4 January 1947 Wolverhampton Wanderers 3 Blackpool 1
BLACKPOOL CRASH IN THE SECOND HALF
Lead vanishes in 12 fatal minutes
RAMPANT WOLVES
Wolves 3, Blackpool 1
By “Spectator”
THEY were saying at Wolverhampton before the match today that it would be 3-0 or 4-0 for the all-conquering Wanderers.
Few seemed to think Blackpool were in the game except to make a Midlands holiday for the 35.000 people packed into the ground a quarter of an hour before the kickoff.
Only Mr. Ted Vizard, the Wanderers' manager, who met today his former Bolton Wanderers partner, Mr. Joe Smith, was inclined to be a little cautious.
“You never know in this game,” he said when I talked to him at lunch.
The Wanderers took the field without Galley and Mullen, and played a recruit full-back, Pritchard.
Blackpool, who played in white, gave another game to the men who defeated Huddersfield last week.
It was still, a cold day. I was told that the pitch was as the Wanderers prefer it - a little firm on top and with plenty of mud beneath.
Teams:
WOLVERHAMPTON WANDERERS: Williams, McLean, Pritchard, Crook, Cullis, Wright, King, Pye Westcott, Forbes and Hancocks.
BLACKPOOL: Wallace, Shimwell, Sibley, Farrow, Suart, Johnston, Nelson, Dick, Mortensen, Buchan (W.), and McIntosh
Referee: Mr. A. Baker (Crewe).
THE GAME
Ambulance men treated casualties before the teams appeared in front of an excited attendance, bordering on 60,000. The gates were closed and thousands locked out.
It was by thousands the biggest crowd in front of which Blackpool have played this season. There was all the atmosphere of a cup-tie.
When Johnston won the toss, Blackpool took the aid of what little wind was blowing.
Two grand clearances by Shimwell halted the Wolves’ left wing before Crook ended a mid by shooting high over Except when Mortensen served Nelson with a too fast pass, Blackpool were not over the half way line in the first three minutes.
In that time Westcott might have given the Wanderers an early lead, but shot wide from a position where he must have scored once or twice this season.
It was open, fast and yet not exciting football.
Dick headed into Williams’s arms after Mortensen had escaped on the left wing and crossed a centre which any wing-forward would not have disowned.
NOT OUTPLAYED
Blackpool make use of long pass
Blackpool were not outplayed. Nobody seemed able to understand it. Now and again, long passes were missing their men, but at least they were long passes.
Farrow drove one of his free-kick specials into a mass of men five yards outside the Wolves’ penalty area, and before the raid ended Mortensen twice hooked shots wide, the second from a perfect free kick lobbed into a packed goal area by Shimwell.
The Division leaders were not finding it all their own way.
A grand headed interception by Suart put the brake on Westcott when the centre-forward went chasing a long forward pass.
But a minute later this tearaway leader was past every other man in Blackpool’s defence? before Wallace gallantly dived at his feet.
Yet, all against the form-book, it was Blackpool who were playing the fast ordered football.
Shimwell’s game had a new confidence and assurance in it. All his clearances revealed decision and had great length.
Blackpool were raiding repeatedly with 20 minutes gone, seldom reaching a scoring position but still outplaying the Wanderers. There was nothing for nearly 60,000 people to cheer.
OVER THE BAR
Farrow shot over the bar from a corner as the pressure continued.
Nothing was happening, at this time, according to plan. It was no picnic for the Wanderers.
Johnston nearly brushed the foot of a post in another all-out Blackpool raid.
This was the sort of football which Blackpool never played against Huddersfield last week. Even the Wanderers’ fans were beginning to applaud it.
At last the Wanderers’ front line began to enter the game, but except for grand headed clearances by Sibley, Suart and Johnston the Blackpool goal was never under fire.
Yet the Blackpool goal might have fallen in the 20th minute as a bouncing ball eluded two Blackpool men, passed in front of Westcott, and was cleared anywhere from him by Wallace.
A minute later, too, the big Scot had to leave his goal to make another nose-dive at the feet of Westcott, the only Wolf during the first 35 minutes to reveal a trace of bite.
Blackpool were no longer in complete command as the interval approached, yet were entitled still to be level and might have been in front.
- THEN A GOAL
In another Wanderers raid Shimwell brilliantly held Westcott and Hancocks on his own. It had been a great first half for the new full-back.
The entire Blackpool defence was steady with him in it.
In the 43rd minute of the half Blackpool deservedly took the lead. It was a goal perfect in design and everything else.
Buchan opened the raid, and swerved past two men near the half-way line.
Dick called for a pass, took it in the inside-left position, brushed McLean out of his path, and crossed the ball.
MORTENSEN, with a big leap, headed wide of the falling Williams’ right hand for his 15th goal of the season.
Blackpool were entitled to this interval lead.
Half-time: Wolves 0, Blackpool 1.
SECOND HALF
The Wanderers went on in the second half with the intention of showing that everything which had happened in the first half had been all wrong.
They nearly showed it in the second minute when Pye took a square pass and shot a ball fast and hard.
The 60,000 people were shouting, “Goal!” as Wallace fell full length to his left and punched the ball out for a comer which was not repelled until a ferocious attack had lasted some time.
The Wanderers meant business this time. Yet Dick twice opened raids for Blackpool which ended out on the wing where there had been little punch all the afternoon.
WOLVES ON TERMS
In the seventh minute of the half the Wanderers were on terms in storming flat out pressure.
A free-kick was lobbed high into a goalmouth thick with men. A rising shot came out of the pack Wallace punched it out with both fists, and was still crouched on his hands as the tall PYE darted to the loose ball and hooked it high and fast into the net.
Blackpool were still not completely out of it. Williams cleared under the bar as Mortensen challenged him before the Wanderers came back with a raid on the right and Wallace held a high shot lashed at him almost from the line by King.
Yet a goal for the Wolves, hammering away every minute, was only delayed.
In the 15th minute of the half the Division leaders went in front as FORBES took a forward pass from Westcott and shot high into the net as Wallace fell vainly at his feet, with the Blackpool defence scattered far and wide for the first time in the afternoon.
The Wanderers were playing at last as First Division leaders are expected to play - fast, direct and aggressive.
Few defences could have held them. Sibley hooked a ball off the line of an empty goal, but in the 20th minute of the half it was 3-1
This time, as the second of two centres raked his goal Wallace leaped at the flying ball, lost it as WESTCOTT hurled himself at him in mid air and was sprawling on the grass as the leader hooked the ball into an empty goal.
The game was lost in those 12 dramatic minutes.
It was merely a case of waiting for the finish.
Blackpool were reduced to Mortensen breakaways in the end.
Result:
WOLVES 3 (Pye 52 min, Forbes 60 min, Westcott 65 min)
BLACKPOOL 1 (Mortensen 43 min)
COMMENTS ON THE GAME
For 45 minutes, Blackpool were giving the Wanderers a lesson in ordered and composed football, with fast, low passes, each pass finding its man.
Blackpool might have won the game in this first half, but only two forwards. Mortensen and Dick, revealed the punch required, They made copybook raids, but the wing forwards could not make any progress.
The defence, until the last quarter of an hour, played nothing but good football.
Farrow and Johnston were giving passes out to both wings before the interval to a forward line which never made sufficient use of them.
It was, however, Shimwell's game in partnership with Sibley which was the highlight today.
NOT SUCH A BAD OLD YEAR
- But Blackpool look ahead
By “Spectator”
This Blackpool team, too, has already won in 24 matches only three fewer points than the relegation team of 1932-33 was able to collect in the entire 42.
The hunt continues, too.
Blackpool have at last the money to spend, and, before this season ends, I think it will be spent.
They don’t think at Blackpool that they have the perfect team yet. But they do think - and with good reason - that it’s not been such a Bad Old Year.
Jottings from all parts
BY "SPECTATOR" 4 January 1947
A 1-1 draw was the result. Blackpool's goal was shot in the first half-minute by Frank O'Donnell. That was a story in itself, for in its two previous games - the games which opened the last full pre-war season - the forwards had not scored a goal.
The men in tangerine on September 3, 1938, were:
Roxburgh; Blair (D.), Sibley, Farrow, Hayward, Johnston, Munro, Buchan, O’Donnell (F.), Blair (J.) and Dawson.
Seven out of eight points, including the Charlton game, were won by the First Division team. Seven out of eight were won by the Reserve, too.
Not a lot of goals had to be scored to win them, either.
The first team shot only five - two of them penalties - to win those seven points, and the second team won five of their seven points with three goals.
But how many does he make for the other forwards?
Why in one Blackpool wartime team, when the front line shot 140 in a season, his contribution to the list was exactly two!
He perfected the technique during the summer. He has had three penalties to take this season. He has converted the three of them as if it were all as easy as shelling peas - as, of course, in theory, it should be.
Although you know what so often happens in practice.
At last Mr. David Steele, the Huddersfield manager, made a semi-capitulation, promising that if ever Metcalfe left Leeds- road, the County should be given first option on his signature. That turned the scale.
He had a triumph that day against the two Blackpool Watsons - Albert and Phil. Neither could hold him.
From his passes the ’Spurs scored their three goals in a 3-1 win.
But it still remains a fact that the player has the last word. I can quote one case this season. When Jackie Robinson left Sheffield Wednesday for Sunderland there was another North- Eastern club in the field offering £2,000 more than Sunderland’s figure.
“ But,” said Robinson, “ I want to go to Sunderland . . . Sorry and all that.”
He went to Sunderland - and the Wednesday lost £2,000.
ONE of these days a Blackpool forward is going to score more than one goal in a match again.
Stan Mortensen, who had scored 14 goals before this afternoon’s game at Wolverhampton, has yet to do it. He has compiled his total one goal at a time.
The only forwards who have! broken this "1...1...1” sequence are George Eastham, who scored twice at Sunderland, and Willie Buchan, who had two against Brentford and three against Portsmouth. That “hat trick” - the last time a Blackpool forward broke this one-goal hoodoo-was as long ago as September 23.
FOOTBALL CURIO: Blackpool lost five goals in an hour and a half to Middlesbrough. In the next four games - six hours’ football - the defence conceded only two.
No figure has been disclosed by Blackpool or Sheffield United, but I hear from a Sheffield source that the transfer fee paid by Blackpool for Edmund Shimwell was £7,000.
They think at Blackpool that it may be one of the bargains of the year.
This was as nearly a model transfer as such a transaction can be in these ballyhoo days.
There were no preliminary headlines - no closed-door conferences - no undignified bartering. It was all settled in less than a couple of hours.
The player was left to choose between Barnsley and Blackpool.
He chose Blackpool because he preferred to play in the First Division.
THE Christmas holidays have handicapped the committee, but early in the New Year it is hoped to set many new schemes in motion.
The committee are reminded of the meeting at the ground at 7-30 p.m. on Tuesday, January 7, and soon after that meeting a general meeting of all members will be called to elect the permanent committee and discuss activities.
A dance has been arranged for early in the New Year.
ARRANGEMENTS have been completed for the visit to Sheffield for the Cup-tie with the Wednesday on January 11. The coaches will leave the ground at 8-30 a.m., so book your seats early and give the team the encouragement they deserve.
Leave a Comment