Dazzling forwards outshine Arsenal
GRAND DISPLAY
Blackpool 3, Arsenal 0
AT 11 a.m. today Manager Joe Smith was almost resigned to fielding a team three under strength for the visit of the League leaders, Arsenal, who routed Middlesbrough 7-0 at Highbury yesterday.
An hour later the three men who finished yesterday’s match with a few scars of battle, Shimwell, Mortensen and Kelly, had passed a field test and were declared fit.
In the end, one only of the reserves standing by for the game, the little Scot, Andy McCall, was required, the ether two, Tom Buchan and the full-back, Garrett, watching the match instead of playing in it.
Dick was rested, and at inside- left McCall had his first game in the First Division since the Christmas match at Stoke.
The Arsenal could not play Don Roper, the forward Blackpool watched for weeks last season, end had Ian McPherson at outside-right with Reg. Lewis at inside-left.
It was another full house and another day of glorious sunshine with the turf baked firmer than most players like it.
BLACKPOOL: Robinson, Shimwell, Suart, Johnston, Hayward, Kelly, Matthews, Munro, Mortensen, McIntosh, Rickett.
ARSENAL: Swindin, Scott, Barnes, Macaulay, Compton (L). Mercer, McPherson, Logie, Rooke, Lewis, Compton (D).
Referee Mr. T. Smith, of Atherstone.
Blackpool attacked the south goal where Swindin with the sleeves of his green jersey rolled up to the elbow, was soon in action, fielding Leslie Compton’s back pass after Barnes had halted Blackpool’s first down-the-centre raid.
The head of the tall Compton, towering inches above Mortensen, repelled Blackpool’s next advance, but in spite of a couple of Arsenal attacks on the old familiar long passing pattern, it was the Arsenal’s goal which was under greater pressure.
ESCAPE
It was a goal which escaped downfall in the fifth minute when Swindin conceded a corner in a great leap at a ball which McCall shot rising at him from 30 yards out.
Denis Compton, who has heard a lot of cheers in his time wherever England have played Test matches, heard a few jeers instead after his first neck-or nothing tackle of Matthews.
Blackpool’s front line con tinned to race nonstop on the Arsenal’s goal, a goal protected by such a desperate defence that three times in less than three minutes Mr. Smith had to address words of reproof to offending Highbury men.
Twice. Bill Mercer had to call those men to order, too, after they had entered into excited protests against Mr. Smith’s decisions.
LIKE CUPTIE
It was like a rip-roaring cuptie In the first 10 minutes - fast, aggressive, relentless, with the Arsenal in a nearly-disordered retreat.
Seldom have I seen a team concede as many free-kicks as this famous Arsenal conceded in the first 15 minutes.
On his whistle Mr. Smith was playing a nonstop solo. Still Blackpool raided, battering away on a defence which was clearing anywhere.
Mortensen nearly grazed a post with a shot fast and low from 30 yards.
OUTPACED
Blackpool’s football was crisp and direct
Blackpool’s football was crisp and direct with the passes never held too long against a defence showing no mercy to the man who dwelt on the ball.
Twenty minutes had gone and an outplayed and often outpaced Arsenal were fortunate not to lose a goal.
After a perfect Munro-Matthews move Johnston took a pass, crossed a perfect centre.
Rickett hit it fast and low, was watching it pass outside Swindin's reach as Leslie Compton appeared from nowhere and cleared off the line.
Corner after corner the Arsenal surrendered, a sequence of four in one storming five minutes.
Except when Rooke, almost in despair, with no forward near him. lobbed a shot wide of a post of Blackpool’s goal, the Arsenal’s front line had seldom been in the game.
Yet, when at last the Arsenal came into their own in one brisk raid. Robinson had to hold a fast low centre as Rooke hurled himself at the flying ball.
FIRST TEST
That was in the 35th minute. It had been the Blackpool goalkeeper s first authentic test, yet three minutes later the Arsenal might, and should have, taken the lead.
An open raid scattered the Blackpool defence. The calm, calculating Rooke took a forward pass, enticed Robinson from his goal, swerved the goalkeeper, and crossed a pass in front of a front line had seldom been in the Blackpool goal with nobody in it.
Denis Compton was waiting, lost the bouncing ball in front of the open goal, and lost a goal with it.
Afterwards the Arsenal were not half as subdued as they had been, raided fast on both flanks.
McPherson was left with a limp after a clash with Suart as this Arsenal counterattack continued.
There were signs as halftime approached that the Arsenal defence was finding at last a little of its accustomed composure. It had shed nearly all of it in the first raging half hour as those little terrier forwards of Blackpool’s hurled themselves at it.
Half-time: Blackpool 0, Arsenal 0.
Second half
In the first minute Arsenal’s goal was near downfall again.
There was a Blackpool raid which seemed as if it would never end. Over in the end flew one of Johnston’s long throws. To it McCall leaped, headed backwards a ball which Swindin pulled out of the air. From the Press box the ball appeared to beat against the base of a post before the goalkeeper cleared it in a desperate lurch.
The Arsenal were still outplayed, were still too often disputing the referee’s verdicts.
Nearly all the time the stands and terraces were noisy with jeers and catcalls.
Leslie Compton headed away one of Matthews’s high falling centres for a corner with the Arsenal half-backs and full-backs betraying a few signs of panic again.
CROWD’S HOWL
Continually the game surged on the Arsenal’s besieged goal. Nearly 30,000 people howled in vain for a penalty as Munro fell in the area in pursuit of a fast rebounding ball.
Johnston repelled one Arsenal raid brilliantly after McPherson had eluded his full-back and crossed a centre into a gaping goal area.
At last this Arsenal goal fell. The iron curtain was torn to tatters. The cheer which greeted it echoed and re-echoed and must have been heard a couple of miles away.
Nine minutes of the half had gone. Matthews took a pass, refused to part with the ball, eluded his full-back, and crossed inside a perfect pass.
Munro half hit it across the goal. MORTENSEN, near the far post, was waiting for it, hooked a fast rising ball which hit Scott, as he stood a guardian on the line, and cannoned off him high into the net.
GOAL NO. 2
Another two minutes and it happened again. Matthews escaped his full-back, left him standing, crossed a fast low centre this time.
Into a pack of men the ball flew low, cannoned off one, off another, was bouncing on the line as McCALL hurled himself into the swarm, forced it over the line with Spion Kop in a state bordering on frenzy.
There were one or two Arsenal breakaways afterwards, but they Were only breakaways.
All the time Blackpool's great forward line was swooping on to an Arsenal defence and at times threatening to play it to a standstill.
Blackpool’s lightweight forwards kept hammering away at Arsenal’s heavyweight defence, had it at times running in circles.
SWINDIN RUNS OUT
Swindin came out nearly to the comer flag, lost the ball to the tearaway Rickett, was sprawling far out of his goal as the ball cannoned out off him for the Sixth corner Blackpool had won in this half alone.
There was actually a time, so completely were the League leaders out of this game, that Shimwell was playing as a forward. It must be a long time since the Arsenal took such punishment as this.
With 15 minutes left the defeat Of the leaders was complete. Kelly took a free-kick, lobbed it high into a packed goal area.
Every man in Arsenal’s alert defence for once stood and watched the flying ball, were still watching as MORTENSEN leaped at it, headed it almost out of Swindin’s uplifted arms into the roof of the net.
UTTER RETREAT
A minute later and it was nearly 4-0 as Swindin made a great, theatrical clearance when McCall shot a fast rising ball inches outside his reach from 35 yards out. The Arsenal were in utter retreat still.
Result:
BLACKPOOL 3 (Mortensen 54, 75 mins, McCall 56 min)
ARSENAL 0.
Blackpool were not thinking about Wembley today. Every man of them was thinking of the Arsenal and how to outpace, outwit and outplay the Arsenal.
They accomplished all three. It must be months since the League leaders were so completely stampeded out of a game, and stampeded out of it by football which had nearly everything in it calculated to shatter even a defence of the Arsenal’s reputation.
In the end this defence was raced nearly to a standstill.
It was not a Blackpool front line today which had punch in one position in it but in five.
The recruit, Andy McCall, had a triumph on his own.
As aggressive and tireless was Munro. These two little terriers were chasing the Arsenal mastiffs all the afternoon, with Mortensen and Matthews scattering their men whenever they came to close quarters with them.
Rickett, too, was another little man proving in this match that, playing the correct football, featherweights can beat heavyweights in this game.
The defence had nearly an Easter holiday. Yet in it the two wing half-backs ensured that the ball was always up among the raiding forwards.
Hayward and the two fullbacks were as composed under pressure as the Arsenal half-backs and full-backs were excitable.
All compliments today? Yes, but they were deserved. In a football sense this was probably Blackpool’s greatest show of the season.
'PLAYER OF THE SEASON’
Makes London hit
By “Spectator”
I HAVE never seen Stanley Mortensen wearing a hat - he prefers caps, the sort which are presented by the England selectors.
Yet, if he wore a hat, he might be pardoned t discovering, after the publication of a certain about him in the London Press, that he required about a seven and threequarters.
Never have I read in one article such praise as this writer, J. C. Orange, bestows on him in “The London Evening News” under the headline “The Footballer of the Year".
Stanley Mortensen has read the article. He has been almost embarrassed by it, for it is one of the tenets of his football creed that no one man ever made a team, that to select one player out of a team for such compliments as are contained in this lyrical half-column might cause resentments and jealousies.
He has no need to concern himself about that. The other MORTENSEN in men in the Blackpool team have read the article, too, and their only reaction is “Good old Stan; he deserves it.”
Before the war-
THOSE happen, too, to be my sentiments.
I have seen this mighty atom come to maturity from the day when he arrived in Blackpool shortly before the war, a pale, frail boy, and, after watching him in the early war years, once the strict training reserved for air crews had worked its miracles on him, wrote - and I was the first to write it - “Watch Mortensen; one day he’ll play for England.”
Now J. C. Orange writes “He is without any doubt the greatest forward England has had in the last 25 years... He will rank with the greatest players of all time... He enjoys his game. To him it seems much more than a mere day’s work.
“I consider him a better inside- right than Horatio Carter, a better centre-forward than Tommy Lawton.
If Lawton’s value is £23,000 - the present transfer record - Mortensen is worth at least £30,000 in these days of crazy buying of footballers.”
Great sportman
JC. ORANGE calls him “a great sportsman,” comments, ‘“Not once have I seen him do anything on the field for which he need have any regret, nothing for which he need be sorry.
‘“He takes hard knocks as things which are bound to come his way, and the odd foul on him as just a piece of bad luck. There is never any attempt at retaliation.
“Stanley Mortensen is the footballer of the year. At 28 he has ample time ahead to be on this pinnacle for three or four years.” Well, there you are - nobody could say fairer than that without writing it in verse.
What will be the outcome of this and other almost comparable odes which have been Written to the fame of a man who still cannot understand what all the hullabaloo is about, who has seldom seen his name outside the headlines since his amazing “hat trick” exploit against the ’Spurs in the Cup semi-final?
Man of the season?
THE Football Writers’ Association, which comprises all the accredited football correspondents on the newspapers and the agencies, has for one of its objects the selection each year of the footballer of the season and the presentation to him at a dinner on Cup Final eve in London of a silver statuette.
The London Press is now apparently persuaded that Stanley Mortensen is in line for this honour. The provincial Press came to this conclusion a year or two ago.
It is possible that the forward who was once warned that he might never have the physical endurance to play in the big Leagues and was told a few years later, when they dragged him out of a wrecked bomber, that he would never play again, may be the first to hold football’s “Oscar.”
If he is, nobody in football will disapprove his selection. Definitely nobody will resent it.
On overtime!
BLACKPOOL’S major problem today - apart from those Cup Final tickets! - is how to ensure that the team shall not go stale before Wembley.
Never has a Blackpool side been committed to such a glut of fixtures in a season’s closing days. When the team took the field against Derby County yesterday it entered the first of 12 matches which it has to play in the remaining five weeks of the season.
Twelve matches in five weeks, including a Cup Final, and, apart from the present Easter programme of three games in four days, another sequence of three in one week a fortnight later.
This is what is called overtime.
Reserves' chance
THAT nonstop sequence could a leave a team tired and jaded. That must not be allowed to happen at Blackpool before the club’s first Wembley.
Reserves will have to come into a few of these games - that is inevitable.
One can only hope that these second-team men take their chance as young Tom Garrett took his at Anfield last weekend.
If ever there was a player destined for a glittering future in the game it is this 20-year-old full-back.
Forthcoming
Jottings from all parts
BY "SPECTATOR" 27 March 1948
GOLDEN GOAL
LIVERPOOL paid either £12,000 or £13,000 to Newcastle for Albert ("Golden Boy”) Stubbins.
On the present inflated scale was worth every penny of it.
His first goal against Blackpool last weekend was the sort too few forwards are scoring these days - the sort Blackpool forwards have forgotten how to score - a ball hit ankle-high as it flew across his path which smote the net as if it had come out of a gun.
But what is chiefly impressive about this man is the cool game he is able to play even in footballs present crazy pace.
On a day when his team forfeited 14 free-kicks he was not guilty of one suspicious action, either.
***
IN nearly every Cuptie in which he has played during recent weeks, Eric Hayward, the Blackpool centre-half, has had to make a social call in the other team’s dressing room.
In match after match he has played against one or two men who were in the he captained during a tour of India late in the war.
There were Ted Ditchburn and Leslie Bennett of the ’Spurs in the cup semi-final. At Wembley there will be - survivors of this touring team - Stanley Pearson and Jack Morris, the Manchester United forwards.
Every year since the tour ended there has been a man out of the team in the Final.
Jack Howe was flown home to play for Derby in 1946. Harry Potts of Burnley was there last year. Now this year there will be three of them.
It must have been quite a team. “It was,” confirms Eric Hayward.
***
GUESTS of the Liverpool directors at the Blackpool match were several men who still wear the scars of war. So brave, so gay they are.
One of them was assisted up the stairs close to the Press room, went up them so slowly. Once he turned his head, said to the steward at the door, “I’m your mascot. I’ve never seen Liverpool lose.”
Never seen them lose. He never will. He is blind.
WHOEVER wrote, the other day that at Anfield you can hear a Liverpool goal coming knew what he was writing about.
They have been down in the doldrums at Anfield this season after winning the League championship only a year ago, but the partisans are as passionate in their loyalty to the team as ever. There were 48,725 people at the Blackpool game last weekend, which is an awful lot of people for an evening match, and about 47,000 of them were giving their lungs a bit of exercise from the first minute.
The cheering never ceased as long as the Liverpool forwards were within scoring range of the Blackpool goal. It was good to hear it. Anybody can cheer a winning team.
A pity that a noisy minority in the centre stand so often demanded the rough stuff - and so unashamedly rejoiced when they were given it.
WHEN the second of Albert Stubbins’ two goals went past Joe Robinson in the closing minutes at Anfield last week it was the first time Blackpool had lost two goals in a game since Christmas Day.
It was the first time, too, that this Blackpool goalkeeper had been beaten twice in a match for the first team.
THE Blackpool players were within 15 miles of Aintree when the horses were racing the Grand National. They were In the lounge of an hotel at Birkdale taking an early tea and listening to the race.
There was the inevitable sweep-stake on it. Stanley Matthews had Sheila’s Cottage. Tom Garrett took the second prize with First of the Dandies. Jack Duckworth, the second team trainer, who was in the lists by proxy, had Cromwell.
And Stanley Mortensen, out of the sweep prizes but still in the money, had backed the first two.
WATCHING the match at Liverpool on Saturday was David Craig, the Blackpool reserve outside-right, who has played little football this season and is just out of hospital after the second of two cartilage operations.
He may be fit to take the field again in this season’s closing days - but even that’s not certain. “I’ll begin all over again next season, I expect,” he said.
He may make the grade, too, once he is fit. He had a big reputation with Marine, the Liverpool amateur team, and had played in the Amateur Cup semi-final just before Manager Joe Smith signed him two years ago.
***
THERE will probably be a few understudies on view when Middlesbrough play the last Saturday match in the First Division at Blackpool this season on April 10.
It is the date of the Scotland-England match at Hampden.
Present indications are that Blackpool will lose “The Two Stanleys,” and Middlesbrough will probably have to take the field without Wilf Mannion and George Hardwick.
And it’s on the cards, too, from all I hear, that the selectors may recall Harry Johnston with the object of fielding Blackpool’s all- England triangle, with Tom Lawton back at centre-forward.
***
AFTER the match at Anfield, with every hotel in the city and for miles outside it booked to the doors, the Blackpool team, went to a golf club for dinner. were guests of the Woolton club.
They were given the sort of welcome which golfers know how to give.
It was, by the way, from Woolton that Phil Rodgers came to St. Annes Old Links soon after world war.
That’s a long time ago - as Phil would tell you - but I can tell him that they still talk of him there with the greatest affection.
MET Tom Lewis at the Liverpool-Blackpool match. As I reported a few weeks ago, he is still in football, but playing no longer, having recently been appointed manager of Ellesmere Port.
Signed at a big fee from Bradford this left-wing forward had his career in first-class football abruptly terminated shortly when he ran himself to a standstill in a Preston match at Blackpool, and a few days later developed a heart affection which for all practical purposes wrote “Finis” for him.
Lewis went to London for a match at Charlton, was taken ill, and never wore a tangerine jersey again. It was the Charlton match in which Jock Dodds made hist first appearance for Blackpool.
JOCK DODDS’ “hat trick” for Everton was his first since he left Blackpool. It should suffice to answer all those folk who tell you that the Scot’s days in big football are numbered.
Dodds is still one of the best centre - forwards in the game on his day. He still holds Blackpool's First Division scoring record for a match - the Middlesbrough game in 1939, when he shot four in succession.
And Dodds still wants a transfer from Everton, who have said "No” three times, and now will probably say it again with even greater emphasis.
BLACKPOOL RESERVE have won only one of their last seven games, and last weekend lost four goals in a home match for the first time since the war.
Some people profess to being surprised. I consider it inevitable. One after one the men of experience have gone. Now the club is having to field every week teams containing immature recruits.
“But,’ says Manager Joe Smith, “they’re learning a lot. learning in the one school that counts for anything - the school of experience.” It is a policy which circumstances have compelled, but it may pay dividends in the end - probably will.
All chance of the championship has gone now. Today the club can employ the Central League for its chief purpose - the training of the men whose names one day may make news in the big game.
***
Unbelievable Not 'Arf!
IN his commentary on the Queen's Park Rangers v. Derby County Cuptie, in London this afternoon, Mr. Raymond Glendenning made a break to comment that he had heard a rumour that Fulham were leading Blackpool by 5-0.
“I give you this for what it is worth ” he said, “ but I can hardly believe it ”
***
City - the last time
ONLY two men who were w in the teams the last time Blackpool played Manchester City at Maine-road in the First Division will be playing next weekend when at last they meet again.
One is No. 1 for the City, Frank Swift, the England goalkeeper. The other wears No. 11 for Blackpool, Alec Munro, the little Scottish outside left.
When the match was played on October 9, 1937, the City held the title of League champions, and yet ended the season as one of the two relegated clubs, a record, but one which no other club covets.
Blackpool were beaten 2-1. Dick Watmough equalised Eric Brook’s first-half goal soon after half-time, but within five minutes Alec Herd put the City in front, and in front the City remained, in spite of being without Frank Swift for half an hour after he had collided with Tom Jones, the Blackpool forward, and gone off the field on a stretcher.
These were the teams in the 1937 match:
MANCHESTER CITY: Swift; Dale, Barkas; Percival, Marshall, Bray; Toseland, Herd, Clayton, Doherty and Brook.
BLACKPOOL: Wallace; Blair (D ), Witham; Hall, Cardwell, Jones (S.); Watmough, Hampson, Fin an, Jones (T. W.) and Munro.
***
Sheffield had a little man on the wing ...
WHEN last a Blackpool team played a First Division match at Bramall-lane, where Sheffield United are to be met again next week, the star of the match was a little outside-left, writes “Spectator.”
He scored Sheffield's third goal to make it 3-0 at half- time, and when Blackpool hit back and reduced the lead to 3-2 early in the second half he settled it all by scoring a fourth for Sheffield and completing a remarkable triumph.
The forward's name was Walter Rickett. He wears a tangerine jersey these days, and was coveted by Blackpool from that November afternoon until he was exchanged for George Farrow this New Year.
First of Blackpool's goals in this 4-2 match was a penalty by Stanley Mortensen - the first and only penalty he has scored for Blackpool in the First Division.
The second goal was George Eastham's.
This was the Blackpool team on November 9, 1946.
Wallace; Sibley, Lewis, Buchan (T.), Suart, Johnston, Eastham, Dick, Mortensen, Blair (J), and McIntosh.
Notice what has happened since? The entire defence and two of the forwards have been transferred, and only one of the remaining seven men, Tom Buchan, is playing in the position where he was fielded only 16 months ago - in the Reserve.
BLACKPOOL TEAM SAY
‘NO FEE FOR PICTURES’
THE BLACKPOOL CUP FINAL TEAM WILL CHARGE NO FEE TO PRESS PHOTOGRAPHERS FOR TAKING THEIR PHOTOGRAPHS, WRITES “SPECTATOR.”
Manchester United players told 16 photographers from newspapers and agencies at Old Trafford immediately before the Easter games “No photographs except at £10 a time.”
The photographers walked out.
Charlton Athletic, who defeated Burnley in last year’s extra-time final, introduced a similar tariff - and were as a result boycotted by the cameramen before the Wembley match.
“We talked it over a week or two ago,” I was told by Harry Johnston, the Blackpool captain, before the Arsenal match this afternoon.
“OUR FRIENDS”
Without hesitation we decided that it would be ungracious to make such a charge to men who had given us a lot of publicity in the past, and whom we have always regarded as our friends.
Private photographers - that might be different.
“The Press can make or break a player.
“Now and again the Press has been critical of us, but at other times it has been as kind to us. We don’t want to capitalise out of them whatever fame we have won.”
That, I know, is the view of every player in the Blackpool team.
MAGAZINE
These men are being content to enhance their income during the pre-Final days by the publication of a half-crown celebration magazine in which I have collaborated.
I saw the rough proofs yesterday of a book which will include articles by Harry Johnston, Stanley Mortensen! and Stanley Matthews, and autographed photographs of all the players.
The first edition of 20.000 may be on sale by next week-end.
The two Cup Final teams have already made £43 a man in extra bonuses in ’Cupties this season and £40 each in talent money.
The winning team in the Final will increase this revenue by another £20 bonus each and an additional £10 in talent money.
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