BLACKPOOL LOSE POINT AFTER GETTING LEAD
Mortensen hits two first-half goals
THEN CRIPPLED
Bolton Wanderers 2, Blackpool 2
By “Spectator”
WHEN I left Blackpool shortly after noon today people were hunting all over the town for motorcoaches to Burnden Park.
For nearly all them it was a vain quest. Scarcely a coach was left down the length of the coast from Lytham to Fleetwood.
All the way to Bolton there were dozens on the road. The general estimate was that between 5,000 and 6,000 people had come from the Fylde towns.
In the Blackpool goal George Farm made his first appearance, and for the Wanderers Jimmy Hernon took his bow before the Burnden Park public.
A fact known to few people was that Ralph Banks, the bricklayer, who plays for Bolton these days, and in this match faced Stanley Matthews, had a couple of trials for Blackpool before the war,
I saw Wilf Mannion, one of football’s problem men. outside the ground. He went in as one of the Blackpool team’s guests. The attendance was soaring to 45,000 when the teams appeared to the sort of reception they give them in Cup-ties.
BOLTON WANDERERS: Hanson: Roberts, Banks (R), Howe, Gillies, Barrass, Woodward, Hernon, Moir, Bradley, McShane.
BLACKPOOL: Farm: Shimwell, Suart, Johnston, Hayward, Kelly, Matthews, Mortensen, McIntosh, McCall, Rickett.
Referee: Mr. A. C. Denham (Ashton-on-Ribble).
THE GAME
The Wanderers won the toss and defended the goal below the railway embankment. Not that it required defending for a long time. It was all the Wanderers in the opening minutes.
Raids on tn Blackpool goal followed in a nonstop succession.
In one of them. Woodward took Bradley’s long pass, swerved away from Suart and crossed a ball which Farm was preparing to punch away as McShane thundered on to him and almost somersaulted over him.
SHOT WIDE
Bradley shot wide at a great pace with a linesman’s flag waving for offside and the referee ignoring it, and in the next minute Farm had to beat out anywhere a long forward pass which all five forwards were chasing.
In the first five minutes the Blackpool forwards had only once crossed the halfway line, Blackpool goal kicks at this time were working out at the rate of one a minute.
The Wanderers were playing with all the confidence of a team that has been winning its recent matches, and was intent on winning this one as rapidly as possible.
Matthews had his first pass in the sixth minute - a long clearance by Hayward - but Gillies intercepted his centre yards in front of Mortensen.
MISFIELDED
Still the Wanderers raced nonstop and full-tilt on a besieged Blackpool goal, McShane crossing one centre which Farm mis- fielded and grabbed on his line as Moir came tearing in at him.
Ten minutes had gone and the Wanderers threw a goal away. There was a raid on the left, a couple of half-hit clearances.
Out came the ball loose to Woodward who, with the goal gaping in front of him, shot wide and was so disgusted that he stood holding his head in his hands.
OUTPLAYED
But Mortensen puts Blackpool in front
Never this season have I seen Blackpool as outplayed as in the first 14 minutes of this match.
Yet no sooner had I written that than Blackpool went in front in the next minute. And that 100th goal of MORTENSEN’S at last put them there.
It was a model goal. Matthews open the raid with a pass inside to Mortensen Out to McIntosh, who had wandered on to the wing, the inside-right glided the ball.
Out on the wing and to the line the centre-forward raced, crossed the ball high: Hanson leaped at it, half-hit it, and in a great leap Mortensen hurling himself at the flying ball, headed that elusive goal he has been hunting for six matches.
Four minutes later came another sensation with the Wanderers, pardonably subdued under the hammer blow, beginning to wonder what had hit them.
PENALTY
There was another raid on the right, another centre crossed from this quarter. A shot by McIntosh 1 was repelled on the line. The ball - cannoned out to the left. Almost on his knees Rickett headed it back again.
In desperation, with his goalkeeper manifestly out of position. Gillies beat it down with one hand on the line. It was a penalty beyond dispute.
MORTENSEN took it, scored with a low fast cross shot to give Blackpool a lead which after all that had been happening bordered on the incredible.
It took the Wanderers another five minutes to find anything approaching their earlier composure and confidence.
Then, in a fast down-the-middle raid, Bradley shot a fast rising ball which Farm punched out in mid-air for the first corner of the match with half Bolton shouting “Goal,” a split second too soon.
BOMBARDMENT
Shot after shot soared high over Blackpool’s goal afterwards. The earlier rhythm but none of the aggression had gone out of the Wanderers’ football and they were still at it minute after minute.
Yet Blackpool were nearer a goal in' an isolated raid which produced another demand for a penalty which Mr. Denham ignored.
But when in the 38th minute the lead was reduced to 2-1 nobody could pretend that Bolton were not entitled to a goal
Yet I suppose that Blackpool ill always say, and justifiably, that it was scored against nine men.
Mortensen had limped into the dressing-room in the 35th minute. Two minutes later another raid opened which ended in a goal.
It opened as Woodward lobbed the ball nearly over Suart’s head and crossed a high centre into a packed goalmouth.
Backwards and forwards afterwards the ball surged in the middle of it all Hayward went to earth and remained down. Nobody in Blackpool’s defence could clear the ball anywhere to make Mr Denham blow his whistle.
MOIR SCORES
In the end the inevitable happened. A short pass reached MOIR and the centre-forward, from 10 yards out, shot a ball which hit the far wall of the net as Farm, probably unsighted, fell shade late.
Mortensen came back into the game with his left ankle strapped as the crowd were still cheering.
The Wanderers’ attacks raged almost without interruption until the interval.
In this half Blackpool scored two goals and yet the Wanderers had not lost a corner and had taken only four goal kicks. It was a classic example of Blackpool taking the few chances that came.
Half-time: Bolton Wanderers 1, Blackpool 2.
SECOND HALF
McIntosh won a corner, Blackpool's first of the match in the second minute of the half by chasing an apparently impossible pass far out to the left flag.
In the next minute Blackpool nearly went further in front as Mortensen raced through to take McCall’s lobbed centre, beat Hanson in a race for the ball, and, as he was falling, lifted it inches over the bar of a goal that had been left open.
SHAKY DEFENCE
This Wanderers’ defence was not too firm under pressure.
It was gaping wide again as McCall shot a ball which missed a post of a goal which Hanson had again deserted - a ball which McIntosh missed, too, by inches as he hurled himself at it a yard off the empty line.
Within a minute Hanson made a great clearance after Shimwell had given Matthews position for a centre which the goalkeeper caught in the air above a ruck of men.
Another minute, and with a goal half empty in front of him, McCall missed a bouncing ball completely after McIntosh had beaded it down to his feet.
The Wanderers were being outplayed for the first time during the afternoon.
It was only in a breakaway that Farm was next tested, the goalkeeper holding confidently a ball hooked over his head by Moir - the sort of ball which goalkeepers hate, as it falls into them with men rushing in at it in a pack.
COMMAND LOST
All the Wanderers first half command of the game had gone. The few attempts they made were being cut up remorselessly by a Blackpool defence swooping fast into every tackle.
Farm misjudged one forward pass which bounced out off his knees, caused considerable anxiety before Kelly cleared it anywhere.
Afterwards, as the game entered on its last 25 minutes, the Wanderers began to put on the heat again, but there were few major incidents in thrustful but little planned football.
Five minutes after hobbling out on to the left wing as a passenger, Mortensen headed into Hansons hands after Matthews had taken the ball impudently up to his half-back, passed him, and raked the Wanderers’ goal with a centre which Rickett crossed again.
Another minute and Farm held magnificently a high rising shot by Bradley, ancd in the next punched out a left wing centre.
EQUALISER
Blackpool, with only four fit forwards, were being penned in their own half again with 15 minutes to go.
Ten minutes from the end the Wanderers made it 2-2.
Two men were in the goal. The first was McShane who took a square pass, swerved past Shimwell, reached the line and crossed a centre which HERNON shot into the roof of the net before a man could move.
This was Hernon’s first goal for his new club.
Two minutes later McCall grazed a post and nearly put Blackpool, in spite of all the Wanderers’ pressure, in front again.
Blackpool held out to the end but it required an all-out defence to do it.
Result:
BOLTON WANDERERS 2 (Moir 38 min, Hernon 80 min)
BLACKPOOL 2 (Mortensen 15, 19 mins)
A Blackpool defence which withstood the tornado of a forward line, and a Blackpool front line which took its few chances in the first half - and missed one or two in the second - won a point out of this match.
One of the stars for Blackpool was Suart, who has never had a finer second half - a full-back fighting every inch of the way.
There was, however, not one man in this defence who gave an inch in the tackle or could afford to either. Farm had his great moments, but he had moments of uncertainty, too, understandable in a man obviously unaccustomed to facing a forward line hurtling itself on his goal at such a pace.
The Blackpool forwards had always to be watched whenever the ball was in the region of Matthews who, with few passes, made the most of nearly all of them.
There was a time before Mortensen eventually retired into a wing position, when this line was threatening to increase the lead which it snatched in four dramatic minutes.
Still, as I see it, nobody could complain about the result.
THE TRUTH ABOUT STAN MORTENSEN
Why he has been missing the goals
By “Spectator”
BECAUSE he has played in five successive games without scoring a goal, the football public in Blackpool is asking “What’s gone wrong with Stanley Mortensen?"
That is a considerable compliment to the England and Blackpool forward. Only if a man has made the scoring of goals such a practice that he has become one of the greatest inside forwards of his generation would his failure to score in nearly 500 minutes excite comment.
It has had no particular influence on the England selectors, who, losing no faith in him, have invited him to go to Denmark for the first of the season's internationals at the end of next week.
Blackpool still, however, asks this question. It is entitled to ask it.
It is only when the boys of the whispering gallery who, to hear them talk, know all that is to be known about football, and profess such a knowledge of a player’s personal affairs that one wonders why they are not employed by M.I. 5 - it is only when they begin to babble, spreading mischievous gossip that the time comes to tell the truth.
Not discontented
ALL whispers about Mortensen being discontented at Blackpool are untrue. I have his own assurance for that.
That he had certain grievances, unspecified, but still grievances, during the summer, appears to be indicated by his long reluctance to re-sign.
It was not until a few days before zero hour at the end of July that he attached his signature again to a Blackpool contract.
But, once he signed, he became again 100 per cent. Blackpool. To insinuate anything else is an insult to the loyalty of one of the grandest players ever to wear a Blackpool jersey.
Nor is it true, as I have been told by the speciously knowledgeable this week, that he has been offered a post with a London store at a fabulous salary. Or that the Arsenal have bid £22,000 for him.
There is no reason to think that he will be leaving Blackpool. There is no reason to think that he wants to leave; and even less to think that whatever may be offered for him Blackpool would accept it.
Their faith
THE Blackpool board have faith in him, in common with the England selectors, who, to my knowledge, have watched him once - in the match at Manchester - and, according to other reports, have watched him twice.
Yet the fact remains that he is not scoring as he was last season, that only in flashes is the old fire there.
What’s the cause of that?
I think that Mortensen himself diagnosed it without intending to when I was talking to him the other day. He was making no excuses for missing the goals. That was not even being discussed.
The truth is that this man who twice was near death while training with the R.A.F., and was once dragged from a crashed aircraft with a gash in his skull which would have killed most men, has never since the war been the tough little guy, insensitive to punishment, which is the general conception of him.
He has had - still has - a lion heart, an amazing speed over the first 20 yards. He had too and will have again, the shot which crowns those tearing, searing raids with goals.
His health
NOW, unless I am all wrong, the inevitable, but, I think, temporary reaction has set in.
The miracle man can’t work miracles indefinitely.
Not when his health has been such as Mortensen’s has been since the beginning of this season. That, I believe, is the chief reason for his present partial eclipse.
That was what he revealed, without, I repeat, making any sort of excuses for himself, when I talked with him. He has been afflicted by boils, which, however good a joke they may be on the music halls, are no joke when you have them.
Insomnia, too, is still his mortal enemy.
"Many a night,” he said, “I don’t sleep until nearly dawn. Why, after the Manchester match, a tiring match if ever there was one, when you’d have thought I’d have been away as soon as my head touched the pillow, I hadn’t a wink until six o’clock in the morning.
“I went downstairs, made tea, read a book, wrote a few letters. But sleep wouldn’t come.”
That’s a common experience for him. Since that plane crash it has beset him intermittently.
He'll come again
HE has played great match winning football in spite of it, for Blackpool and for his country and it’s my opinion that he will play it again.
People who think that Stanley Mortensen is burnt-up, in the boxing phrase, that his days of glory are ended, simply don t know and will never understand this mighty atom.
He will come again. People are entitled to ask the question they are asking. But they are not entitled to be singing premature swan songs over him, or to be talking a lot of unkind tarra- diddle.
POSTSCRIPT. — And until Blackpool begin to play the long-passing direct game which was exemplified to perfection by the County at Derby on Wednesday, no' team will ever get the best out of this one Blackpool forward. For it is on the long-chased pass that he has built his fame.
Two 'Pools next week - but whose points?
IT will be the second of four successive all-Lancashire matches for Blackpool - Bolton, Liverpool, Preston, Everton - when Liverpool come to town next weekend.
No happy hunting ground for Liverpool is Bloomfield- road. Twice since the war the Anfield men have lost here.
The first time, in November, 1946, they came as League leaders, undefeated in 12 games, and were beaten 3-2. Last year Blackpool won 2-0. Three of those five Blackpool goals - one two years ago and both in last season’s games - were scored by Jim McIntosh.
Without Albert ("I will not sign”) Stubbins, Liverpool have not been the potent force in attack this time which made their front line a menace to any defence in the first two postwar seasons.
Yet any team possessing such a wing forward as Billy Liddell - the Scot with the jet-propelled shot - or Jack Balmer, who makes a habit of scoring against Blackpool, require a lot of watching.
I wrote a week ago about the toll which is taken of a team in a few years. These are the men who played for Blackpool in the 1946 Liverpool match less than two years ago:
Wallace; Sibley, Kennedy, Farrow, Hayward, Johnston, Munro, Dick, Mortensen, Blair (J.) and McIntosh.
Six only of those men are left on Blackpool’s staff. Five only have played in Blackpool’s First Division team this season. How brief is the glory sometimes.
Jottings from all parts
BY "SPECTATOR" 18 September 1948
THE WRIGHT WAY
JACK WRIGHT, the full-back who has come out of the West Lancashire League into the First Division as if there was nothing whatever remarkable in the transition, ought to be able to play football.
When he’s playing a game he’s doing what comes naturally - if you believe in heredity.
His father was one of the greatest water polo players and Rugby giants in Lancashire in his day, and when Jack was married a few weeks ago he chose as his bride the daughter of Peter Cowper, who has 20 years in professional football and played for Southampton and West Ham United.
LATEST bet in Blackpool is “Stoke City for the Cup.” Why? Because in the last two seasons the team that should have played Blackpool on Wembley Day have won the Cup.
Two years ago it was Charlton Athletic. Last season it was Manchester United.
On Cup Final day this season Blackpool, according to the First Division fixture list, should play at Stoke. So, obviously, if this sequence continues - although know of no particular reason why it should - the City will go to Wembley and win there.
Well, if you want a nice long-odds bet, here it is. But don’t blame this department if you lose.
WHEN I was commiserating the other day with Trainer Johnny Lynas on the casualty list confronting him in the Blackpool dressing room he was as philosophical about it as he always is - as he even was after Wembley.
“It comes to every team, some time or other,” he said. “It’s come to us now - and that’s all there is to it.”
The public know little about the hours this man spends - and his assistant Jack Duckworth spends, too - outside training hours, ministering to the halt and the lame.
No 40 - hour week for them at any time, and in recent weeks they've been on over-time plus. Why, it’s a commonplace for Johnny Lynas to give the injured treatment at his own home in the evenings long after the ground is closed.
Blackpool ought to be appreciative of the services of these two men - and I think Blackpool are.
I AM glad to notice that Verdi Godwin is shooting a goal or two for Manchester City.
He was at Blackburn last season, scored the goal which gave the Rovers a 1-1 draw at Ewood Park exactly a year ago in the Blackpool match. After that match, I recall, he came back to Blackpool with the team he had deprived of £1 bonus each. Not that anybody held that against him!
There was a time when he was in Blackpool’s “A” team, but he preferred Blackburn in the end. Now at the City he is being chosen to lead the Manchester forwards instead of the high-priced Irishman, Eddie McMorran.
FROM a fortnight on Monday Mine Host at the Gynn Hotel, Blackpool, will be Malcolm Butler, the ex-Blackpool fullback, who played three times for Ireland after enlisting with Blackpool in February, 1935.
His days in football are over. "It's definitely the end? ” I asked him. “I’ve played my last game,” he said.
Football has lost one of its gentlemen, but I think that in the circumstances he was wise to take this post outside the game when it was offered him.
For too many men professional football ends in a cul-de-sac. Then the people who’ve cheered you soon forget all about you.
A pilot in the last war, Butler had a distinguished career in the R.A.F., but when you talk to him about it - about the time when he was shot down and made a trek of a few hundred miles through enemy-occupied territory back to base - he says, “Let’s forget it. I want to ‘shoot no lines.’ ”
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SOME cricketers who can also play football desert cricket as soon as football begins.
But not William (“Bill”) Slater. He could have gone into any of Blackpool F.C.’s minor teams during the last month, but he preferred to remain loyal to Blackpool C.C.’s Ribblesdale League XI, playing his football only in midweek.
What would have happened if he had forsaken the cricket team? It is probable that Blackpool would have lost the Ribblesdale League title, for, after an unexpectedly lean month with the bat - 31 runs in five innings - he came to Blackpool’s rescue in the deciding game at Clitheroe last weekend, played an innings which won the points which won the title.
Now this talented young sportsman goes to Leeds University, but will not. I am assured, be lost to Fylde sport.
THEY are saying already in the Lancashire Combination that when George Farrow, the ex-Blackpool and Sheffield United half - back, took Paddy Sowden. the Blackpool “A" team forward with him to Bacup Borough he made the biggest capture in the Combination for years.
Paddy is one of those forwards who shoots fewer goals than he creates, but as a tactician he is in a high class for a player so young. Several League club scouts have already been reported at Bacup, their target for the day this product of the Blackpool “A” team.
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EXACTLY one year and three days have separated Stanley Matthews’ two goals for Blackpool in the First Division.
The second was scored last weekend - with or without intent! - on September 11, 1943. The first was against Blackburn Rovers - and this, too, was into the north goal at Blackpool - on September 8. 1947.
Two goals in a year entered under the name of S. Matthews in the score card. But how many could be entered “via S. Matthews?”
He makes them, but he is singularly disinclined to take them. Yet I don’t think he’ll finish this present season with only one to his credit.
I may be wrong, but, as I wrote a few weeks ago, I suspect he’s after the goals this time, is becoming a little tired of the title of “The Man Who Can’t Score”
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WHY was Johnny Hancocks’ goal for the Wolves at Blackpool disallowed?
One correspondent on Spion Kop asserts that there was no mystery about it at all, writes an interesting letter, and illustrates it with a diagram to reveal that Jesse Pye ran offside before the ball was shot.
That may be the case, although how it is possible to J. Hancocks detect a hair-line offside decision in front of the north goal from Spion Kop I don’t pretend to know. It was manifestly impossible from the Press box in the main stand.
Opinion of one expert in the box, Mr. Bert Fogg, the former League referee, was that offside was not the reason for the decision, that the forward who shot the goal shouted before he shot and was penalised for it.
I am told that the referee confirmed this view at the end of the match. Offside had nothing to do with it.
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WORD for Joe Robinson, the Blackpool goalkeeper.
Goalkeepers are supposed to be - and often are expected to be - infallible in a world where nobody is.
This player has made his mistakes. They have cost points. So out he has had to go, back into the Central League, seeking the confidence which he has lost. He has gone without a murmur of complaint.
I cannot forget, appreciating that the decision to exclude him was almost inevitable in present circumstances, that it was only in April that he was one of Blackpool’s 11 heroes of Wembley, that he played in all the Cup-ties and until the semi-finals never lost a goal.
A goalkeeper who can do that can come back again. I hope he does
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WHAT is to happen to George Dick, the Blackpool forward?
As Blackpool offered him terms and he refused to accept them, asking instead for a transfer, he has not been paid a penny by the club since the end of July, and has now as a result lost between £60 and £80.
My information is that he is prepared to go to a club with whose manager he could not come to terms shortly before the season opened. If this manager’s club - a First Division club - renews its offer, which Blackpool were always prepared to accept, the ex-B.A.O.R. forward, who soared to fame in two seasons, may soon be in a new jersey.
This club could do with him, and with one or two other new forwards, too. according to their present record.
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HONOURS
(COMPLIMENTS to “The Two Stanleys” on their selection for England in the match in Denmark next weekend.
And compliments to Harry Johnston on his restoration - belated but deserved - to representative football.
Captain of the Football League against the Irish League at Anfield on Monday evening, he has been given an honour to which he is entitled and which may presage his re-introduction to the international arena.
More members wanted
THE great interest displayed by members who have written to the secretary promises well for the well being of the club.
The committee hope that more Bloomfield-road fans will join and show their interest.
The membership fee is only 2s. 6d., and the secretary, Mr. C. A. Hay, of 10, Swanage-avenue, Blackpool, will be delighted to acknowledge subscriptions and forward any details of interest.
Do not forget that arrangements have been made for members to travel to any of the League away games. Already this venture is proving most successful.
A fortnight today, when Blackpool meet North End at Deepdale, we look forward to another big load of members cheering for Blackpool.
The big dance is booked for November 5 at the Tower.
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