16 October 1948 Chelsea 3 Blackpool 3

CHELSEA MAKE IT A DRAW IN LAST MINUTE

Blackpool lead 3-1 then player crippled

A GRAND GAME

Chelsea 3,Blackpool 3 

By “Spectator”

PLAYING in London for the first time since an April afternoon at Wembley, Blackpool packed Stamford Bridge for the Chelsea match this afternoon.

Swarming mobs milled about the team’s coach when, threequarters of an hour before the kick-off, it reached this ground where once Cup Finals were played.

Stewards had to be summoned to clear a path to the dressing-room entrance. For half a mile outside the bridge traffic was almost at a standstill.

Every ticket for the match, I was told, was sold a fortnight ago. Dozens of Blackpool people had to race on to the massed terraces as a few of the gates were closing.

Except for the absence of Shimwell, Blackpool were at full strength, with the England right wing back in action.

Stanley Mortensen came to London yesterday after a week’s holiday in Dublin. Pickering, the young goalkeeper from York City, in whom Blackpool at one time were said to be interested last season, again deputised for Chelsea.

CHELSEA: Pickering, Bathgate, Hughes, Goulden, Harris, Macaulay, Campbell, Bowie, Bentley, Walker, Mclnnes.

BLACKPOOL: Farm, Suart, Wright, Johnston, Hayward, Kelly, Matthews, Mortensen, Rickett, McCall, Wardle,

Referee: Mr. J. G. Williams (Notts).

THE GAME

The attendance at the kick-off approached 75,000, which is the biggest for a Blackpool match since the Cup Final and bordering on a League record for the club.

Reports reached the Press box that the gates today were closed for the second time this season.

As the teams appeared hundreds of boys were released inside the barrier, on the edge of the greyhound track, which encircles the football pitch.

Thousands swarmed over the track a few minutes before the game opened, were ordered back by loud-speakers.

CHELSEA’S RAIDS

Young Jack Wright halted Chelsea’s first advance after his captain had won the toss for Blackpool and won nothing with it, for there was little wind and the rain had long ago ceased.

Chelsea raided continuously in the opening minutes. Walker headed over the bar, and afterwards Campbell crossed a centre to which Farm fell forward to field at Bentley’s feet.

The first time Blackpool were within shooting distance, Kelly lobbed forward a free-kick which Pickering scooped off the ground as it fell in front of him.

This raid continued, ended in Matthews walking the ball up to his full-back and crossing a centre which Bathgate cleared as Mortensen darted in fast, but a split second late to meet it.

Chelsea’s answer, in a game as fast as I have seen this season, was a corner in the fourth minute from which Bentley headed wide.

In the next minute came an incident which threatened serious

consequences for an outplayed Blackpool, who conceded two more corners.

Nobody appeared to notice the incident for seconds after it had happened. Mortensen went after a loose ball, fell as Hughes challenged him for possession sprawled on the grass and lay stunned for half a minute before the whistle was blown.

Then, after prolonged attention the inside right was carried off, remained off for a couple of minutes.

Unexpectedly, he came limping back with his left ankle bandaged.

The whirlwind siege of Blackpool’s goal ended, and Blackpool won a corner in the 10th minute. Pickering cleared it.

As in the early minutes of the game at Preston, Blackpool’s little centre - forward Walter Rickett had been chasing all over the field for a ball which had constantly eluded him.

SHY OF MATTHEWS

No man in the Chelsea defence would go anywhere near Matthews, who was allowed to centre the ball as he wanted.

He repeatedly centred it into a packed Chelsea goal area, where no Blackpool forward ever seemed to be in position to reach it.

Still, it was Chelsea’s game again with a quarter of an hour gone. Once the lead was missed when a rebounding ball put Bowie on side, and the inside right, racing in unmarked, shot over the bar.

Two minutes later Bowie atoned for this error with a goal which ended a fast breakaway on the right.

Over on to this right wing wandered the ex-Newcastle forward Ray Bentley.

He tore past Wright, crossed a low centre which BOWIE, careering in late as two Blackpool men closed on him, shot low over the line as he skidded forward at a ball bouncing away from him.

This lead was deserved, might have been increased two minutes later as Bentley hurled himself excitedly at another right wing centre, and missed it completely with the goal almost open.

FARM’S CLEARANCES

Farm made one grand clearance after another, punching out one falling centre superbly as Bentley challenged him for the flying ball.

Blackpool were not completely outplayed, now and again built neat, ordered advances, but could produce scarcely any punch.

Yet in the 24th minute Blackpool made it 1-1 with a goal as crisp and ordered as I have seen for a long time.

Matthews opened the raid with a free kick, crossed a ball which reached the left wing.

On it went to Wardle who, swerving one man and doubling back to escape the tackle of another, crossed a high centre which MORTENSEN, with nobody near him, and the entire Chelsea defence at sea, headed into the roof of the net.

THOUSANDS OUTSIDE

While all this was happening there were amazing scenes outside the ground.

So many thousand people were locked out that squads of mounted police could not disperse them.

All approaches to the ground were choked. Press messages - this message among them - were being delayed while a path was carved out of the mob for the messengers.

With all the assurance in the world Farm held over his head a centre shot fast at him by Mclnnes, and then, at the other end, Matthews shot inches over the bar from outside the penalty area.

A couple of minutes later Pickering snatched away a high bouncing ball on to which Mortensen was racing.

With 10 minutes of this grand, exciting half left, Chelsea made a perfect raid which ended in Walker hooking across a centre which was lost for a split second in front of an open goal. Then Bentley lofted it over the bar from an offside position.

BLACKPOOL AHEAD

In the next minute, the 38th of the half, Blackpool went in front.

It was a grand goal in two moves. Again the Chelsea defence was discovered wide open. Into the open space Rickett glided a long forward pass.

McCALL went after it all on his own, reached it 40 yards from a goal protected only by its goalkeeper, raced on, and shot from 20 yards a ball so fast and low that Pickering was never within feet of it as he dived to his left.

This was the inside-left’s fourth goal of the season and perfectly taken.

It crowned a complete comeback by the entire Blackpool forward line.

Before the interval grand clearances were made by Farm, and a shot by Bowie hit the side net.

Half-time: Chelsea 1, Blackpool 2.

SECOND HALF

In the second minute Blackpool made it 3-1. There was a long throw it by Johnston—a throw so long that the ball was falling inside the penalty area as Mortensen chased after it and fell full length. A great clamour for a penalty followed.

In the middle of it. with some men standing and others still in action, McCALL nipped impudently inside, almost scooped the ball off Pickering’s hands, shot it over the goal’s empty line.

Chelsea raided a lot afterwards, but all the raids were repulsed by a Blackpool defence which now had complete faith in itself.

McCall, all out for his first hat- trick in the League, hurled himself at one of Matthews’ made-to- measure centres and missed it by an inch as Pickering snatched it off his head.

CHELSEA FADE AWAY

Gone was all the early glamour and aggression in the Chelsea front line. Tommy Walker put it into action constantly but always it lost the passes to the tackles of Blackpool’s half-backs and fullbacks.

Farm had not to take a goal kick until 14 minutes of the half had gone. That indicated how Chelsea had declined.

All the open front raids were being built by Blackpool’s front line, whose men were interchanging position at such speed that one raid ended with Rickett at outside-right, Matthews on the other wing and McCall and (Mortensen galloping in partnership' down the centre.

Yet in the 20th minute of this half Bowie would have made it 3-2 if Farm had not made the save of the match - a superb mid air punch from a Chelsea corner.

A minute earlier Suart. hurt in a do-or-die tackle, had limped out to outside-right with Rickett, who will play anywhere, at right- back.

Again Blackpool were finishing a game with 10 men and a passenger. It is becoming an old Blackpool custom. 

It was sufficient to give the initiative to Chelsea again, but Rickett halted his wing as if he had been a full-back all his days and, in fact, opened an attack which ended in Wardle shooting fast into Pickering’s arms.

Even with only four fit forwards Blackpool were never long in retreat.

Yet, with seven minutes left, and a minute after Farm had been hurt, BOWIE reduced the lead for a still lighting Chelsea, forcing the ball over the line out of a pack of men.

That put Chelsea in command again, battering desperately at a massed Blackpool defence.

Two minutes from the end Bowie shot wide with the goal almost wide open in front of him. A minute from time McINNES equalised and sent 77.696 people wild - that was the official attendance.

CHELSEA 3  (Bowie 16, 83, McInnes 89 mins)

BLACKPOOL 3 (Mortensen 24, McCall 38,47 mins) 

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COMMENTS ON THE GAME

This dramatic draw gave Blackpool their eighth point out of the last 10.

It was a game which Blackpool nearly won after Chelsea had threatened during the first 20 minutes to run riot in it. Once the left flank of Blackpool’s defence had closed the gap into which Chelsea’s right wing was constantly racing in those early minutes. Chelsea’s grip of the game was lost.

Then the Blackpool forwards came into their own and sometimes made the outwitting of the Chelsea defence seem simple.

Whether Rickett at centre-forward works the oracle I cannot yet decide, but again, as at Preston, a defence which never seemed to know what to do about him was trapped repeatedly into losing all position and leaving the path to goal as wide open as the famous barnyard door.

I rank McCall and the incomparable Matthews as Blackpool’s best forwards.

In a defence which went stronger the longer the game lasted a highlight was the superb goalkeeping of Farm.

There is another man Suart on the casualty list now, but there is another point in the bag. That point was won by a team which retrieved a losing position, even with 10 men, and made a great match of it to the end.

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NEXT WEEK: It is so long since we saw BIRMINGHAM

THEY ought to play “Auld Lang Syne” when Birmingham City take the field at Blackpool next weekend. It will be a case of old acquaintances meeting again after a long absence.

It was on December 17, 1938, that last a Birmingham team played in Blackpool. A war has happened since then, and the men from St. Andrew’s have had “City” put at the end of their name.

Both clubs were in the relegation belt - a belt from which Birmingham never escaped - when the 1938 match was played. Both had been guests at Cleveleys Hydro in special training for a week before the match.

It was 2-1 for Blackpool in the end after Birmingham had been given a second- minute goal. Bob Finan making it 1-1 and Willie Buchan scoring the winner.

Three men only of the 1938 team are still on the Blackpool playing staff - two of the half-backs, Eric Hayward and Harry Johnston, and wing-forward Alec Munro.

This was the side which beat Birmingham:

Wallace; Blair (D.), Sibley, Farrow, Hayward, Johnston, Munro, Buchan (W) Finan, Eastham, Lewis.

Birmingham avenged the defeat in the return match - another 2-1 game - at St. Andrew’s the following April, but by that time Birmingham were for all practical purposes out of the First Division, and Blackpool, with Jock Dodds signed and scoring the goals, still in.

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WHERE, OH! WHERE, THE GOALS?

 - Scoring is forgotten art 

By “Spectator”

WHERE ARE THE MARKSMEN - THE MARKSMEN OF ENGLAND?

Today, when the season enters on its ninth week, and the teams play their 13th games, Johnny Hancocks, of Wolverhampton Wanderers, heads the lists of First Division scorers with nine goals. And he is an outside-right.

Shooting and heading goals is becoming a lost art. Jim McIntosh has played in only eight of Blackpool’s 12 games, and yet his six goals put him at the top of Blackpool’s list.

Forgetting his scoring in representative football, which is admittedly so impressive that it is scarcely fair to forget it, Stanley Mortensen in his first 10 games for Blackpool this season has had the ball past the goal- keeper only five times.

When they redrafted the offside law between the war, and, as a direct result, converted centre half-backs into third fullbacks with all the melancholy consequences which have since become apparent, the reformers asserted that they were at least making football a game fit for forwards to play in.

For a time-

THEIR, case was that Bill McCracken and his disciples in the one-back school had created a stalemate which had to be ended.

They ended it, and in theory made the outwitting of defences and the scoring of goals simpler than they had ever been. So for a time it worked out in practice.

Consider all that was happening about 20 years ago.

In the season in which Blackpool won promotion to the First Division for the first time in 1930 the forwards scored 40 goals in their opening 12 games. The present front line has scored 21 in a similar period.

A year later in the club’s first season in the First Division forwards were still shooting goals at an average of three or four a match.

125 “against”

THEY shot 125 past Blackpool's goalkeepers in this one season of 1930-31, while Blackpool’s own line, in the midst of these massacres, put 71 to its own name, only 10 fewer than Arsenal scored to win the Division championship last season What’s gone wrong?

The Promised Land into which the forwards were given a passport by the remodelling of the offside law has become a barren wilderness. Never in the history of the game have so many people watched so many forwards scoring so few goals.

It is one of the enigmas of football in this year of grace.

Iron curtain

ONE reason as I see it, is that the tendency has become more and more pronounced to build - or to seek to build - such a formidable iron curtain in front of a goal that attack has inevitably been subordinated to defence.

Inside forwards have had to go out of business - nearly all of them - as potential marksmen. As teams play these days, the wing half-backs retreat on orders as soon as a raid menaces their goal, and, to close the gap which opens as a result between forward and half-back lines, the inside men retreat after them.

Not all are Peter Dohertys. It would be unreasonable to expect it. Not all are specialists in perpetual motion, as the perfect modern inside forward requires to be.

"W” formation

THEY call it the “W” formation - the formation which Arsenal perfected and exploited with two such inside men as David Jack and Alec James serving the long pass from the old wing-half positions for two greyhound wing forwards and a fast, hammering centre-forward to pursue.

Now the Hulme-Jack-Drake-James-Bastin line is no more, and all its counterparts are fading out, and goals are becoming scarcer until today as this season’s records reveal there is a goal famine in the land.

In other words “This is where we came in” before they amended the offside law and called it a reformation, when, as events have established, they could have given it a variety of less polite names.

Ask them

ASK any football manager hunting the country for scoring forwards - and if I can be supplied with the name of a manager who isn’t I shall be glad to publish it and have it framed.

I report elsewhere on this page that Manager Joe Smith went to watch a centre-forward playing in a Northern Section match last weekend.

Jim McIntosh’s six goals in ten games may be high above the contemporary average, but, according to most of the Blackpool football public, it is still not adequate. That, too, I know, is the view also of the majority of the Blackpool directorate.

So off the manager is sent - as he has gone half a dozen times already this season - for a man who can score goals.

Same report

AND every time he has to come back with the report that the man he has watched has nothing which his own forwards do not possess - and often not as much.

“There just aren’t any scoring forwards about,” said Mr. Smith when I talked to him this week.

He has no answer to the riddle. I can only theorise about it. but the fact remains that there is a goal famine, and nobody seems to be able to do anything about it.

The fact that today it is not as rampant at Blackpool as it is elsewhere should at least make us in this part of the world duly thankful for small mercies.

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Jottings from all parts 

BY "SPECTATOR" 16 October 1948

TALKING to a man the other day who said, “ I was over in the Isle of Man last week. Who do

you think I met there? . . . .

Billy Rookes. Remember him?”

I shall never forget him. This little man, who came to Blackpool as a wing-half, played in every position for the club except goal - and would have played there if they had asked him.

Once he had to be fielded as a full-back, partnered by the Irishman, “Big” Gavin, who was as tall as Billy was small. It was the quaintest full-back partnership in Blackpool’s history, conscripted at short notice for a replayed Cup- tie with Darlington, with the flags at half-mast for Horace Fairhurst, who had died a few days earlier, and with his partner, Bert Tulloch, unable to play because of a family bereavement.

That was the day the west stand was opened - a day in 1921 which for all these reasons will always stay in the records.

***

SO Burnley’s new captain, now that Alan Brown has gone to Notts County, is Robert Emmerson Oliver Johnson, a centre - half nearly as long in the leg as he is long in the name.

It was as long ago as 1933 that he had a few months at Blackpool was given a free transfer, as he was also given one by Blackburn Rovers, but immediately made his name in Second Division football at Turf Moor.

He has had to play second fiddle to Brown since the war, but made six appearances for Burnley in the First Division last season, and now will probably play against Blackpool at ‘ The Moor” on December 11.

At 6ft. 2in. he is one of the tallest men in English football.

***

REDUCTION of Blackpool’s forces by international matches has ended until a date towards the season’s end, April 9, when Scotland play England at Wembley.

The only other representative fixtures left in the calendar until that match - the game with Wales and the Football League v. Scottish League match on March 23 -are to be played in midweek.

The Irish match is on November 10, three days before Blackpool are at Portsmouth, a day before Blackpool should have gone to Brussels if their match in Belgium had not been cancelled.

Reason for its cancellation - and Blackpool, I suspect, were not too upset when a reason offered itself - was because of a guarantee required by the Belgians that both Stanley Matthews and Stanley Mortensen would be playing.

The Irish match put that out of court.

***

STANLEY MERCER, the centre-forward who lives in St. Annes and made a practice during the war of winning games for Accrington Stanley against the star-spangled Blackpool, has left the Stanley and gone to Mansfield.

I have been told repeatedly in the last year or two that he would have come to Blackpool if he had been given the chance - and if Blackpool’s offer for him had been acceptable to the Stanley.

Whether Blackpool ever made an offer I do not know, but it is certain now, I suppose,’ that he will never lead a Blackpool forward line.

A few folk I know will regret that, still sav that in good-class football this Stanley, with the aid of the two other Stanleys, might- have shot a few goals for the men in tangerine.

***

TO HEAR people talk you would think centre-forwards were a glut in the market. Mr. Joe Smith, the Blackpool manager, is not one of them.

He went to watch another front - line leader in a Northern Section match last weekend and came back with the report, “Our own men are better.”

Jim McIntosh has his critics at Blackpool - but, then, so has even Stanley Matthews - and the same folk were saying only a few weeks ago that Stanley Mortensen was finished. 

The fact remains that McIntosh has scored six goals in his eight games in the First Division this season, and only in two of those games has the famous “M” wing of England been playing with him. 

“Mac” has been leading the shuffled lines, and yet still scoring. That, in fairness to him, should be put on record.

 ***

IT is a remarkable record which Stanley Mortensen has created for himself in representative football since the war. There has been none to equal it in the history of English football.

He scored 11 goals in eight games for England and the Football League last season.

Last weekend he had three against Ireland, the only country whose defence held him in 1947-48. Two against the League of Ireland and four in Portugal in the last two matches of 1946-47 give him a grand total - and “grand” seems to be the word - of 20 goals in 11 successive games.

Not even the giants of the past ever equalled those figures.

 ***

WHAT’S bred in the bone........

I am told that the son of George Wilson, ex-Blackpool and Sheffield Wednesday international, playing his first game for two years, revealed glimpses of his father’s greatness in a match for Blackpool North End in the Fylde League a few days ago.

His father, who left Blackpool - and has since returned to it as a licensee - to re-establish the fading fortunes of the Wednesday as long ago as 1920, was a centre-half. He son is a wing half.

One generation sometimes follows another on the football field.

Matthew Barrass, the ex-Blackpool' inside-forward, has a son playing as a wing-half for Bolton, and Jim McClelland, another former forward at Blackpool, had an inside forward at Blackburn two years ago, perpetuating the family name.

And on Blackpool North End’s books is the son of Billy Benton.

He is one of those players who will play anywhere -and has clayed everywhere for North End, even in goal.

***

IN the mail this week was a letter:

Sir, - Being supporters of the first team and the reserves we five of Spion Kop would like to wish Bill Lewis all the very best for a speedy recovery when he enters hospital. We will be very pleased to see this wholehearted club man once more in action.

The letter was signed: “Five of Spion Kop.”

In the hospital which he entered early this week for an operation on a chipped knee bone the Blackpool full-back will read this, I know, with pleasure.

Only a man who has given Blackpool such loyal service as he has given the club could have inspired such a message.

 ***

AUBREY POWELL, the Welsh international inside-right from Leeds United, who, for some inconceivable reason Everton have been playing as a wing forward, may be as under the weather as the rest of the Ever-1 ton team these days.

But he is as! good a little sportsman as ever he was.

Twice during last weekend’s game at Blackpool he won the applause of the people - the first time when he retrieved the ball and took it back into position after he had been halted for offside, and the second time when, with Hugh Kelly hurt and on the grass he deliberately put the ball over the line to enable the Blackpool trainer to attend his man.

Little things, but nice to see in these stem, remorseless days.

 ***

The Rickett switch

NOBODY could say that Walter Rickett is not adaptable. Once only this season has he played in one position in as many as three successive games.

This is how he has been in the line-up since August 21: Outside-left (two games), outside-right (three games) Outside-left, outside-right, outside-left, inside-right, centre-forward, outside-right.

One of these days he’ll be putting on a jersey with the wrong number on it. Not that Walter complains. He appeared in every forward position in his days at Sheffield.

Strange how versatile little men are at football.

Alec Munro is another. He has played everywhere except centre - forward for Blackpool, and twice in an emergency last season retired to the full-back line and was no failure there.

 ***

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SUGGESTIONS PLEASE

IF you have any suggestions or criticism to make regarding the Supporters’ Club do not wait until the next meeting.

Send a line to our secretary, Mr. C. A. Hay, M.B.E., 10, Swanage-avenue, Blackpool. He will be delighted to hear from you. because you will at least be proving your interest and enthusiasm for the welfare of the club.

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MANY people have been complaining that they are unable to get a programme.

The number of programmes is not sufficient when the ground is full, but the paper control is the reason for the, shortage.

When things return to normal we hope all who want programmes will get them.

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ON Wednesday, October 27, our ladies are holding a dance at the Jubilee Theatre. Give them your support.

Also, do not forget the big dance at the Tower, on November 5. We are looking forward to a grand time at these events.

***

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Evening Gazette - 18 October 1948

Looked a certain win until -

By “Spectator”

AT 4-33 on Saturday afternoon at Stamford Bridge, with thousands of the 77,696 people who had packed this little Wembley to watch the match drifting out to the underground stations and the bus queues, it was about 100 to one against Chelsea winning a point from this game, writes “Spectator.”

At 4-40 Chelsea had made a 3-3 draw of it and one of the forwards had missed an open goal which would have won the match.

A team that can snatch a lost game out of the fire in those circumstances, even against only 10 fit men, is entitled to all it wins. That has to be put on the records,

Yet, once it has been acknowledged, I think even Chelsea would admit that Blackpool would have taken their fourth game in succession if casualties had not again beset this luckless team at a critical time.

SUART’S INJURY As long as Blackpool’s defence was at full strength the match, for all practical purposes, was over as soon as little McCall early in the second half walked the ball over the Chelsea line while nearly everybody else was either demanding a penalty for Blackpool or denying that one was due.

That made it 3-1 for Blackpool and ostensibly a walk-over. Then in rapid succession, as the game was petering out, Suart fell and bruised his left shoulder and went out on a wing, and Farm, a goalkeeper who is revealing greater class in his game in every match, nearly had his ribs caved in as he dived at a raiding forward’s feet.

DEFENCE SHUFFLE

Against this shuffle and for a few fatal minutes panic-ridden defence Chelsea scored twice and won a point.

The Blackpool defence took a hammering in the first 15 minutes, but later steadied and mastered the Chelsea front line.

The attack, even with Mortensen at half-speed from the 10th minute - another casualty - again used the long pass effectively, had a forward as elusive as ever in Matthews, and a wandering raider called Walter Rickett who was as big an enigma to the Chelsea defence as he had been to Preston’s at Deepdale a fortnight earlier.

 ***

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Blackpool played before their biggest league crowd

By “Spectator”

NEVER in a League match has a Blackpool team played in front of so many people as stormed Stamford Bridge for the Chelsea game on Saturday, writes “Spectator.”

The presence inside the gates of 77,696 was a record in League football this season. Only at Wembley last April has there been a bigger attendance to watch ’a Blackpool team in the club’s - 53 years’ history.

Between 20,000 and 25,000 were locked out. An invasion bordering on 100,000 descended on “The Bridge” from noon until shortly before the kick-off three hours later.

Thousands of boys, crushed against the front barriers, climbed on to the greyhound track and swarmed to the edge of the playing area soon after the teams appeared.

FORWARD SURGE

Police squads could not halt the wave. It subsided on orders from the loud-speakers early in the match, but surged forward again a few minutes later.

The scenes near the line resembled a gigantic autumn picnic, with hundreds racing to shelter and thousands crouching under helmets fashioned out of newspapers when the rain began to fall.

Between 10,000 and 20,000 never saw Chelsea’s late two goals. They had gone home to escape the pelting rain a quarter of an hour before the" end.

Such was the press of people massed under the stands, inside the ground but unable to snatch even a view of the field, and such the milling hordes outside the gates that the “Evening Gazette’ messengers could not leave the ground for nearly half an hour during the first half.

Telephone lines remained open between London and Blackpool with not a word to transmit over them until these boys had been lifted on to the cinder track, walked to one end of the ground, and been released from one of the few gates which were not barricaded.

It was not a record attendance for Stamford Bridge. In 1935 there were 82,905 people in the ground for a League match with Arsenal. But Saturday’s figures were a record for all grounds in England since the limit capacities were fixed by the Home Office.

Players’ injuries not serious

The three Blackpool men hurt at Chelsea on Saturday are not seriously disabled.

Fears that the new goalkeeper, George Farm, had finished the game with crushed ribs were dispelled yesterday, and he has gone home on a weekend’s leave to Scotland.

Ronnie Suart has a bruised shoulder, but is expected to be fit for the weekend. And so is Stanley Mortensen, who limped nearly all the match after his left ankle had been hurt again