BLACKPOOL HOLD ON GRIMLY TO GOAL LEAD
Ten men and a cripple shake off Liverpool's late raids
McCALL’S GOAL
Blackpool 1, Liverpool 0
By “Spectator”
BLACKPOOL will soon despair of ever being able to field a full strength team.
All three England players were away today, two of them nursing damaged ankles and watching the match, and the third, Stanley Matthews, in Copenhagen for the Denmark match tomorrow - his 55th appearance for England.
That scrapped the famous right wing triangle and left understudying for it two men who were in the “A” team at the end of last season.
They were Rex Adams and Ewen Fenton. Also in the triangle was Walter Rickett, who often played in an inside position in his Sheffield days, but had until today never been anywhere except on the wing for Blackpool.
There was another full house of 30,000 with several of the gates closed 15 minutes before the kick-off.
BLACKPOOL: Farm; Shimwell, Suart, Fenton, Hayward, Kelly, Adams, Rickett, McIntosh, McCall, Wardle.
LIVERPOOL: Sidlow: Shepherd, Lambert, Taylor, Hughes, Paisley, Payne, Balmer, Shannon, Fagan, Liddell.
Referee: Mr. J. Williams, of Bolton.
THE GAME
Eric Hayward, who is having plenty of practice these days as Blackpool’s captain, won the toss.
Blackpool spent the first five minutes attacking the north goal, in front of which that fast moving full-back Lambert made a fine clearance in the first few seconds.
In Liverpool’s first and only raid for a long time, Hayward halted Shannon.
The game was moving almost without cessation on Liverpool’s goal.
The first corner under all this pressure was a gift from Lambert who sliced the ball almost over his own head and over the line.
Twice out on the left wing Wardle beat his man, creating positions for Kelly, who shot wide, and Rickett who hooked over the bar.
Blackpool’s football was open and direct and making progress all the time.
With 10 minutes gone Liverpool won a comer and might have had a goal in the raid which prefaced it if Hayward had not leaped to head out a centre crossed by Balmer to the waiting and unmarked Shannon.
While this pressure continued Farm, wearing a pair of immaculate new gloves, punched out with both fists yet another centre raking Blackpool’s goal.
After this succession of Liverpool attacks, Blackpool nearly snatched a goal in the 17th minute. It was nearly a goal for a First Division recruit.
Rickett took a clearance, darted forward, gave Adams a forward pass on to which the wing forward could run at full gallop. On to it the 20-year-old raced, shot a ball which Sidlow punched over the bar with one fist while still in mid-air.
NEAR THING
Fagan heads just wide of post
There was plenty of assurance in Farm’s fielding when a centre was crossed again from the left with Liverpool raiding.
Then Liverpool were near to the lead. Suart giving a corner which Payne crossed with such precision that Fagan met it and headed only inches wide of a post which Farm was not guarding.
Neither team was long in complete command. Back surged Blackpool’s front line, and after one raid on the left a pass came across which eluded Sidlow and seemed to bounce away from Rickett with the forward standing almost under the bar.
Two corners for Blackpool followed before, with half an hour gone, Liverpool advanced on the left. Shimwell fell in a tackle and the trainer was summoned to aid him off for treatment.
Farm beat down the ball smartly when Balmer shot at him a minute before Shimwell left the field.
Another two minutes, and as the full-back came limping over the line again Fenton cut fast across Fagan’s path as the ball was bouncing up and down in front of the Liverpool forward in a scoring position.
Hayward shattered Liverpool’s next raid and those raids continued for a time at the rate of about one a minute.
They always came to a standstill before the last pass could be made.
Blackpool’s raids met a similar fate, one forward pass after another ending in the packed ranks of Liverpool’s defence
HAYWARD AGAIN
Every time his full-backs were passed Hayward stopped his man. He halted Liddell a few minutes before half-time as the Scottish outside-left raced into one of those positions where he shoots his goals, after Shimwell had made on him the hesitant tackle of a full-back still limping.
This was about the least exciting half I have seen this season. The forward lines had been repelled repeatedly.
On half-time Wardle, faster than I have seen him since he came to Blackpool, opened a raid which ended in a corner out on the right.
It nearly produced a goal, Rickett heading down a ball which Sidlow held as he fell to both knees on his line.
Half-time: Blackpool 0, Liverpool 0.
SECOND HALF
The first raid in this half which amounted to anything ended in Balmer heading Liddell’s centre into Farm’s hands.
Blackpool’s retaliation was a protracted attack which a free-kick ended close to the penalty area - a free-kick which was lifted into a packed goal mouth by Fenton and headed out anywhere by Hughes.
There was still nothing conclusive in the raid of either front line. Something went wrong with the last pass every time.
Always, too, in the centre of Blackpool’s defence was Hayward, as strong in the tackle as ever.
Adams crossed a couple of perfect centres which caused considerable excitement, but little else.
GREAT CLEARANCE
Liverpool’s goalkeeper made one great clearance as the ball seemed to rocket either off McCall or off the full-back racing level with him.
Blackpool’s attacks continued. But something was still always happening as a position was developing.
When Liverpool lifted a brief siege, Farm was twice in action, punching out a long falling centre magnificently as Payne tore in at him, and beating out in the next minute a ball shot wide of him by Shannon.
Shimwell hobbled out on to the right wing, Heaving Blackpool yet again with 10 men and a passenger.
For a time a shuffled defence wilted under pressure which gave it no rest.
Clearances were hit anywhere. Suart hit one over line for a corner, shoving it away from two advancing forwards.
BLACKPOOL SCORE
That was in the 19th minute. In the 20th, in a breakaway, Blackpool’s line of four forwards and a crippled full-back went in front.
The raid opened with McIntosh pursuing a haphazard forward pass. Hughes reached it first but could only divert it out on to the wing.
Shimwell hobbled after it, call ed “Leave it, leave it,” crossed it in to an unprepared defence. McCALL was waiting for it, shot from 15 yards out, a ball which Sidlow reached but could only punch into the wall of the net.
PROTEST
Mr. Williams gave a goal, but was immediately surrounded by a swarm of protesting Liverpool men demanding that he should consult a linesman whose flag Was lifted out on the left wing.
He consented, had a little conference, and in a silence which was shattered into cheers again pointed for the second time to the centre circle.
LIVERPOOL SHUFFLE
Liverpool continued to raid, but despairing of ever shooting a goal shuffled the forward line with Shannon at outside-left and Liddell in the centre.
Yet even Liddell, the sharpshooter, did not shoot today, preferred instead to lob a free kick half a dozen yards outside the penalty area into a pack of men where, for a time, it was lost to view before cannoning out into an open space again.
Ten minutes left and Blackpool were still in front, but they were grimly, at times desperately, defending to hold this lead.
For minutes there were as many as eight men called back into this last ditch action.
Breakaways, nearly all of them built by Rickett, interrupted this late storming of the Blackpool goal.
In one of them, five minutes from time, Adams was laid low and eventually came back into the game limping.
Result:
BLACKPOOL 1 (McCall 65 mins)
LIVERPOOL 0
Except that Blackpool won this game and won it against the odds not a lot can be said for it.
Admittedly the hoodoo which seems to be afflicting Blackpool this season beset the team again.
Another man, this time full-back Eddie Shimwell was lost today. And again for the second successive week, the team played the last 35 minutes with 10 men and a cripple on one wing.
That may not have been sufficient to excuse some of the indifferent football which was played earlier but to win in such circumstances disarms a lot of criticism.
Resolution was the quality which chiefly won this match - the resolution of such men as Hayward retrieving one desperate position after another, and Rickett leading one forlorn raid after another in the second half.
The forwards were given little of the ball by the wing half-backs and yet both Fenton and Kelly were always in the thick of it whenever their goal was menaced.
Half an hour before the interval Wardle was revealing glimpses of the football which made his name at Grimsby.
Farm was a confident and competent goalkeeper in front of Liverpool’s second half raids.
It was not a game to remember but it was a game which Blackpool were entitled to be a little proud of winning against such odds as these.
“GOALS AGAINST” TOTAL LEAPS
Defensive decline is the price of injury
By “Spectator”
WHEREVER I go in the country these days I am asked "What's wrong with football?" Wherever I go in Blackpool I am asked "What’s wrong with Blackpool?"
Everything seems, to have gone to the dogs. Has it? I’ve noticed nothing in particular to cause all this depression.
I agree that there is something wrong with foot- ball. But it is not a recent manifestation.
Ever since the war everything on the field has been so subordinated to speed, and nearly everything has been so dictated by the “Get-shut-of-it!” brigade that football's craftsmen must long ago have come to the conclusion that for them there is no future in it.
I watched a match at Bolton a week ago which would not have graced the Second Division before the war - and I am not one of those who think that the past alone wears a halo.
A census revealed, as I report in another column, that during the 90 minutes there were 131 stoppages for a variety of causes, over 50 per cent, of them for throws-in, as one defence after the other chose the path of least resistance or helter-skelter forwards raced the ball over the line or went tearing in vain pursuit of it before haphazard passes crossed it.
Three good ones
YET I must admit that of the nine games I have seen Blackpool play this season, three - the home matches with Derby County and Wolverhampton Wanderers and the Maine-road game with Manchester United - were about good as I expect to see in these not-so-glorious days.
That, at least, is a higher average than most football commentators can claim.
There is something wrong with football. As attendances soar the quality declines.
Yet, arguing from the reasonable assumption that about a million people every weekend can’t be wrong, there is still sufficient drama in it to excite the populace and at least to justify its existence in the good old phrase about “the safety-valve of the masses.”
It is assuredly blowing off a good head of steam today!
-And Blackpool
THAT is the general case football’s fall from Olympian grace of other days And that is not including, either, one of the basic causes, if the authorities would face the fact the sordid transfer system. What about the particular case? What’s wrong with Blackpool’s football?
Statistics, which everybody seems to love such a lot these days, prove that there has been a decline. The first nine games this season have produced seven points. The last nine games last season produced 12. After playing nine games two years ago the team were in possession of 14.
So the line on the graph has gone down all the time.
But a closer analysis of this season’s figures and the chart a year ago establishes one fact which will be a revelation to most people. It was a revelation to this chronicler when he unearthed it.
The goals against
FOR the comparison that the forwards reveals scored exactly as many goals - 14 - in the first nine games this season as in the first nine last season.
But - and this should be in capital letters - the defence conceded only seven goals a year ago and have lost 20, or nearly three times as many, this season.
If, therefore, Blackpool are not exactly in the position where Cup Finalists are expected to be at the end of September, it is presumably the defence which is chiefly at fault.
There are people who would put all the blame on the goalkeeper, Joe Robinson.
That is manifestly unfair. There have been mistakes in goal, and those mistakes have cost points. But one man alone can not be indicted for everything.
Hit by injuries
THE big crop of casualties has afflicted the defence to a greater degree than the attack. Eddie Shimwell and Harry Johnston have both been out of commission and no defence can afford to lose such men as those.
These casualties, to be fair, have affected the entire team, have never allowed it to settle into the force it was a year ago, have sapped its confidence, and, in part, at least, have contributed to the team’s comparative failure in the first -five weeks of the season.
The half-back line, with the exception of the indomitable Eric Hayward, has not been as impressive as Blackpool half-back lines have a habit of being. The full-backs have not, match by match, been as decisive as they were last season.
The goals in the “against" column are a sufficient indication of all that. Nor are 14 goals in nine games, even if the total equals last season’s figure, such a mighty achievement by the forwards.
Back to form ?
THEY think, nevertheless, at headquarters that as player after player is sent into training and passed for service again, and now that the two-games-a-week serial has ended, form will re-establish itself and Blackpool will come again.
I am inclined to think so, too. And, in view of all that these Blackpool men did last season, there is good reason to think it. Football is a topsy-turvy game ask the people who fill in the coupons! But not even in football can a team shed all its glory in a few months.
And so to Preston: It was seven last time
IT is the football equivalent of the Lancashire-Yorkshire match at cricket when Blackpool go to Deepdale next weekend.
Often there is not a lot of cricket in the Battle of the Roses. There is often not such a lot of football in these Preston - Blackpool matches which have been raging on and off in my recollection since those distant days of 1920, when the clubs met in the Cup and Tom Roberts headed a winning goal past Harry Mingay in a blizzard 10 minutes from time in a 2-1 dog-fight.
Once, in the first promotion season of 1929-30, Blackpool’s forwards shot six goals past Jock Ewart at Preston to win a sensational match 6-4 - Jimmy Hampson had three of the goals, including a penalty - and as recently as last May Blackpool won, again at Deepdale, by 7-0.
That last match, however, must count as a freak - at least, North End prefer to think of it as such - for it was won against a Preston team which took the field after playing a series of games in a Scottish tour and against a young goalkeeper who was obviously rattled by giving away the first of the seven goals.
In normal circumstances there is never such a lot between the teams in these games. Two years ago it was 2-0 for Preston at Deepdale and 4-0 for Blackpool in the return. Last season North End won 1-0 at Blackpool.
It all depends, I suppose, on whether Tom Finney is playing for Preston. His presence or his absence seems nowadays to determine whether his team win or lose.
Jottings from all parts
BY "SPECTATOR" 25 September 1948
SO Jock Dodds comes back to give Everton a bit of the Old Look and scores a penalty to make a 1-1 draw with Liverpool for a team that can do with every point it can win these days.
He still remains, nevertheless. on the Goodison Park club’s transfer list at his own request although a 11 the reports which have been circulating about his signing for half a dozen clubs are - as the man said when he read his own obituary notice - a little premature.
It is only a fortnight ago that Lincoln City had a delegation at his flat near Squires Gate. A few hours later the Oldham Athletic manager came to town empowered to offer the fee Everton are asking for him
But the big Scot decided to say "No.” I think he may remain at Everton and, being the player he still is, I think, too, that the First Division is still the environment in which he should remain.
A BROCHURE on the recent close-season Continental' tours by the England team and a number of club teams is being circulated by the F.A.
Among the limited number of copies are two which have been sent to Blackpool's Stanley Matthews and Stanley Mortensen.
Glancing through one of them this week, I noticed a comment on the two-hour film of the Italy- England match which the England team saw the day after the game in Turin.
Yes, it was a two-hour film-and the Italian public lapped up every minute of it - a complete film record of the match, plus flash-backs to other England-Italy games.
Would there be such a public for such a complete screen script of the Final or an England-Scotland game? asks the author of the brochure.
I think the answer is “Yes" What about it, Mr. Rank?
SO that 100th goal for Stanley Mortensen has come at last.
He played - if you’re interested in statistics - from the 30th minute of the Villa match at Blackpool, on August 28 until the 14th minute of the Bolton match at Burnden Park on September 18 before he scored it - a total of eight hours and 44 minutes.
It will be a long time before he plays even half as long again for one solitary elusive goal. Now the Mortensen record at Blackpool in Cup and League since the war is:
Goals Games
1945-46 .. 38.. 38
1946-47 .. 29.. 39
1947-48 .. 31.. 40
1948-49 .. 3.. 9
Total .. 101..126
There is no scoring record at Blackpool comparable with it except Jimmy Hampson’s 247 goals in 360 games.
I WISH Mr. George Sheard, the Blackpool Press officer, had been working his stop-watch at Burnden Park last weekend. If he had recorded the actual minutes of playing time there would almost have been a case for a few folk asking for their money back.
Bolton had 39 throws-in - 30 in the second half alone - and Blackpool 33. Goal-kicks numbered 10 for the Wanderers and 16 for Blackpool.
Add 11 free-kicks for offside; against the Wanderers and 22 others for a variety of reasons during the hour and a half, and interruptions, exclusive of corners, totalled 131.
That averages one about every 50 seconds. Which leaves precious little time for football.
They are still arguing about the Wanderers' first goal at Burnden Park last week.
Half the Blackpool people at the match, which means between 2,000 and 3,000 people, think Referee A. C. Denham should have blown his whistle as soon as Eric Hayward went to earth.
But should he? Only when he is convinced that a man is seriously hurt a referee authorised to exercise his discretion and bring a match to a standstill while the ball is still in play.
Events revealed that Hayward could not be classified as this sort of casualty.
What Mr. Denham was praying for. I suspect, and what should have happened was a clearance anywhere out of the field by a Blackpool player. Then the game could have been halted and the trainer called to the centre-half.
Don’t blame the referee for not blowing the whistle. Blame the Blackpool defence for not making him blow it by
***
LATEST project contemplated by Blackpool F.C. Supporters Club is an electric signboard for the announcing of the half-time results at the ground.
The board would be erected, with the directorate’s permission, on the topmost tier of Spion Kop and would be operated from a control box near the south-west corner of the ground.
The system, too, would permit the flashing of messages - team changes and other announcements.
At present the broadcasting system, presented by this enterprising club, is being remodelled and renovated.
A MAN who has not played a football match for a long time stole all the Blackpool players’ thunder last weekend at Bolton.
The autograph hounds were baying at the doors and windows of Blackpool’s coach as avariciously as ever after the match. But when this man appeared at the official entrance the pack deserted the coach, Mr. Joe Smith swarming about him until he was nearly engulfed in the pack.
Their chant this time was not the familiar, “Aw, come on, Stanley!” or “Give us yer signature, Harry!” but “Please, Mr. Smith!” and “Sign here, Mr. Smith!”
None of them ever saw Manager Joe Smith play for the Wanderers! but in Bolton his name is legendary.
***
They draw the crowds
TOTAL number of spectators at Blackpool's first five away games this season is nearly a quarter of a million.
There were 46,000 at Sheffield, 51,187 at Maine-road, 47,750 at Sunderland, 32,082 at Derby, 47,000 at Bolton.
The team in tangerine are still Box-office with a capital “B."
***
WILF MANNION, meeting the Blackpool coach last weekend and walking into Burnden Park as a guest of the Blackpool team, has set all the gossips’ tongues wagging again.
There is nothing definite for them to wag about - but they keep on wagging.
The Middlesbrough forward, on his own admission, would prefer to be back in football than practising passive resistance against his Mannion club, and it's my bet that he will be back within a comparatively short time.
But not, I think, at Blackpool. Last week's brief encounter at Bolton was purely accidental.
***
PETER FOR PLUCK
HERE’S Irish courage for you!
It was as early as the 10th minute of the match at Villa Park last weekend that Peter Doherty went into a tackle and came out of it limping. He played the rest of the match almost in agony, scored two goals, made the pass which ended in the other.
Those three goals gave Huddersfield Town a point, and, but for a late goal by the Villa's Leslie Smith, would have given them two.
Yet from that 10th minute until the end Doherty was playing with an ankle hone broken, and never complained about it until after the match when the inflammation was so severe than an X-ray examination was ordered for the following day.
Now football will be without him for several weeks - and football in its present state can't afford to be without its Dohertys.
***
New 'mikes' at the ground
BLOOMFIELD-ROAD enthusiasts will have found a big improvement this afternoon in the broadcasting system.
At the tryout, after new “mikes” had been installed, it was certainly noticeable that the announcements were audible in all parts of the ground.
It is a pleasure to the committee to announce that the Mayor (Coun. J. R. Furness. J.P.) has accepted the chairman’s invitation to become patron to the club.
Now is your chance Spion Kop fans. A subcommittee room for enquiries has been opened in the refreshment hut at the south-east comer of the ground.
Next Saturday is our local “derby” match with Preston, and let us have a grand following to cheer the ’Pool on.
***
Besides the regular Tuesday evening whist drive and the big November 5 dance at the Tower, the ladies are hoping to arrange a dance in the Albert Hall shortly.
They also hope to run a “turkey drive” near Christmas Watch for the dates.
At a public meeting last week our chairman (Mr. Jack Pickard) expressed a hope that our membership would rapidly increase to somewhere near 5,000. Now fans what about it?
Send 2s. 6d. without delay to Mr. Charles Hay, 10, Swanage-avenue.
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