LEAP
Yet the two South Africans on Blackpool’s right wing outwitted it once by a swift interchange of passes and when Perry crossed the last pass it nearly produced a goal
For Mortensen was waiting in an unexpectedly open position, leaped at it, and headed it down so fast that it either hit a post or was parried by Swindin as the goalkeeper crouched near this post.
That was an escape for Arsenal and prefaced a storming series of raids by Blackpool.
One of them won a corner, Others revealed that even this Arsenal defence could -be lured or stormed out of position, even with the 6ft. 2in. of Leslie Compton towering in its centre and heading away everything which came at him in the air.
BIG GAP
One great gap gaped again in the 23rd minute. McCall saw it, glided a pass into it, and left Mortensen to chase it and lash it wide of the goal.
Afterwards Blackpool’s direct and aggressive front line was threatening repeatedly to stampede the Cup finalists’ defence into panic.
It was seldom that the Arsenal attack ever reached Blackpool territory.
Once when it crossed the halfway line, Goring was rebuked by the referee for playing a sort of roughhouse leap-frog with Crosland, and when Denis Compton walked into the centre to protest against the referee’s award of a freekick he was ordered back to his wing by Mr. Flanagan.
BLACKPOOL AHEAD
Rain of shots, and then a Falconer goal
Two minutes later, the 25th minute of the half, Blackpool went in front with a goal which before the ball crossed the line reduced Arsenal’s defence to utter chaos.
Three shots in succession rained on to this besieged goal before it fell with the Kop in a tumult and 30,000 people in a state bordering on dementia.
Mortensen’s first shot hit a full-back’s foot, cannoned off it on to the post, came out, and was twice afterwards cleared on the line.
Then GORDON FALCONER raced into the swarm and with Swindin sprawling under his bar and his defence scattered, shot a fast rising ball into the net for his first goal in big-time football in this country.
Afterwards Arsenal were in a complete and often bewildered retreat.
REFEREE’S REBUKE
Denis Compton’s protest against another decision ended in another rebuke for him by the referee.
Then, eight minutes after Blackpool had taken the lead in a breakaway, it was lost.
There was a fatal split second of hesitation out on Blackpool’s right flank of defence.
While two men hesitated and their goalkeeper raced out to redeem the error, the aggressive GORING raced between them, brushed off one challenge, and from only a couple yards inside the penalty area lobbed forward perfectly a ball which sailed slowly inches below the bar of an empty goal. Not even this goal made any particular difference to the game’s course
IN RETREAT
It was still about 80 per cent. Blackpool, with Arsenal’s defence, against the wind and the hurricane pace of the Blackpool forwards, going back everywhere Forbes lashed the ball over the line for a corner almost as if he, big-hearted player as he is, was seeking a rest, and the corner Had not been repelled before Perry, always hunting for goals, took the ball in the centre-forward position and hooked it over his own head and barely over the bar.
FREE-KICKS
Too many free-kicks were still being given against Arsenal. Too often Mr. Flanagan was addressing a word of reprimand to one or other of them.
It was not the sort of football one expects of a team from a Highbury club.
Blackpool could have been leading by a goal or two at the interval.
Half-time: Blackpool 1, Arsenal 1
Second half
Three minutes of the second half only had gone when Blackpool went in front for the second time. This was the sort of goal they teach in the text books.
Kelly retrieved a ball which was apparently straying into “no man’s land,” released a pass to McCall. The little Scot took it, heard a call for a long pass, and lobbed it far down field wide of Leslie Compton.
After the pass went the man who had asked for it, STANLEY MORTENSEN, left the big centre-half standing, found himself all alone in front of Swindin, and shot past him for another goal which had the Kop and the terraces delirious with joy.
Within a minute, on the wings of the wind, Arsenal’s forwards swooped as a line into the game at last and nearly made it 2-2.
FARM IN ACTION
Freddie Cox, the comer-kick goal specialist, darted after a long forward pass, reached it, and shot so fast and low that Farm had to hold the ball as he fell in a heap at the foot of the near post.
Twice afterwards, with Arsenal raiding at last, with punch and decision, Farm was in close-range action with Goring, and three minutes after Blackpool had taken the lead it was nearly lost again.
This time Farm came out to make a challenge to a raiding left wing, lost the ball, and was far away from home as Lishman lobbed it slowly back again.
Across to meet it raced Wright, halted it on the line, and within a yard of the far post calmly stabbed it to a standstill before clearing it.
JUST IN TIME
Barnes clears from feet of Falconer
Within another two minutes Blackpool were almost as near a goal.
With the ball bouncing loose half a dozen yards off Arsenal’s goal line Barnes came fast across to whip it off the feet of Falconer as the South African moved a shade late to it with the goal gaping in front of him Fifteen minutes of the half had gone and the Arsenal, massing for a corner kick, had a man hurt, and a key man, too, as the ball came across
Up to the flying ball leaped Leslie Compton, collided in mid-air with a Blackpool man, faded out for the full count, and after attention went out, dazed, on to the left wing, with Joe Mercer moving into the empty centre-half position.
Afterwards, in spite of this shuffle of forces, the game, as in the first half, went the way of the wind, with Arsenal’s forwards raiding as they had never raided before half-time.
UNDER PRESSURE
Blackpool’s defence under this pressure never looked anything except compact, and yet it was pressure which continued on and on and was definitely, with 20 minutes of the half gone, a little ominous.
One regrets to report that Arsenal were still too often playing the man, and too often playing, too, martyred innocence whenever they were penalised.
Two more men were rebuked, one of them for questioning another of Mr. Flanagan’s decisions before a third man came under this referee’s displeasure.
The Arsenal continued to press, but not, unfortunately, to play anything except hit or miss football.
After 10 minutes on the wing Leslie Compton went back again to the centre-half position and Blackpool’s immediate answer was to win a corner via the aggressive nonstop Mortensen.
FEWER RAIDS
Fifteen minutes were left, Blackpool were still leading, and Arsenal’s raids were becoming fewer again.
Perry lost one chance as the ball bounced awkwardly for him lashing McCall’s pass wide from a scoring position after half losing it.
A minute later, taking Denis Compton’s neat backheel pass. Forbes shot through a pack of men a ball which Farm reached but could not hold, snatching it up as he fell full length on his line.
STRONG FINISH
Arsenal attacks keep Farm busy
It was still open, with the Arsenal’s forwards storming in under a full head of steam as the end approached.
Repeatedly Farm was in action, snatching up long passes which the wind was taking away fast from the pursuing Arsenal forward pack.
Five minutes were left and Freddie Cox nearly repeated his famous Cuptie goal against Chelsea direct from the corner flag.
Another minute had gone and Denis Compton discovered himself all alone in front of Farm and hit a bouncing ball straight on to the goalkeeper’s chest.
It was a massed Blackpool defence against a constantly- raiding Arsenal front line - a defence which conceded another corner, went back and back but still stood firm.
Yet in the last half minute, just to show that there was one last kick left, the tiring, courageous Blackpool won a corner.
Result:
BLACKPOOL 2 (Falconer 25, Mortensen 48)
ARSENAL 1 (Goring 33)
COMMENTS ON THE GAME
YESTERDAY it was all depression after the Goodison Park defeat. Today after this barnstorming defeat of Arsenal it was all jubilation.
That is football. Up and down and up again.
The Blackpool front line gamble paid a 100 per cent, dividend. The right wing flank from South Africa had a match of infinite promise until Falconer, always making his passes with the intelligence of the cultured footballer, ran himself nearly to a standstill.
All the afternoon Perry was a raider demanding and exacting respect - a forward who knew the direct route to goal and took it.
This line scorned today the complex move, often had raids built for it by the footcraft of McCall and possessed in Mortensen a spearhead centre-forward playing in his England form.
LINK RESTORED
The broken link yesterday between half-backs and forwards was repaired in this match, with Johnston and Kelly constantly putting the line into the game constantly retreating, too, to the aid of a defence which always seemed less vulnerable to shock raids than Arsenal’s taller rearguard.
There was not a lot in it in the end, but Blackpool’s first - half football alone deserved the points, and the valiant resolution afterwards ensured them.
Arsenal have now been to Blackpool six times since 1937 without winning one match, and five of the six have been lost.
They must be glad that Bloomfield-road is not Wembley.
GOAL THAT MORTENSEN DID NOT WANT TO CLAIM
Blackpool 2, Arsenal 1
(Mortensen 2) (Goring)
STRANGE sequel to the violent explosions which sabotaged Arsenal at Blackpool on Saturday is that Stanley Mortensen, the charge of dynamite from the north-east, has today a goal which he does not want among the 105 he has now scored for Blackpool in postwar football.
It was the first of the two that defeated the Cup finalists.
Everybody, which includes not only the 32,000 people packed inside the ground but the 22
players in the two teams, gave it to 24 -year-old Gordon Falconer, the elegant South African playing in his first game in the First Division.
Three shots cannoned out - two off men on the line, and one, the first, off the foot of a post—before the forward who had come 4,000 miles to play in English football volleyed it into the net.
OVER THE LINE
Only when the game was over was the news released that Referee B. J. Flanagan, of Sheffield, had given a goal from the first shot of this barrage, had decreed that the ball had skidded over the line from the post.
And the forward who had made the shot was the mercurial mile-a-minute Mortensen, who, told that it was his goal, said “Aw, but give it to Falconer all the same - it’d be the first he’d ever had.”
The referee’s decision, however, is, as they say in newspaper competitions, final, and so to Stan Mortensen’s name there are now entered 22 First Division goals in the record this morning instead of 21.
TEAM WORK
Arsenal stampeded in first half
Not that it’s all that material.
One man shot the two goals that won the game, as he has a habit of shooting them, but it was a team that sent Arsenal into a full-tilt stampede on the wings of the wind in the first half and held the Highbury men by a resolute and dauntless resistance late in the game.
It was a team superbly fit, as It had to be meeting a heavyweight Arsenal who entered the match after a Good Friday rest, a Blackpool team that pulled out all the stops, whose remodelled forward line was one of the greatest gambles of this season to come off triumphantly.
The new right wing from Johannesburg had in it all those direct qualities which Blackpool front line football has not always had this season.
PERRY’S PLUCK
Young Perry obviously is prepared to chase a ball and to take It on to a goal on whichever wing he plays, and his partner, who resembles young David Jack, is a W. J. Slater in a South African edition, a shade hesitant at the last split second, yet but a master of the deft pass with the running ball.
This time, too, with the ground firm, the Scot, McCall, revealed What a fine ball player he is, and contributing to this re-establishment of an old firm, Wardle, always preferring the unorthodox to the orthodox move, often outwitted his full - back and specialised in the centre, which invites goals.
GARRETT A STAR
It is sufficient to write of the defence that it never went into the panic which so often assailed the Arsenal’s, that the half-back line often made the Forbes-Leslie Compton-Mercer line-up seem comparatively commonplace, and that Tom Garrett’s football, the decision of his clearances alone, make it evident that the First Division is his natural habitat.
One’s only complaint about this match is that too many of the Arsenal men were so fretful under the referee’s deserved rebukes, so petulant on the least pretext and sometimes- on no pretext at ajl.
Some of them will have to mend their manners before they go to Wembley.
LAST lap of the Easter golden mile at Blackpool on Monday.
To town come Everton searching for points as precious for an escape from relegation as the points for which Blackpool will be playing in the quest at the other end of the table.
Everton have lost eight goals and not scored one - 3-0 last season and 5-0 in 1947-48 - on their last two visits to Bloomfield-road; in fact, they have not a goal to their name at Blackpool since the Easter Monday of 1947, when Jock Dodds scored a couple in a dramatic and unexpected 3-0 defeat of Blackpool.
In theory it is a big slice of cake for Blackpool, but as crazy results are the order rather than the exception at holiday times, and Blackpool’s home form is notoriously up and down, one is inclined to begin counting points from this game only when they have been won.
Five days later there will be another all-Lancashire match on Blackpool’s fixture card, and again not only the championship problem, but the relegation dog-fight, too, may be affected by it, with Bolton Wanderers, on the eve of the Easter programme, not yet completely out of the wood.
Blackpool have a record at Bolton at strange variance with the record of a team that for years could not beat a Bolton team at Blackpool.
In three postwar visits one game only has been lost, and that by the only goal. In the other two Blackpool played draws, and in the last one held at one time a 2-0 lead after Stanley Mortensen had scored his 100th goal in all grades of football for the club.
As four visiting teams have won and another five drawn at Bolton this season, Blackpool, with 19 away points already in the locker this season, must presumably have a chance.
DOUBLE-TIER STANDS
MAY BE KEY TO BIGGER GROUND
They’ve done it at Derby
By Clifford Greenwood
***
THE MORTENSEN STORY — No. 20
That ’Spurs semi-final will never be forgotten
FIFTEEN-GOALS-TO-NONE
WEMBLEY YEAR
By Stanley Mortensen
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