18 October 1947 Blackpool 1 Portsmouth 0

BLACKPOOL’S ATTACK HAD PACE AND FURY

Jim McIntosh has a grand game

SHIMWELL SHINES

Blackpool 1, Portsmouth 0

By “Spectator”

ACCORDING to the experts there was so little public confidence in the Blackpool and Portsmouth forwards playing in this game that it was a goalless draw before ever the match began.

On paper it threatened to be. Portsmouth reported that the northern climate had put a couple of forwards, Douglas Reid and Peter Harris, out of action and caused an entire shuffle of a forward line which,

Blackpool, too, took the field with an attack so remodelled that only one forward, Alec Munro, was in the position where he played at Burnley a week ago.

All this affected the attendance, for they are as fond of box office names in football as at Elstree.

Yet 100 of the faithful came all the way from Portsmouth by coach through the night, reaching Blackpool at seven o'clock this morning, and on a dull afternoon there were still nearly 20,000 people on the ground shortly before the kick-off.

Teams:

BLACKPOOL: Wallace: Shimwell, Suart, Farrow, Hayward, Johnston, Nelson, Munro, McIntosh, Buchan (W.) McCormack.

PORTSMOUTH: Butler; Rookes, Ferrier, Seoular, McCoy, Dickinson, Lunn, Brown, Froggatt, Barlow, Parker.

Referee: Mr. V. Rae (London).

THE GAME

Blackpool won the toss and defended the south goal. It was a case of defending it and little else for the first few minutes.

The Portsmouth forwards were chasing the ball down on to it nearly all the time. Barlow lost the ball and one bare chance with it near to Wallace. Once, too, Lunn the little Irish recruit, playing his first game in the First Division, cut in fast before being halted by Shimwell crossing to a flank too often exposed in these early minutes.

UNPREPARED

The first man in tangerine to call Butler into action was a half-back, the goalkeeper fielding one of Johnston’s long passes to an unprepared left wing with no Blackpool forward anywhere on the scene where goals are scored.

Yet in Blackpool’s next raid the Buchan-McCormack partnership built a perfect advance with a series of fast, crisp passes which ended only when the offside whistle trapped the inside forward within shooting distance.

The Portsmouth forwards were still persistent, Froggatt back-heeling one of Lunn’s passes into Wallace's arms before winning a corner on his own.

Another minute and Wallace held near the foot of a post a ball hooked fast at him by this aggressive fair-haired outside-left playing as a centre-forward.

DISCONNECTED

Blackpool's forwards had scarcely been in the game as a full line force, but only as two disconnected wings in the first 10 minutes.

McIntosh twice roamed out an to the right wing to make positions for the inside men with all the new confidence which was discernible in bis game in the Lancashire Cup-tie three days ago.

The first Buchan headed into Butler s hands, the second was lost in a ruck of men racing in to close a big gap in the centre. Another minute and Munro won a corner. It led nowhere, but it continued a pressure which for a time was as continuous as Portsmouth’s had earlier been.

NONSTOP

Reawakened Blackpool keep pressing

In the 20th minute a goal was near.

Farrow took one of his famous long throws. McIntosh leaped at it, headed it backwards to where Buchan waiting for it, headed it backwards, too, wide of Butler who reached the flying ball in a great leap.

Far minutes afterwards a reawakened Blackpool battered nonstop on a Portsmouth defence which had not lost a goal in its last two games, but lost one in this match in the 25th minute.

A minute earlier Butler had made a great close-range clearance from McIntosh.

The raid was never repelled. On to Portsmouth’s goal again, and on to it again a seven-man attack -five forwards and two half-backs - surged.

In the end a loose ball was beaten out: to Nelson. All on his own, the little Irishman was waiting for it, lobbed it back again.

JOHNSTON SCORES

Butler pulled it down and lost it in front of an open goal where JOHNSTON, in a position where centre-forwards generally stand, shot his first goal in First Division football since the war.

And if ever a man deserved a goal after all this time it was Blackpool’s captain.

This was a Blackpool team more aggressive than anybody had expected it to be today. The raids on Portsmouth’s goal continued. Farrow nearly increased the lead with a free kick from 50 yards out which missed the far post by inches.

One of the big men in this big push was the understudy centre-forward, For the first time for months he heard them shouting today “Good old Jim.”

Portsmouth were in the game, with half an hour gone, only in isolated raids.

In one, Brown hit the outside of a post with a neck-or-nothing shot from the line.

ALL-OUT BID

Portsmouth improved so much that there was little between the teams in the closing minutes of the half. Shimwell's great clearances had been a feature. One of them halted Portsmouth’s left wing as the Fratton Park men went all out to make it 1-1 late in the half.

Half-time: Blackpool 1, Portsmouth 0.

Everybody was saying at the interval that Blackpool should have had a penalty when McIntosh was felled to earth in the area shortly before half-time.

From the Press box the offence was not discernible.

Blackpool opened the second half with a corner and a succession of raids, two of them created by McIntosh's service of the ball to his wings.

In the next Blackpool attack, too, he gave Buchan a perfect forward pass which the inside-left lost to a full-back’s belated tackle.

PERFECT CENTRE

The Blackpool goal was in no particular peril until Lunn crossed a perfect centre from the corner flag which Wallace beat out and collected again in a big sideways leap with Froggatt racing in.

Another minute and Wallace made a hazardous dive at the Portsmouth leader’s feet with a goal near again. The Portsmouth forwards were often raiding afterwards.

Then, at last, Farrow found a gap in Portsmouth’s defence with a long free kick which Buchan headed backwards inches on the wrong side of a post which Butler was in no position to guard.

BIG ESCAPE

The next minute and Portsmouth’s goal had a big escape. There was a vain clamour for offside.

Nelson took the loose ball, raced on and shot it. Out of Butler's reach it rose, hit the bar of an empty goal, cannoned down into the goalkeeper's arms, fell out of them, and was cleared with McCormack tearing in to walk it over the line.

Blackpool attacked with pace and fury afterwards, one raid after another on the right wing being created by Shimwell’s tackles and studied clearances.

It was nearly all Blackpool in the next 15 minutes - a fighting Blackpool team attacking with pace, decision and resolution.

McCormack missed the post by a yard with a great shot from a right wing centre. Munro shot wide from McIntosh’s pass.

Then, from a narrow angle, the Blackpool centre forward, after escaping his guards shot a goal which was disallowed.

Portsmouth were still not out of the game but with 10 minutes left Blackpool’s lead was not often threatened.

Result:

BLACKPOOL 1 (Johnston 25min)

PORTSMOUTH 0

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COMMENTS ON THE GAME

All those people who for months have made a seasonal occupation of criticising Jim McIntosh as an outside-left departed from the ground today singing his praises and telling each other he was the man who must play as a centre-forward in future. 

I am in agreement with them. This match confirmed all that I wrote about him after the Lancashire Cup-tie on Wednesday.

Again he was a leader not in name only, but in his service of the ball to both wings. One of them, the right - the pocket edition partnership of Munro and Nelson - he played into the game.

The entire line, in spite of a first-half fade-out on the left, had a greater purpose in it than J expected with three reserves in its ranks.

Whatever else may have been wrong with it, however ragged the design of a few of its raids, this line at least knew how to exploit the shock attack and deservedly, with the aid of a halfback line which has forgotten how to play a bad game, won against all the odds.

Yet the man who nearly stole the match was in neither of these divisions.

It was Eddie Shimwell’s best game since he left Sheffield, uncompromising in its tackles, its clearances repeatedly building raids.

Blackpool scored a goal and won a couple of points with it. That was one more goal and two more points than most people expected the match to produce.

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SHOT-SHY ATTACK IS LOSING POINTS

It’s a waste of good football

By “Spectator”

"COME and watch them shoot at practice,” invited Manager Joe Smith when I was at Blackpool's headquarters this week. “You won't recognise one or two of them.”

He was talking about his forwards - those men who in front of goal who are so often the despair of this man who, when he was a Bolton Wanderer, was about as popular with goalkeepers as a cartilage operation.

I went out and watched them and one or two of them, I admit I would not have known if they had worn masks. 

For the men who will not shoot on Saturday afternoons can shoot on mid-week mornings with the best of them.

Many of the shots, I concede were off the target, a few so far off that Jock Wallace in goal was once or twice constrained to observe in a caustic bit of old Celtic, “They dinna need a goalie at all" 

But others hit the net - and, at least, they were shooting.

A lament

“IF only," said Mr. Smith, "they‘d do it when they're playing “ As he said it, at was a lament. For that is chiefly what is wrong with Blackpool today.

There is being fielded this season a defence which has a record without parallel for years at Blackpool, where season after season defences have been lavish in their surrender of goals.

In 12 games this season this defence has conceded only nine goals. Only two others in the Division -Arsenal and Burnley - have lost fewer.

Last season in the first 12 matches - and after playing 12 Blackpool were top of the League - Mr. Wallace had been into the back of the net 16 times to retrieve the ball.

Seven games, five goals

IN their last seven games the Blackpool forwards have scared five goals.

That averages out at about a goal every two hours, and at a conservative estimate the front line has been attacking for an hour and a quarter to an hour and a half of every one of those 120 minutes.

I know that the line is not yet the perfect attack even in approach. Tell me one that is. It is still not bringing such an artist as Stanley Matthews into the game as often as it should. It is still exploiting to excess the down-the-centre move and expecting one man, the other Stanley, Mortensen, the centre-forward, to ring the bell every time.

But it is opening defences - and still not profiting by it because there is only one man in it who can or will shoot.

On match days

AND such football as Blackpool have been playing will still not produce the results it should be achieving until the forwards shoot, on match days as I know now, they can shoot at practice.

For in truth ‘tis better to have shot and missed than never to have shot at all.

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Jottings from all parts  

BY "SPECTATOR" 18 October 1947

BOX-OFFICE TEAM

NEXT to Arsenal Blackpool are the best box-office team in the land today.

Nearly 260,000 people have watched the team in the season’s first six away matches at Huddersfield, Everton, Villa Park, Blackburn, Grimsby and Burnley.

In three of those games the gates were shut.

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AN invasion of the Third Division by Blackpool players in recent times.

Consider this list: Butler at Accrington, Roxburgh at Barrow, Finan and Oardwell at Crewe, Withington, Hugh O'Donnell and Lawrence at Rochdale, Burke at Carlisle, Jim Blair at Bournemouth, Eastham at Swansea, Todd at Port Vale.

Soon, I hear. Eric Sibley may be among them. A club in the Southern Section are interested.

***

WHEN next you watch a match in which Burnley are playing notice how the team come out.

Last man on the field is Arthur Woodruff, the fair-haired centre-half who has become a full-back, and such a good fullback that he has been selected by the F.A. for the R.A.F. match on Wednesday.

He always leaves the dressing room last. Why? Nobody seems to know. He’s probably forgotten the reason.

But it's become nearly an article of faith with him.

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TALK about keeping up with the Joneses.

There's Sam, the Irish international half-back, whose playing days are over and who is now an the managerial staff at Blackpool. 

There's Harry, who has already had trial at Blackpool and when he leaves the R.A.F. may have another.

And now there’s the youngest, Walter, who, I am told, impressed a lot of the customers when he played for Blackpool Reserve last, weekend.

The brothers play in the half- back line. 

***

I HEAR whispers that the centre-forward from St. Annes, Mercer, who is on Manager Jack Hacking’s staff at Accrington, may soon be in the service of a First Division club.

Both Sheffield United and Blackburn Rovers are reported to be interested in him.

This front-line leader, who has had a season or two with Leicester City since he left these parts, made a habit of shooting goals against the Blackpool wartime team.

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NOTE for the Big Cheque Men: The present Burnley team cost exactly £7,000, which is about the price a few clubs ask for apprentices these days.

Alan Brown’s price was £5,000, the right-half, Attwells, £2,000. The remaining nine cost nothing at all.

And out of the XI they have made a team which is a team in the strict sense. Manager Cliff Britton has shown that it can be done.

 ***

ON a busmans holiday at the Blackpool-Burnley match was Mr Percy Snape, ace, referee, formerly of Blackpool.

He had in his pocket the neatest, cutest little wireless set I have ever seen the size of cigarette box and yet with a range which includes the stations in the States.

 
It is one of the few models in this country

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TALENT SEEKER

Manager Joe Smith was not at the match. He was out of town, his destination undisclosed, but his purpose was obviously a continuation of the quest for that elusive scoring forward.

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THE Blackpool Supporters’ Club committee have arranged a series of social events which will help to bring together the members and at the same time raise funds for the various efforts they have in mind.

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We set off with the Guy Fawkes night dance on November 5 at the Tower Ballroom. Several novelty features have been arranged.

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Following this will be the snooker festival at the Clifton Hotel. November 10 to 15, when the players will include Fred Davis, and a host of amateur stars, including the women’s amateur snooker champion, the men’s amateur snooker champion, and the boy snooker champion.

There will be two sessions daily, at 3-0 and 7-30.

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Then there will be the quarterly meeting on November 18. A hall for this has not yet been arranged, but members will be informed in good time.

The ladies’ committee are holding a whist drive on November 26, and there will be a dance on the following Friday, November 28. There will also be a dance on Tuesday, December 30.

All these events will take place at the Jubilee Theatre, Co-operative Buildings, Albert-road, Blackpool.

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The Supporters’ Club hut at the Bloomfield-road ground is always open an hour before the matches on Saturdays. and also at half-time Anyone wishing to enrol as a member will be cordially welcomed. We are also there to give help and advice to all the members, so please don’t be afraid to come forward.

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The Supporters’ Club had hoped for an allocation of stand seats at the Bolton match next Saturday. There will be plenty of room on the ground, but no stand seats are being reserved.

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