15 November 1947 Blackpool 2 Sheffield United 1
United played to standstill
BUT CHANCES MISSED
Blackpool 2, Sheffield United 1
BLACKPOOL had to take the field without Stanley Matthews against Sheffield United this afternoon.
Shortly before noon he had his last test and did not pass it, still finishing with a suspicion of a limp, a legacy of the strained groin muscle which reduced him to half speed a week ago. Sammy Nelson deputised.
Trainer Johnny Lynas expressed the opinion that with an intensive course of treatment during the weekend Matthews should be able play against Sweden in London on Wednesday and, I suppose, for Blackpool's visit - to Middlesbrough next week-end.
In spite of a 2-1 defeat by Derby County a week ago Sheffield announced, “No change.”
It was football’s coldest day this season, but the sun still shone as it seems to shine every Saturday afternoon these days.
It was, nevertheless, sufficiently cold to affect the attendance, which had not reached 17,000 when the teams appeared
Teams:
BLACKPOOL: Wallace, Shimwell, Suart, Farrow, Hayward, Johnston, Nelson, Mortensen, McIntosh, McCall and Munro.
SHEFFIELD UNITED: Smith; Furniss, Cox, Jackson, Young, Forbes, Rickett, Nightingale, Whitelum, Hagan and Coop.
Referee: Mr. A.E. Ellis, of Halifax.
THE GAME
Blackpool faced the sun and a cross wind when Johnston lost toss.
In the first 10 seconds there was a goal which was disallowed without a murmur of protest.
After McCall’s pass Mortensen raced from a position yards off-side, sidestepped the ball past Smith and watched it roll over the line.
One or two people cheered, but only one or two. The referee’s decision was never in question.
SO NEAR ...
Immediately there were two free kicks, the first against Shimwell for a handling offence a couple of yards outside the penalty area.
No sooner had it been cleared than Blackpool raided again, and as Mortensen fell under Cox’s neck-or-nothing tackle Mr. Ellis indicated a patch of grass less than a yard outside Sheffield’s area.
Farrow took the kick and blazed the ball inches over the bar.
Not often are there three major incidents such as this in the first two minutes of a match.
Yet another free kick came as Young blatantly obstructed McIntosh as the centre forward was chasing a high bouncing ball which had escaped the centre-half.
It was not the rough house this succession of free kicks might indicate.
All that was happening was that the ball in the gust of wind was bouncing awkwardly for the men.
There was, however, a pace and decision in every Blackpool raid for a time.
In one of them Mortensen out-paced two men before raking the Sheffield goal with a flying centre which no Blackpool forward g could reach.
Nelson ultimately retrieved it and sent in a fast rising ball which Smith beat out for a corner.
HIGH CENTRE
Another minute, and there was a second corner, one of Farrow’s long crossfield passes found Munro, whose high centre from the left was headed sufficiently wide of Smith by the aggressive Mortensen for the goalkeeper to be glad to beat it outside his far post.
CUNNING HAGAN
Attacks menace the
Blackpool goal
The United’s defence was not all that united in these early minutes.
With 15 minutes gone the Sheffield forward line had not been a lot in the game.
Yet when Hagan took a pass instead of giving one, as he had been giving them to every other man in the line, he corkscrewed past two men, lost the ball, retrieved it again and crossed a centre which Wallace, in the sun’s glare had to be alert to save.
REPELLED
This grand inside-left created one or two raids afterwards, but none of them reached shooting positions, and two in rapid succession were repelled by the Farrow-Shimwell partnership.
Twice afterwards Hagan menaced Blackpool’s goal by football which had all the cunning in it this former England forward possesses
Once, I think, he lost a chance. He hesitated with the ball bouncing in front of him. In the end he passed to Whitelum, who hesitated, too, and lost an even bigger chance almost in the jaws of Blackpool’s goal.
Blackpool’s immediate retaliation as rain began to fall was a series of hammering raids, which actually won four corners in less than five minutes.
SHEFFIELD LEAD
Sheffield’s retaliation for that pressure was a goal in the 30th minute, almost direct from the fourth of the corners A long, downfield pass was cleared out of a ruck of men.
HAGAN chased it and twice half lost it.
Then as Hayward fell in front of him he seemed to leap over the prostrate centre half and force the ball over the line as Wallace, in desperation, fell a half second too late at his feet.
There was a lot to admire in Sheffield’s direct no-nonsense-about-it football afterwards, but I think they were fortunate to be in front.
MISSED CHANCES
First half story of
poor shooting
The tale of the first 30 minutes was that Blackpool had created chances almost by the half dozen and missed them by bad shooting, and that Sheffield had carved out about a couple and scored from one of them.
Mortensen lashed another shot over the bar where so many others had gone.
Repeatedly, too. the wind swept away the wing forwards’ centres.
Goal kick followed goal kick until Smith must have tired of taking them.
Blackpool attacked continuously for the remainder of the half, but the story continued of repulsed, inconclusive attacks, with the forwards taking passes on a nonstop service from the two wing half-backs, Farrow and Johnston, and either losing them in the massed Sheffield defence or shooting high or wide.
FORWARD SHUFFLE
The pressure continued, too, with the forward line shuffled in the last five minutes. The line was led by Mortensen with McIntosh on the left wing.
Blackpool should have been leading at half-time by a goal or two. Instead they were losing by a goal.
These forwards simply could not finish in the first 45 minutes.
Half-time: Blackpool 0, Sheffield United 1.
Second Half
In the second minute of the half the elusive goal nearly came.
There was another free kick conceded by a desperate defence at a range where Farrow always takes them.
He moved to take this one, walked over the ball instead and left Shimwell to shoot one of those thunderbolts which they all know about at Bramall.
Fast and low it flew. Smith dived at it. seemed to punch it out against the face of a post and was still sprawling nursing his wrist as the ball bounced out for a comer.
I was beginning to think that there would never be a Blackpool goal today. Then in the fourth minute of the half it came.
It is scarcely necessary to report it that MORTENSEN who was still leading the line, scored it
Blackpool hammered away.
A long ball was lobbed onto Sheffield's oppressed and scattering defence.
Mortensen chased it. and passed two bewildered men as if they were standing still. Then he ran on, and as Smith dived at his feet, shot low into the net for his seventh goal of the season.
Still Blackpool raided - and raided now as if it were a Cup-tie.
PENALTY CLAIM
Another corner was conceded and another.
As the ball flew out for the second there was a clamour for a penalty as it appeared to hit a Sheffield fullback's hand as he stood almost on the line and beat it out as if he were a goalkeeper.
Sheffield raided once, a model raid in three direct, long passes. It ended in Coop hitting the outside of a post with his centre with Blackpool's unprepared defence torn wide open.
Nearly all the time, otherwise, the game was surging fast on Sheffield’s goal.
RELIEVED!
Whistle goes with goal wide open
It was comparatively quiet and almost without incident for a time.
Then, at the end of another of those open Sheffield raids Wallace had to race out to his left wing, where he lost the ball and was probably glad to hear the referee’s whistle or an infringement as he sprawled out there with the goal wide open.
In these raids the Sheffield forwards looked good, but there was still only one of them to every half dozen by Blackpool who, with Mortensen and Munro inside, were packing a greater punch than ever.
It was a punch which nearly produced another goal - and by a half back.
McCALL’S LEAP
In the 20th minute of the half McCall made an incredibly high leap for such a small man and headed to Farrow a ball which the right-half hit so fast from 30 yards that it required an amazing sideways dive by Smith to get it away for yet another corner,
FISTS RAISED
Afterwards tempers were frayed to ribbons, and, in one long exchange near the east touchline, so torn to tatters that in the end a Blackpool forward’s name was taken.
No sooner had this been sorted out than Mortensen was felled to earth with a tackle so ruthless that there was another scene with fists raised before the free-kick could be taken.
That free-kick cost Sheffield a goal.
Again FARROW stationed himself to take it, and this time took it.
Whether Sheffield expected his full-back to come up from the rear again and shoot it nobody will ever know.
This time the half-back himself made no mistake, hit the roof of the net with Smith still in midair and spion kop a forest of waving hats, caps and programmes.
That was in the 65th minute. Blackpool’s forwards continued to hammer away as if they were at Wembley in the final.
FURIOUS FORAY
Yet in a breakaway the Blackpool goal had one escape in a wild and furious foray almost under the bar which ended in Whitelum hitting the side net and Wallace crumbling up and requiring the trainer’s attention before the match - or should it be battle? - could begin again.
There was not a lot of football left, but there was plenty of fury - too much of it.
Free-kicks were being levied at the rate of one a minute, to many of them against a Sheffield defence which had lost whatever order it possessed and was taking everything in the tackle.
Boos, catcalls and demands of ‘‘Send him off” rang out as the match approached its tearaway end.
Result:
BLACKPOOL 2, (Mortensen 49 min, Farrow 65 min)
SHEFFIELD UNITED 1 (Hagan 30 min)
COMMENTS ON THE GAME
BLACKPOOL-ARSENAL OF THE NORTH
- But, please, not the “V”
formation
By “Spectator”
a derelict caravan colony, Blackpool have already qualified for the title.
Whatever the reason - and I suspect it is chiefly the signing of Stanley Matthews - this Blackpool team of 1947 is, next to Arsenal, the biggest box-office attraction in the game.
A hundred thousand people would have watched this game if Highbury could have accommodated them. The present record for a League match - 82,905 for a Chelsea-Arsenal (how this name creeps in!) clash in 1935 - would have been shattered.
A Blackpool visitor was asked £7 16s. for a 10s. 6d. ticket - and went to see another match.
This, I know, could never happen at Blackpool. Nor anything approaching it. Not at Blackpool could tickets for the season in a reserved box sell at 15 guineas. Nor could patrons be told that they would have to wait a minimum of five years before being granted the privilege of paying such a price.
I have the utmost admiration for this London club, which has perfected the big business technique unashamedly now that football has become big business. There’s no law against that, and no other sort of objection, either.
When, too, Arsenal’s manager, Mr. Tom Whittaker, in the direct line of succession from Herbert Chapman and George Allison, announces on the loud-speakers before last week end’s game, "The Arsenal team has a code of behaviour which is the envy of the football world,” nobody thinks he is boasting.
Why? Because a forward can scarcely ever be offside against the Arsenal defence these days for the good reason that Arsenal have become almost all defence and so little else that in the six games before the Blackpool match the forwards had scored only four times.
If the end justifies the means, then this new “V” game in football has already justified itself.
But what if other teams decide, “If Arsenal do it. why shouldn’t we?” Then what happens? A stalemate is inevitable, and football as a spectacle will be even less worth watching than a lot of it is today.
Jottings from all parts
BY "SPECTATOR" 15 November 1947
I can take Eddie’s word for it. He’s a grand sportsman is this full-back from Sheffield, one of Blackpool’s best bargains ever.
Few people know it, but if the Blackpool delegation who went to sign him - Mr Joe Smith and vice-chairman, Mr. Harry Evans - had arrived a couple of hours later at Bramall-lane, Shimwell would have gone to Barnsley.
Blackpool won 4-2 after the amazing George Dick, who had scored two goals a week earlier at Chelsea as an outside left, had scored another couple in the last eight minutes.
Playing for the United - and playing again today, I hope - was J. Hagan. In my opinion he is still the best inside forward in England not playing for England.
One by one the Arsenal players appeared, were greeted - "Hello, Leslie !” and “Hello. Ronnie !’’ - and allowed to depart into the night.
One man only they were waiting for. When he appeared there was nearly a riot and such a fluttering of autograph books, such a chorus of “Sign, please” that police and commissionaires were nearly engulfed in the rising tide.
Yes, you are correct, it was Stanley Matthews. It always is. It’s amazing that he has so little conceit of himself in all this adulation.
Another Blackpool loyalist is the London Astoria’s Jack White, a former Everton amateur, who forsook football for the ballroom, has since made his name in the Capital, and who today numbers half the Blackpool team among his friends.
Since Blackpool and Arsenal first met each other in 1896 - Arsenal were Woolwich Arsenal then, of course - Blackpool have won only three of 31 games and never yet taken two points at Highbury.
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