THE GAME
A big invasion from the Midlands gave Birmingham a great reception. Harry Johnston won the toss, and Blackpool defended the south goal.
It was a goal on to which Birmingham’s neat, spry forwards moved nonstop for the first minute without reaching it.
When this brief pressure ended the new man, Davidson, chased Shimwell’s clearance, reached it a yard off the line, and, still at full gallop, crossed it into the side net.
FORWARDS HELD
It was a fast pace, but the defences had both forward lines held in the opening passages.
Neither attack led anywhere particularly, although Wardle was often in the game, and shot one ball which cannoned off a full-back into Merrick’s arms.
Birmingham were near a goal in the seventh minute.
Stewart unexpectedly in the inside-left position, took the ball from a position where Blackpool considered he was offside, but was brilliantly halted by Shimwell as he was racing into a shooting position,
Afterwards the Birmingham goal, protected by a packed defence, was almost constantly in peril.
McCall was an aggressive raider on it, won a corner, and refused to be subdued by a defence showing him little mercy.
MERRICK CLEARS
Once, in desperation, a fullback hooked the bail high over his own head, causing a panic almost under the bar as the ball came down and was punched away by Merrick.
Two minutes later, in the 15th minute, there was an uncommon incident. Wardle chased after a long forward pass. A Birmingham defender crossed to meet him. The two men appeared to collide on the line, and, in the collision, to cannon into the linesman, who fell to earth.
The linesman required treatment by both trainers before the game could go on.
Johnston was constantly gliding passes to the Blackpool right wing, looked an England player all the time.
It was seldom that the Birmingham forwards crossed the halfway line. They went over it twice, but Suart’s fine headed clearance ended one advance, and a calm pass back to his goalkeeper by Hayward ended another.
Nearly all the time it was the Birmingham goal which was under pressure.
MERRICK AGAIN
Wardle won a corner with a shot which Merrick punched away in a big leap.
In another raid McCall took Wardle’s pass, shot a ball to which this Birmingham goalkeeper fell full length to beat it away as it was about to cross the goal-line.
Nearly all the passes were being served to Blackpool’s right wing, but it was the left which was chiefly menacing Birmingham’s goal.
FREE-KICKS
Half an hour gone and still no goals. Birmingham seemed content to concede free-kicks by the half-dozen to keep their goal intact.
In the end, as so often happens in these circumstances, it was Birmingham who nearly snatched the lead.
Two forwards went after a loose ball. Suart shepherded them, waited for his goalkeeper to come out and take the ball away.
Out at last came Farm and he seemed to fall a split second late to the ball which passed him.
It may have been crawling over the line had Suart not reached it and hooked it away as his goalkeeper lay in a heap yards away.
In Blackpool’s next raid - and these raids were still almost continuous - McCall, the one Blackpool forward who was shooting, shot again, and rocked Merrick to his knees from close range.
NEAR THING
A minute after that this goal keeper was in action again, losing possession to the irrepressible McCall, and racing back to his line to snatch the ball which Rickett had headed towards an empty goal.
The offside whistle put the brake on Birmingham’s front line every time it advanced, and as the interval approached it was not as inactive as it had been.
On half-time Davidson stabbed a shot very wide from a possible but unexpected scoring position.
Half-time: Blackpool 0, Birmingham 0.
SECOND HALF
Blackpool battered away again in the first couple of minutes on a Birmingham defence that was as firm as ever.
When the Birmingham forwards came into the game, Hayward and Kelly in succession repelled their raids.
There was not, however, a great deal between the teams in the opening five minutes as Birmingham’s front line began to move more into the game.
BIGGEST ESCAPE
Twelve minutes of the half had gone and the Birmingham goal had its biggest escape of the match.
Kelly sent Wardle away. Over flew the wing forward’s centre.
In a surging mass of men Merrick lost the ball. It was cleared off the line with the goalkeeper submerged under the pack challenging for it.
A minute later, direct from one of Johnston’s long throws. Rickett headed backwards into Merrick’s hands.
There were times when Birmingham’s half was a congested area, with only a goalkeeper, a centre-half and one full-back in the other part of the field.
But still goals would not come, could not be forced against a defence towering over Blackpool’s raiding forwards in nearly every position.
A goal was actually nearer in a Birmingham breakaway as Dorman took a forward pass, raced into a scoring position, and shot low into Farm’s hands.
Twice afterwards, in raids which merely interrupted Blackpool’s pressure, these Birmingham forwards had chances - big chances and missed them.
The first time Bodle sliced a shot yards wide with the Blackpool goal barely protected in front of him.
The second time Dorman beat the Blackpool offside trap, raced forward on his own, and shot a ball which hit Farm’s knees and bounced out again. Ten minutes from time Blackpool went in front.
Birmingham gave away one free-kick too many. Shimwell took it, crossed into another packed goal area a ball which was falling into an unexpectedly open space.
Into this space RICKETT dived full length, and headed the ball a foot inside the far post as Merrick fell to it.
If ever a goal was deserved this one was.
Two minutes later there was a scene as Wardle was crashed to earth. The forward protested so vehemently about it that after he had given the free kick the referee rebuked him.
It ended with Shimwell thundering the ball into a packed mass of men, and a lot of cheering and a lot of jeering.
Result:
BLACKPOOL 1, (Rickett 80 mins)
BIRMINGHAM CITY 0
One of the lessons of this game was that the odds will always be on heavyweights against featherweights at football.
That Blackpool won against the odds was a big achievement.
Birmingham's tall packed defence nearly won a point for the St. Andrew’s men against a Blackpool forward line inches too small in too many positions, and for a long time out of balance.
Game and fearless as Munro always is, he could make little impression on the Birmingham barrier which faced him and his partner, Davidson, unprepared for this test, was patently in a game faster than any to which he had been accustomed in Scotland.
It was on the other wing where the Wardle-McCall partnership was as good as I have seen it, and in the centre, where Rickett chased ~ everything, that Blackpool’s main, strength in attack reposed.
Reassuring was Shimwell’s game. He cleared as strongly as ever whenever he was required to clear, which was not often against a Birmingham forward line which either raced into an offside trap or achieved nothing when it escaped it.
Johnston had the game of an England half-back.
Blackpool won because they refused to submit to a dominating defence.
NEXT WEEK: MIDDLESBROUGH have their ups and downs
Wolves 0, Middlesbrough 3
EIGHT GOALS IN TWO GAMES
Middlesbrough 5, Bolton 0
MIDDLESBROUGH - the team that can be as good as the best in the land and as bad as the worst.
Those are the men Blackpool play on Tees-side next weekend.
Once, shortly before the war, Blackpool lost nine goals in a game at Ayresome Park. Last year a 4-0 defeat was Blackpool’s biggest reverse of the season, writes “Spectator.’’
Yet, a year earlier, in the match which ended the brilliant career of the Scottish goalkeeper, Dave Cumming, Blackpool won 2-1 on this north-eastern ground, and in last season’s return match took the points in a 1-0 game with a George McKnight goal and overplayed this in-and-out Middlesbrough side completely.
So what will happen next weekend is anybody’s guess.
What has been happening in the last fortnight Indicates that Middlesbrough, even without Wilf Mannion, are playing again football which can be as devastating as any played in the land.
Three-nil against the Wolves at Wolverhampton and 5-0 against Bolton Wanderers a week later is steam-roller stuff which can flatten out any team.
Three of last week’s five goals were scored by Micky Fenton, the Blackpool war-. time guest, who, as soon as people begin to say that he has been playing football too long, immediately begins to prove them wrong.
I expect a big test of Blackpool’s defence in this match.
BIG NAMES - TEAM WORK, TOO
- Blackpool have glamour, but it’s an 11-man show
By “Spectator”
I AM not one of those who think - or write - of Blackpool as Stanley Matthews, Stanley Mortensen and Nine Others.
Nor, to be fair to two men who are as good sportsmen as they are good footballers, is either Stanley Matthews or Stanley Mortensen of this opinion.
It is a pity that so many other people seem to be.
Ever since Blackpool caused chaos in London S.W.6 a week ago by attracting 77,696 spectators past the turnstiles at Stamford Bridge, with 20,000 or 25,000 more storming outside when the gates were locked, various writers may have been causing a little embarrassment in certain quarters by attributing this stampede almost exclusively to the presence in the match of “The Two Stanleys.”
Their names in the programme made a difference - as those names always will - to the attendance.
Attraction No. 2
IN these days the public worship personalities, whether they have been built up by publicity offices or created, as in the case of “The Two Stanleys,” by sheer natural talent.
Blackpool have become football’s Box Office Attraction No. 2 - No 1 is still Arsenal - since these two men came into the forward line.
Yet two men never made a team, as these two would be the first to assert, as in the long ago Jimmy Hampson was always telling you when it was the fashion to talk of Blackpool as if there were only one man in the team.
I was, therefore, glad to read in the Chelsea programme last weekend a confirmation of this view.
Team spirit
“DO, not run away with the idea,” the programme’s editor warned his readers, “that Blackpool are a ‘two-man’ show. Nothing could be further from the truth.
“They are a successful side because team spirit has taken precedence over everything else. This fact soon becomes obvious when you watch carefully the Blackpool style of play.”
That required writing, if only to silence - if it can - those anything-for-a-headline specialists who have been exploiting “The Two M.s” craze until nearly everybody - including “The Two M’s” - are sick to death of it.
It takes 11 men to make a football team. It is the teams that play as teams - as Blackpool are seeking to play all the time - that come home with the bacon.
Two examples
TWO clubs immediately come to mind in postwar football to make this case indisputable. One was Burnley in 1946-47. The other was Manchester United last season.
I shall always recall Stan Mortensen’s comment when I called in the Blackpool dressing-room after the sensational defeat of the ’Spurs in last season’s Cup semi-final. His “hat trick” had won the match when it seemed lost beyond redemption.
“Thanks,” he said. “But don’t forget there were 10 others in it, too"
Matthews creed
STANLEY MATTHEWS has a football creed of his own, and the first article in it is “Football is a team game. From all who think or play otherwise, deliver us.”
These two players have not created this “Magic of the Two M’s” fashion. ' They have had less to do with it than with the New Look.
So, admitting all this, it is still permissible to examine the turnstile figures for Blackpool this season to reveal that Blackpool at last have become “The Arsenal of the North” - the Arsenal of the North with a Third Division ground.
There has not been a packet of money in it for Blackpool and there never will be while Bloomfield-road’s capacity is limited to 30,000.
Packing them in
BUT the fielding of this team which packs in the populace wherever it plays is making a lot for other people.
Glance at these official attendances: 46,000 at Bramall-lane, 51,187 at Maine-road for the Manchester United match, 47,750 at Sunderland, 32,082 - nearly a ground record at Derby, with nearly another 40,000 at Bolton and Preston.
Climax was last weekend’s 77,000 at Stamford Bridge, which is the biggest attendance at a League match in England since the war.
In seven away games this season Blackpool have played in front of nearly 335,000 people.
Half a million
THE mere 30,000 average at Blackpool in six home games is still sufficient to put Blackpool’s audiences at over half a million for the first two months of the season.
It’s happening everywhere, I know - everywhere gates are soaring to unprecedented figures. Yet there is not another team in the land, again excepting Arsenal, who have been as big an attraction this season as Blackpool.
Two men alone have net done that. Neither is so conceited as to think so. Neither, to be honest, is conceited at all. Which, when you come to think of it, is about as remarkable as the postwar glamour of a team which before the war never had its name in lights.
Good management
COME people say it is an illusion, that it’s all been done by mirrors. Others say it is because two of the most famous names in the game are now in the Blackpool cast.
But there is a lot more in it than that - not the least good management and a loyal team.
Jottings from all parts
BY "SPECTATOR" 23 October 1948
IT promises to be another “full house” when Newcastle United come to Blackpool in a fortnight’s time.
Applications for tickets from Newcastle have flooded Blackpool’s mail for weeks. Hundreds of cheques and postal orders have had to be returned.
Newcastle folk, crazy about football, are making a day of it for this Blackpool match. Scores of coaches have been booked from the northeast.
It threatens to be the biggest invasion by a visiting club since Colchester transported its population to Blackpool for the February Cuptie.
MET MURDOCH McCORMACK at Crewe on the way home from London last weekend. He is treading no primrose path at Crewe yet, has been in and out of the Alexandra’s first team.
I still think he will make the grade. I hope he makes it, for he is a modest, unassuming player who never had to order a new size in hats after all the hullabaloo that went on after he had scored a couple of goals in his second game in the First Division.
All those headlines so often spoil a player, give him a big conceit of himself. They made no difference to “Murdo.” He has a house in Crewe, which is something a few Crewe folk will envy him, and he can still, I think, have a future in the game, too.
AMONG the distinguished company present at Stamford Bridge were one or two people who did not disclose their identity. They were the England selectors.
One of the men they were watching was Harry Johnston, the Blackpool captain and wing-half. He played a game of sufficient conviction to put him in the lists again.
It will not be surprising if Johnston is playing against Wales on November 10, a midweek match on the calendar three days before Blackpool meet the present First Division leaders, Portsmouth, at Fratton Park.
JIMMY STEWART has gone places since he left Blackpool in 1935, spent a season in Scotland and returned to England as Portsmouth’s trainer. Portsmouth went to Wembley and won the Cup in 1939 in his third season at Fratton Park, and now Portsmouth are leading the First Division with one of the two undefeated records left before this afternoon’s games.
Jimmy - everybody calls him “ Jimmy,” and he prefers it that way - still comes every year to Blackpool for his holidays.
His manager, Mr. Bob Jackson, successor to Mr. Jack (“Spats”) Tinn, also has associations with this town, where he lived for a long time.
Compliments to them both. They’re on top of the world today in this up-and-down game called football.
A DATE for the midweek diary: Liverpool at Blackpool in the Lancashire Cup first round on Wednesday. It is an afternoon match.
***
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.
CURIOSITY of the Chelsea-Blackpool match a week ago, according to one of Mr. George Sheard’s census charts, was that the Blackpool forwards were not once offside during the afternoon.
***
Blackpool leaving Stamford Bridge last weekend resembled a casualty parade. Ronnie Suart had his left arm in a sling, George Farm was clutching his battered ribs, and Stanley Mortensen was limping on that left leg of his again. This is becoming a familiar after-the-match scene wherever Blackpool play.
It has led to all sorts of emergency team shuffles, and at Chelsea, in the last 14 minutes, to the appearance as a full-back of Walter Rickett, who has now the record of playing for Blackpool in five positions in the season’s first two months.
Nobody has ever done that for Blackpool before. And nobody, if I know anything about it, will want to do it again.
Walter Jones, brother of Mr. Sam Jones, Blackpool’s second- line manager, is another adaptable character, too. In his four games for Blackpool Reserve he played the first as a centre-half, the second as a left-half, the third at right-half, and the fourth at inside-right.
***
IF ever you want to meet a few famous people there is no reason to go anywhere except to a football match at Stamford Bridge.
In the Press box on Saturday I met G. V. Barna, the famous table tennis player, and Cliff Bastin, one of the stars of the greatest Arsenal team.
Afterwards in the directors’ sanctum there were, among others, such eminent personalities of the stage and the music-hall as Ralph Reader, Jack Train, Billy Danvers and Ted Heath.
There is a wall outside the boardroom containing brass plates recording the visits of Royalty to “The Bridge.” I counted 10 plates, and then gave it up.
The Defence Minister, Mr. A. V. Alexander, is a Chelsea director, and it is a fact that unless you go to Stamford Bridge once or twice in a season you are almost a social outcast.
***
INEVITABLY I met Eddie Standring again last weekend. I write “inevitably” because whenever Blackpool are in London - or even within 100- miles radius of the capital - there is Eddie.
This exile from Blackpool, who has never lost his attachment to the football team recently completed his 21st year with a music publishing house which has had not a few of the smash-hits of the last decade or two to its name.
Among the 60 complimentary telegrams which were delivered on the day were messages from the chairman and directors of Blackpool, from Manager Joe Smith, and from Harry Johnston and the team.
Eddie was one of the men behind the scenes in the Mayfair cabaret which consoled Blackpool for the Wembley defeat in April.
***
CELEBRATION DINNER
MOST enjoyable event was held on Wednesday, when the Blackpool Football Supporters' Club entertained officials and players of the Football Club in recognition of their success last season.
In an after-dinner speech the Supporters’ treasurer was bold enough to suggest that if arrangements could be made to increase the size of Bloomfield-road to 50,000 - pending the time when conditions allow a larger ground - the Supporters’ Club, with the town’s aid, would make a 50-50 contribution with the Corporation to the cost.
We are out to help the parent club, and intend to work in harmony with the board.
Social season
AT the Jubilee Theatre on Wednesday the ladies are holding a dance. Please give them your support, and do not forget that on November 5 the big dance will be held at the Tower. Tickets are now on sale.
Best wishes for the future are extended to George Dick, who has moved during the week to West Ham United.
***
The Supporters’ Club are handling the sale of the book, “History of Blackpool F.C.” No supporter should be without a copy telling of the early days and refreshing the memory of all that has happened since the team won promotion for the first time.
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