20 September 1947 Blackpool 0 Sunderland 1

SUNDERLAND’S SNAP GOAL BEATS BLACKPOOL

No marksman in home forwards

DEFENCE WAS GOOD

Blackpool 0, Sunderland 1

By “Spectator”

SIX Scots - five forwards and the goalkeeper - and five Englishmen - all the half-backs and full-backs - were fielded by Blackpool in their game with Sunderland, at Bloomfield-road this afternoon. You could call them the Anglo-Scots today.

Sunderland, who are still losing points at home, and forfeited a couple to Blackburn Rovers a week ago, included Jack Robinson, the little inside-left from the Wednesday, who, almost as fast as you could say “Jack Robinson,” shot four of the five goals which gave this Roker Park team the sensational success in the corresponding match last season.

The early season boom is waning. Today the long queues were gone, stand tickets were on sale until shortly before the match. The attendance, nevertheless approached 23,000 when the teams appeared.

Hundreds of visitors from the north-east where football is almost a religion were on the terraces.

Teams:

BLACKPOOL: Wallace; Shimwell, Suart, Lewis, Hayward, Johnston, Munro, Buchan (W.), Dick, McCall, McCormack.

SUNDERLAND: Mapson; Stelling, Walsh, Scotson, Hall, Wright, Duns, Lloyd, Davis, Robinson, Reynolds.

Referee: Mr. T. Seymour (Wakefield).

THE GAME

Harry Johnston won the toss and decided to defend the north goal. There was not a lot in it for scarcely a breath of wind blew on an afternoon close and humid.

In Blackpool’s opening raids Dick and Buchan served to the wings perfect long passes which never came back.

In the third attack there was a casualty. Dick leaped at McCormack’s high centre, collided with the goalkeeper, took the sort of count which once or twice he took in the ring when he was a cruiserweight.

Down fell the goalkeeper, too. Into the open goal area Munro lobbed a high ball which was cleared.

SUNDERLAND REPLY

Twice, afterwards, the Blackpool goal was under fire. The first time Lewis crossed to halt a raid which was forcing a path past a confused left flank of defence.

The second time when Shimwell passed back a slow bouncing ball to Wallace, Lloyd raced in so fast to intercept it that the goal keeper had to take a dive at his feet on the edge of the area.

When McCall, the little inside- left, came into the game, he raced into an open space on the other wing before releasing a pass which Dick lost to a massed defence as he was reaching shooting position.

McCall shot into the arms of Mapson from 20 yards a ball which the Sunderland goalkeeper took with complete composure.

LOT OF CHASING

There was a lot of chasing of a light bouncing ball but not a lot of football, no great promise of goals in spite of an uncertainty now and again betraying itself in both defences.

McCall was in nearly every Blackpool raid, opened another, called for a return pass, and when it was given Mm half hit a shot which cannoned out for a corner - a comer which ended in McCormack lobbing the ball over the bar with the Sunderland defence in confusion.

LITTLE PUNCH

But Blackpool do most of raiding

Blackpool were raiding two or three times for every time the Sunderland forwards crossed the halfway line, but there was little punch at close quarters, earnestly as Dick raced after everything.

After snatching out of a pack of men a ball crossed high from the corner flag by Duns, Wallace fielded a shot from a Sunderland full-back, Walsh, who took a chance from the halfway line.

The game was fast, but scoring positions were scarce. Sunderland won another corner after Munro had raced fast into an open space and crossed a ball which half a dozen men missed in front of Sunderland’s goal.

SUNDERLAND SCORE

In a game in which no one had been shooting, a shot in a hundred by a wing half gave Sunderland the lead in the 25th minute.

It followed a third Sunderland corner on the right. The ball, after being crossed, was beaten out.

Standing loose, in a scrum half’s position, SCOTSON hit it as it rolled towards him, leaped high in the air in joy as in the next half second it hit the back of the net with Wallace, still in mid-air, beaten by the ball’s great pace as it rose wide of him.

Two minutes later Blackpool had a goal disallowed.

Munro had an open path, raced on. In front of him McCall called for a pass, was given it in a position which from the Press box looked a couple of yards offside.

On the little inside-left raced, shot past Mapton. The rejoicings were brief. Without hesitation Mr. Seymour refused a goal,

LITTLE REST

There was fury in Blackpool’s retaliation afterwards. Mapson punted over the bar in a big leap a long failing centre by Munro, an aggressive forward who gave his full-back little rest.

The coiner, too, produced a lot of excitement, McCormack volleying the ball into a pack of men before Johnston hooked it wide of a post with Mapson staggering after it and both teams almost to a man massed in the Sunderland goal area.

Not that the Sunderland forwards were subdued. Their short, crisp passes invariably found their man, and in the open they were fast and direct.

In another of these Sunderland raids Duns shot wide from an offside position.

GREAT CLEARANCE

McCall was still seldom out of the game, forced Mapson to another great clearance with a shot taken on the half volley.

Too many of Blackpool’s passes were telegraphed, but Blackpool had been shooting ever since the Sunderland goal.

Munro missed the far post with one cross shot to which Mapson for once fell late.

This goalkeeper had been on overtime this half, but Blackpool went to the dressing-room in arrears for the first time - in a home match this season.

Half-time: Blackpool 0 Sunderland 1.

SECOND HALF

Blackpool’s pressure continued when the second half opened, but again every raid was repelled by a defence which was given an extra half-second to clear the ball or intercept a pass.

Mapson was still at it non-stop, fielded a ball headed into his arms by Dick after McCall had made a position for himself by chasing a hundred to one against chance.

Two minutes later McCall won a corner in a raid opened by a great clearance by Lewis and which continued with a McCormack through pass.

There seemed little prospect at this time of Blackpool’s forwards forcing a gap in Sunderland’s defence.

Duns, with no man near him and the Blackpool defence opened by a precise open raid, stabbed the ball wide of a post with Wallace at his mercy.

With 23 minutes of this half gone that one snap goal seemed destined to win the game.

NON-STOP RAIDS

In one Blackpool raid - and these raids were following each other in a non-stop succession at this time - McCormack chased one Munro centre so fast and hit it so hard that he somersaulted over the barrier on to the Kop terraces.

But there were too few shots in this line as it advanced on Sunderland’s goal.

This goal had one escape when Stelling cleared off the line a ball which McCormack crossed.

Still the pressure continued but still it led nowhere. There was a greater menace in Sunderland’s fewer raids

DARING SAVE

Ten minutes from time Mapson, made a daring dive at Munro s feet with the people on the Kop shouting “Goal” half a second too soon.

Three minutes later. Dick shot the ball at this goalkeeper’s legs with the goal wide open again.

Blackpool went at it until the end but there was not a marksman in the line.

Result:

BLACKPOOL 0 

SUNDERLAND 1 (Scotson 25 min)

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COMMENTS ON THE GAME

I began to think before the end of this game - in common, I suspect, with 23,000 other people - that the Blackpool forwards would never score in this match if it lasted until midnight.

It was one of those days. The line attacked for probably an hour of the hour and a half, but not a man in it had a shot in him.

That was the reason, the only reason, that Blackpool lost a game which was actually won by a wing-half shooting as no forward ever shot.

Not that the entire line was a failure. There were two men in it who warranted a paragraph each.

In the open little Andy McCall was searching for the ball all the time, and when in possession of it was not only elusive, but almost impudently assertive.

Munro, too, had one of those little terrier games in which he specialises. Five of him in the line and something might have happened. The defence, in spite of a few half-hit clearances and a few passes from the half-backs which went astray, had nothing wrong with it.

It was the forwards who lost this match.

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BLACKPOOL SPORT TODAY IS BIG NEWS

What is it all worth in publicity?

By “Spectator”

IN the years between the wars Blackpool F.C. deputations made such a habit of calling on the municipal authority for a Corporation subsidy that they must have worn an inch or two off the Town Hall steps.

The Council always said "No,” The deputations always plaintively asked "Why?” And nobody was ever able to give them a convincing answer, except that a football club as a publicity medium was presumably worth less than half a dozen "Come to Blackpool” posters on the walls of wayside railway stations.

I suspect that a few of the city fathers have since been converted, but today the Blackpool club is no longer a mendicant soliciting alms. If it’s not in the big money yet, it’s in sufficient of it to be independent.

Yet I still wonder, even if publicity can never be assessed in terms of £ s. d., how much the Press notices given to Blackpool sport is worth to the town.

On the air

TAKE last weekend. Over an  hour of the B.B.C's time was allotted one evening to a fight featuring a Blackpool boxer, Ronnie Clayton, who only a few weeks earlier had been searching the town for a gymnasium and until the Blackpool Boys’ Club and ultimately the Squires Gate Holiday Camp offered him quarters had been of interest to nobody in particular.

Two days later the second half of the Aston Villa - Blackpool match was broadcast. At this match there were 55,000 people.

In Blackpool’s last three away games nearly 150,000 have watched a team which today, with the inclusion of Stanley Matthews in its forward line, is one of the big box-office attractions of the country.

No new move, but—

AND all this is worth nothing?

You could tell that to the Marines - but even the Marines today would be sceptical about it.

No, there is no new move to approach the Corporation for a subsidy again. But the Council should be reminded, I think, that it possesses in Blackpool sport and not football alone - an asset which it has been too inclined to despise in the past and which it recognises today only when one of its stars - Ronnie Clayton in this case - suddenly soars to fame.

Casualty list

THEY have been stocktaking or, in this case, counting the casualties - at Blackpool this week since the last of the midweek games was played at Blackburn.

I am often told that two games a week is not one too many for professional' footballers. But I am never told that by professional footballers - not, at least, when there’s a heat wave on and the grounds are baked.

"We’ve made no fuss about it, but we’ve gone though the mill,” reported Manager Joe Smith this week.

They’re not complaining at Blackpool, in spite of a formidable casualty list. But there’s no question that these armour-plate pitches have taken their toll.

Still, in spite of everything, 12 out of 16 points had been won before today’s Sunderland game, which is exactly equal to last year’s record. And last year, after eight games, Blackpool were top of the League.

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Jottings from all parts  

BY "SPECTATOR" 20 September 1947

AUTOGRAPH hunters were never so numerous or so persistent football.

The Blackpool team had not been in its Birmingham hotel half an hour last weekend before there was a telephone call for Stanley Mortensen. When he answered it he was informed by a thin treble voice that five little boys were calling him from a kiosk near to the hotel and would be glad to meet him outside the hotel in five minutes for the signing of their autograph books.

What could a player do in such circumstances? Being Stan Mortensen he went out, met them - and signed.

There was, too, the little boy who escaped all the guards, marched out with the Blackpool team on to the field at Villa Park and was busily soliciting signatures before a police constable solemnly paced from the touch-line and escorted him off.

All this is what is called private enterprise.

***

I NOTICE that Jimmy Todd, the wing half who under Manager Joe Smith’s tuition graduated from football on the sands at Blackpool to the Ireland team in less than 12 months, is still in Port Vale’s Third Division team.

The first time I saw him in a match he had his nose burst late in the second half, but finished the game with a sponge pressed to his blood- smeared face, dropping it to the ground and snatching it up again every time he had to take a throw-in.

He never dreamed of coming off for attention. He was - and always will be - that sort of player.

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MEMORIES were awakened for manager Joe Smith, of Blackpool, when the Blackpool team passed through Newcastle-under- Lyme on the way to Birmingham and on the return halted there for dinner.

It was at Newcastle that Mr. Smith was born, at the “Bird in Hand” hotel there that he signed for Bolton Wanderers - he pointed it out from the coach - and at the hotel where dinner was served that a young unknown forward called J. Smith, who was playing for Newcastle P.S.A. at the time, attended his first football banquet.

“And,” he meditates wistfully, “I can still remember that there were seven courses.”

They could not even spell “austerity” in those days.

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HERE’S a coincidence, as Mr. Harold Berens says in “Ignorance is Bliss,” the radio show which the Blackpool team saw in a Birmingham music-hall last weekend.

Results of the Blackpool-Blackburn Rovers games this season and last season were identical 1-1 at Ewood Park, 1-0 at Blackpool.

I am sorry for the Rovers. They are such nice folk at Ewood Park, but they are heading fast for the rocks with their present team - and they know it.

***

IT’S not often the Blackpool men play cards on tour these days. Travelling by coach instead of train nearly everywhere means that all the solo and bridge schools - yes, they were beginning to play bridge, a few of them - are broken up.

But they are still as fond of snooker as ever. Who’s the Fred Davis of the present first team? It might be George Farrow, but that, I know, will be disputed. They must have a championship some day.

***

BLACKPOOL’S 1-0 defeat of the Villa at Birmingham made history. It was the first time since League football was instituted that a Blackpool team had ever won on this ground.

In First Division matches before the war the results were 4-1, 5-1 and 6-2 for the Villa. Now the bogey’s laid.

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Letter in "The Evening Gazette” last week from a reader who still has a packet of 1895 six-for-a-1d cigarettes has recalled to Arnold Whittaker, the former Blackburn Rover, who is living in retirement in Blackpool, a five-for-a-ld packet which once, as a young professional, he crept furtively into a tobacconist’s shop in Blackburn to buy. 

Smoking was prohibited by many football clubs those days - it is not encouraged today. Surreptitiously he put the packet in is pocket - and out of it fell a card.

It was one of a series of famous footballers - and its subject was Arnold Whittaker.

He has smoked the cigarettes long ago, but he still has the card.

 ***

Referee W.G.E  ("Bill") Evans is as immaculate as ever - new white boot laces and everything for every match, and as fast as ever - here, there everywhere. 

Nobody ever disputes his offside decisions, and the players, I now, respect him.

He must have raced miles in the Villa-Blackpool match. His next Blackpool engagement is the Burnley fixture at Turf Moor on October 11.

 ***

THE Blackpool directors will not permit advertising over the loud-speakers at Bloomfield-road. The Blackburn Rovers board are not so particular.

In between the gramophone records and the team announcements at Ewood Park on Monday the virtues of a razor blade were being extolled. Nobody seemed to mind.

The difference is that whereas the system has cost nothing to install at Ewood, and is serviced free by an advertising agency, the Supporters’ Club at Blackpool have had to pay £750 for their set.

Now I wonder who are wiser. Blackpool or Blackburn?

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CAP NO. 51

IT will be Stanley Matthews’ 51st international match when he plays for England at Brussels tomorrow.

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NEW FORWARDS ?

Blackpool’s manager, Mr. Joe Smith, missed watching his team for the first time this season. According to unconfirmed reports he was prospecting in the Midlands. One of the directors was away in Scotland. Subject of both quests will, I think, says “ Spectator,’’ be forwards.

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Letter from a sportsman

IN Stanley Mortensen’s mail last week was a letter from Gordon Brice, the Wolverhampton Wanderers centre-half, by whom the Blackpool centre was accidentally hurt in the game at Blackpool.

In it the half-back expressed his regrets, the hope that Stan would soon be fit again, and the gracious sentiment that it was always a privilege to play against such a fine footballer.

After all of which Brice himself was put out of action last weekend. It’s no game, this football, for the frail and meek, but it is still a game for good sportsmen. It's nice to be reassured about it now and again.

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THE Supporters’ Club’s first major present to Blackpool Football Club is the broadcasting system which was used for the first time last week.

It was again in operation today. Everyone agrees it is a most useful acquisition.

Sports book

THE Supporters’ Club book “Sportraits of 1947” which deals with football, cricket. boxing, snooker and billiards is on sale on the ground and in all newsagents, price is. 6d. Get a copy and help the Supporters’ Club.

Club hut

ONE of the rooms at the back of the west stand has been allocated to the club. It is being decorated and will be opened shortly for the benefit of members.

Programmes

TO those not able to get a programme  we apologise. The programmes have been disposed of long before matches start, and we cannot print more because of Government restrictions on paper.

Comments

DON’T forget that your praise or criticism will be appreciated. Send your comments to “Supporter” c/o Football Ground.

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