THE GAME
Blackpool played in white and had a bigger reception than they are often given at home.
George Hardwick, the former England captain, lost the toss for Middlesbrough but nothing with it, for there was scarcely a breath of wind.
Continuous attacks by the Blackpool right wing opened the game, Munro ending them with a rising shot from 20 yards which was only inches over the bar as Ugolini, the north-east goalkeeper with the Italian ancestry, leapt at it.
DEFENCE PUZZLED
Rickett was soon chasing the ball to all points of the compass, won a corner in the third minute off a Middlesbrough defence which never seemed to know where to expect him to appear next. Blackpool's football was neat and crisp, every pass finding its man.
Yet in the fourth minute, almost the first time they raided, Middlesbrough took the lead.
It was a goal made and completed by a wing half-back.
Gordon brushed a path through a hesitating Blackpool defence out on the left wing, squared a pass to Fenton who, as I saw it, was a yard offside.
Blackpool evidently were of a similar opinion, for a couple of men appeared to hesitate again as the centre-forward returned the pass to GORDON who hit the far wall of the net with a slow, sliced shot. It was the first goal scored by a Middlesbrough half-back this season.
That subdued Blackpool a lot. For a time afterwards the game raced continuously on the Blackpool goal
Three men were on Matthews all the time.
Twice in succession Walker came all the way at the gallop out of the wing position to halt the England wing forward, the second time forfeiting a free-kick which produced the game’s second corner for Blackpool and a subsequent scene of excitement in front of the dancing Ugolini.
POSITION LOST
A minute later Blackpool were near a goal again as Johnston and Rickett created position for McCall which was lost as the ball bounced away from the little inside-left with both full-backs closing on him.
A period of Blackpool pressure followed, ended in Hayward passing back too slowly to his goal- keeper, and he had summarily to halt Blenkinsop in his tracks a yard outside the area as the inside-left chased the loose ball.
That cost a free kick but nothing else, for Fenton shot yards wide from it.
Otherwise, except for that isolated incident, it was still nearly all Blackpool’s game until in another fast, open raid the Middlesbrough front line tore into scoring position again and Hayward had to cross to an exposed right wing to retrieve the position.
Blackpool were playing good football but there were too many passes in it. Middlesbrough’s direct open game always contained the greater menace.
Yet War die, with one superb swerve, beat his full-back before casting Middlesbrough’s defence into a state of chaos in a raid which went on and on until Shimwell thundered a shot wide from 30 yards.
HAYWARD LIMPS
Hayward was left limping after racing out again to halt a Middlesbrough right wing which at this time was a little too often outpacing the Blackpool defence.
In the 23rd minute came an unusual incident. Again Hayward made a pass back too slowly, blatantly obstructed Fenton as Farm came out desperately to the rolling ball.
Without hesitation Mr. Jackson gave an indirect free kick in the penalty area under the new rule.
It required about a minute to line the teams up for this uncommon formation and a small scale debate into the bargain.
And after all that it led nowhere, for Matthews came creeping up into the back of the scrum and hooked away Walker’s square pass to the waiting Fenton.
SUPERB SAVES
Twice in Middlesbrough raids afterwards, Farm made superb mid-air saves and Spuhler shot wide of him.
Each save won an ovation and compliments from a Blackpool defence which was losing position in this game more often than I have seen it lose it in recent weeks.
Yet Blackpool were still not outplayed. There was one scrum almost under the bar of the Middlesbrough goal which made you think you had gone to Twickenham instead of Ayresome Park, and in another attack Ugolini made a great clearance at the angle of post and bar from Matthews.
Blackpool had nearly all the game as half-time approached. In the last five minutes of the half Middlesbrough were penned almost in their own penalty area.
But all the passes against a massed defence were producing no scoring positions, nothing comparable with one which Spuhler by sheer pace made for himself in a breakaway before shooting a ball which Farm fielded on his knees.
Half - time: Middlesbrough 1, Blackpool 0.
SECOND HALF
George Hardwick made the clearance of an England player on the line of his goal after Kelly, McCall and Wardle in a raid, perfect in conception, had crossed a ball into a packed Middlesbrough goal area in this half’s first minute.
Nearly all the time Blackpool were raiding, the Middlesbrough forwards entering the game only in pursuit of long, forward passes.
Munro, put in possession by Matthews’ lobbed pass, crossed one centre which Blackpool had not a forward tall enough to reach.
TOO SHORT
That was perceptible everywhere - the lack of height in the Blackpool front line. Sheer force of numbers halted Rickett as he went after one of those forward passes for which he had been waiting all the afternoon.
Raid after raid broke on the barrier of a taller Middlesbrough defence. Now and again the Middlesbrough forwards were in the match and packing a punch when they were in it.
But it was not often that Blackpool’s pressure was interrupted. Middlesbrough in breakaways were fast and direct, but the sort of football which had a bit of class about it was still being almost continuously played by a Blackpool forward line everywhere except in front of goal where, monotonously, nothing conclusive ever happened.
ONE-WAY TRAFFIC
With 15 minutes of the half gone this one-way traffic on Middlesbrough's goal ceased for a time with Middlesbrough still employing the long pass which too seldom was being introduced into Blackpool’s game.
Accepting one of those passes as Fenton served it out to an open wing Reagan, in fact, might have increased the lead, shooting wide of the far post from a position where he might have shot inside it.
The old failure to give sufficient of the ball to Matthews was revealing itself again in Blackpool’s game with 20 minutes of a fast but still strangely inconclusive half gone.
It was. in fact, not until the 21st minute that either goal was hear downfall.
Then, from the first corner of the half, Fenton leaped at a flying ball and headed it backwards over the bar of a Blackpool goal packed with a swarm of men.
Five minutes later it was Blackpool who were as near a goal. One of a succession of free kicks conceded by a Middlesbrough defence, still often in retreat, opened the raid.
LOST THE BALL
In the midst of it. and in the midst too, of a dozen men milling near him, Ugolini lost the ball, fell, and was staggering back into position again as Rickett shot into an open goal, hit him, and nearly rocked him back over his own line as he clutched and held it.
Not for a long time have I seen a Blackpool forward line raid such a lot with so little result.
Ten minutes from time McCall made position superbly for himself before shooting over the bar.
Ugolini was in brilliant action in the last five minutes, snatching out Wardle’s free kick from the edge of the penalty area and a perfect centre by Matthews with the whole pack of the Blackpool forwards around him.
Result:
MIDDLESBROUGH 1 (Gordon 4 mins)
BLACKPOOL 0
I shall always think that the goal which won this match should never have counted. I shall always think, too, that it should not have mattered in any case, for Blackpool had sufficient of this match to have won it two or three times.
If the Blackpool forward line had possessed a few extra stones and inches, and if it had made one pass instead of three, this game would never have been lost.
The attack had all the class but none of the punch. Oh for a Mortensen today!
The Blackpool defence left too many gaps out on the wings before the interval, but presented a less open front afterwards. Among the half-backs Johnston and Kelly were always building those raids which promise such a lot and achieve so little.
Repeatedly in the first half Hayward not only halted Middlesbrough’s blood-and-thunder raids down the centre, but often went out to the exposed Wings and halted them there too.
Nearly all the afternoon the Blackpool goal was menaced chiefly in breakaways, but there was sufficient of them to reveal what a good goalkeeper Farm has become so confident and assured in everything.
This was Blackpool first defeat in seven games, the first since September 15 - and it should never have happened.
NEXT WEEK: NEWCASTLE have a lot to avenge
THEY call Newcastle United, A who come to Blackpool next week for the first time for 12 years, “The Million Dollar Team,”
The United seem to have spent from an open cheque book to build a team. Yet the men who will appear at Blackpool will not have cost such a lot as all that. For in recent weeks, since the club’s belated return to the First Division, the St. James’s club have learned at last the lesson that all that glisters is not gold, that famous names alone seldom made a team.
So Blackpool will meet not half so many big-transfer men as they expected, and yet those men have won already 11 points on tour this season - against a mere eight at Newcastle!- and with such a record may avenge not a few defeats at Blackpool in the long ago.
For the histories reveal that in their last three games at Blackpool Newcastle teams have lost all six points and no fewer than 13 goals - 4-0 in 1934, 6-0 in 1935, and 3-0 in the last match in 1936.
Jimmy Hampson scored two of the goals in the 1936 match - and W. W. Parr, the English amateur international, who met his death during the war as a pilot with the R.A.F. created both for him. Bob Finan made it 3-0 before the interval.
Not one man will be playing at Bloomfield-road next weekend who was playing in the game 12 years ago. This was the 1936 line-up:
BLACKPOOL: Wallace; Blair (D.), Witham; Hill, Cardwell, Jones (S.); W. W. Parr, Hampson, Finan, Farrow, Cook.
NEWCASTLE UNITED; McPhillips; Richardson, Ancell; Gordon Davidson, Imrie; Park, Ware, Cairns, McMenemy, Pearson.
Time marches on . . . and professional footballers march out with it. So short is the average player’s life span in the first-class game.
HOUSES BEFORE SIGNINGS IS THE NEW
FOOTBALL FASHION
By “Spectator”
THERE was a lot of talk after two wars about a land for heroes to live in. Now, in Blackpool this week, there is nearly as much talk about houses for professional footballers to live in.
I am not blaming Jim McIntosh for the ultimatum he has presented to the club based on a reasonable complaint that-for too long he has been compelled to inhabit a house too small for a man and his wife and three children.
He would be less than human -this player who hates the headlines and yet seems destined always to be in them - if he had not a sense of grievance on this subject.
Consider his record. It was as long ago as September 14, 1935, that as a boy of 17 he signed a professional contract with Blackpool. In his first season, chiefly with the second team, he scored 52 goals, and nine of those goals won Blackpool the Lancashire Cup.
When he played during 1935 36 at Swansea in a Second Division match he was the youngest Player ever to be fielded in the League by Blackpool.
In the Navy
THE time came two years later when he was a pawn - and an unwilling pawn - in the Frank O’Donnell transfer, and went to Preston. He was still sufficiently fond of Blackpool, to marry a Blackpool girl, was living in the town at the outbreak of war, served five years in the Royal Navy, and returned to Blackpool two years ago.
So, excluding his seasons at Deepdale, he is today nearly the longest-serving player on the staff.
And, as Mr. Joe Smith, the Blackpool manager, faced with McIntosh’s transfer request this week, admitted, “We’ve never had a player who has given us more loyal service.”
Not so long ago this man who has given this service was barracked out of the First Division team. Last April, after he had played in every Cuptie, he was left out of the Wembley team.
At last—
YET still he never complained, said, “Well, if they think I'm not good enough - they’ve the last word.” Which is more or less what he said when he was discarded again this season.
Now at last he has complained. But not about playing for the second team instead of the first.
‘I want to make that clear,” he says. “ I’ve no grievance about that at all.”
He has asked for a transfer - to put it in its simplest terms - because he thinks that if Blackpool cannot provide him with the sort of house he requires - and he is not asking for one of the Coal Board’s manorial seats! - there may be another club who can and will.
He has not said so, but I should think that Jim McIntosh has come to the conclusion that if such houses can be found - as they have been found - for other Blackpool players who have not been half so long with the club, his own request for a similar residence can scarcely be construed as extortionate.
Moving Soon?
THAT happens to be the view, I suspect, of the majority of the Blackpool board.
It is my forecast, therefore, that one of these days in the near future Mr. and Mrs. McIntosh and their family will be moving into a house where the living space is considerably less restricted, and this minor disturbance in a very small eggcup over a too small house will be all over.
All of which introduces the broader issue of the provision by special priority, with or without the sanction of Mr. Aneurin Beyan, of houses for footballers.
It may be and probably is all wrong. A strong ethical case could be argued against it.-
Yet in recent years it has become a football custom, and as long as the demand for first-class players remains in excess of the supply there is not the remotest prospect of its abolition.
First question of a married player in the game today to a club competing for his signature is “What about a house?” And the club has to promise a house before the player will promise his signature.
Property market.
CLUBS have gone and still are going into a property market where the prices border on the lunatic to buy houses for no other purpose than to employ them as bargaining counters in the no less lunatic transfer market.
Of course, it is all wrong, but the law of self-preservation in football compels all clubs who can afford it to resort to it.
Blame the clubs who introduced the practice and created the precedent. But in justice you cannot blame the players for using it for their own benefit.
Put yourself in the player’s position If you could make it a condition of service that you were provided with a house you’d take the house. Of course you would if you were honest about it. And, after all, it is not only in football that it is being done.
Letter from a sportsman
LETTER from Bill Lewis in the mailbag this week before he left the Bowden nursing home where he had an operation a fortnight ago. “ I don't expect to play before the end of the year,” he writes, "but when I return I’ll do my best to make up for lost time.
Injuries come to every club and every player at some time or other. What's the good of complaining?"
That's typical' of this Blackpool full-back, as good a sportsman as ever put on a pair of football boots, as good a clubman as you'll meet in a day's march.
There's another, too, on Blackpool's casualty list writes “ Spectator " - the Irishman, George McKnight.
He hurt a knee in the fourth match of the season in the Central League, and said when I met him at the Birmingham match - without any whining about it, either - “It'll be a week or two yet before I'm back."
Jottings from all parts
BY "SPECTATOR" 30 October 1948
LAMENT in a dozen letters in the mail this week: “When, oh! when are we going to see ‘ The Two Stanleys ’ playing in partnership at Blackpool?”
I can understand it. But I am not blaming “the Two Stanleys” or anybody else.
It has been one of those unfortunate coincidences that one or both of them should have been unfit or engaged elsewhere in match after match at Blackpool this season.
The record books reveal that as a wing they have played for Blackpool only four times this season, and once only - in the Wolverhampton match on September 11 - at Blackpool. So nobody has seen such a lot of them as a wing in league football.
Three of Stanley Matthews’ seven games have been at Blackpool, and the other Stanley has made four home appearances in 11 games.
Neither has played at Blackpool since September 11.
COMPLIMENTS to the Blackpool football public - Spion Kop and everybody else - for their reception of Douglas Davidson, the new Scot from East Fife.
This 28-year-old forward, who was signed chiefly to strengthen a young and depleted second team, never expected to play in the First Division within 24 hours of crossing the Border, and, unprepared for such a test, would, I think, have preferred not to play.
The pace was obviously too fast for him. Yet he never gave up trying - one of the qualities which the scout recommending him wrote of him in a report to the club - and the 28,000 people at the match never gave up encouraging him.
It’s nice to put that on record.
BLACKPOOL RESERVE'S 1-0 win at Leeds a week ago made news.
It was not only this team's first away victory this! season, but the first time they 1 had won outside Blackpool since the match at Chesterfield o n January 31.
Two of the goals in that 4-1 game were scored by forwards who have since left these parts - Murdoch McCormack, who is now at Crewe, and Hugh Doherty, who, when last I heard of him, was considering an offer from a Second Division club.
I NOTICE:
That Jimmy Blair scored one of the goals which won for Bournemouth at Leyton last weekend.
That Tom Lyon, who was supposed to be near the end of his career when he left Blackpool 10 years ago, is still one of the men of the match every time New Brighton play.
That Stanley Mercer, the St. Annes centre-forward, is still among the goals since he transferred from Accrington Stanley to Mansfield Town.
That Dick Burke, the full-back who left Blackpool for Newcastle two years ago but did not remain long at St. James’s Park, is still in Carlisle’s defence every week.
That Douglas Robinson, the ex-Blackpool “A” outside-left, who went from the Trades Club XI to Bacup last week, created a good impression in his first game in the Lancashire Combination.
SO Port Vale have said “Yes to Jim Todd’s application for a transfer.
This wing - half, who, a lew months after he had been seen by Manager Joe Smith in intersquadron football for the R.A.F., played, on the Blackpool manager’s recommendation, for Ireland, has been in and out of the Vale team for months.
The Vale paid £1,000 for him when he left Blackpool in the first postwar season.
Todd is a 90-minutes-a-match man. The first time I saw him at play he finished a match with his sleeves rolled up above the elbow and a blood-soaked sponge pressed to his nose.
That’s always been Jim Todd - in the thick of it to the last second. Such men may not be classic footballers - and Jim Todd has never pretended that he was - but no team is complete without one of them
***
STRANGE to think:
That the only match Sheffield United had won before this afternoon’s game was the Blackpool match which opened the season at Bramall-lane.
That Harold Bodle should have played such a commonplace game - for he is an accomplished player, this forward - for Birmingham at Blackpool with half a dozen League club scouts watching him.
Probably he knew they were watching him. That often puts a player off.
That Blackpool, after losing so many goals early in the season, should not have lost one in the last three home games.
That as soon as Bill Shankly was put in the Preston team North End won a match without Tom Finney. Although that’s not so strange. It was advocated in this column three weeks ago.
ONE of the first men. George Farrow met after negotiating the transfer from Bacup Borough to Hill City last week of Peter (“Paddy”) Sowden, the ex-Blackpool “A” forward, was one of the players who had been with George in Blackpool’s last promotion team - Frank Hill.
A few hours earlier Mr. Hill had been appointed Burnley manager.
“Why,” he asked, when told of the transfer, ‘ wasn’t I given a chance of this lad?”
He had made a bid a few weeks earlier in Crewe Alexandra’s name for this 19-year-old forward who came to Blackpool from Bradford four years ago, played for the Sea Cadets, and later graduated into Blackpool’s “A” team.
Not only were Crewe interested in him at that time, but, among others, Mansfield Town and Rochdale.
***
WHO is the best golfer on the Blackpool F.C.’s staff? Opinions vary.
Ronnie Suart was the scratch prize - a cup - in a recent tournament. But opinions still vary.
Best handicap score was returned by Walter Rickett. That little man, when he was presented with the cup, promptly made a mock presentation of it himself to one of the other players, pretending that as this player had marked his card he should have the cup!
I’m convinced that the Royal and Ancient would consider all this almost irreverent.
But, in the absence of all evidence to the contrary, those two hold the titles today and. seriously, in spite of their little jokes on the subject, won them.
I am told, deservedly.
***
There was talk, before Scotland won at Cardiff last an experimental team, of Jimmy Blair, the ex-Blackpool forward, being recalled to his country eleven.
He still may be, for the Scottish selectors were watching him a few days before this latest Scottish team was announced, and all reports agree that at present he is playing great football for Bournemouth.
Blair’s only international was against Wales two years ago. His father played four times against England, once against Wales and once against Ireland.
***
NILS MIDDLEBOE, the Chelsea Dane, who often in his playing days in English football played at Blackpool, has had conferred upon him “The Order of Dannesbrog,” which in this land would be called an O.B.E. in recognition of his services to Danish sport since he returned to his native land.
He was his country’s liaison officer on the Olympic Games executive. And, from all I remember of him, he was a first- class footballer, too, a player never guilty of a serious offence against the written and unwritten code of the game. They called him in England one of “the gentlemen of football.”
Another is leaving Stamford Bridge in December - Tommy Walker. Who is to succeed him is one of Chelsea’s contemporary problems. Whoever it is will be no greater gentleman - for greater gentlemen than Tommy Walker are just not made anywhere.
***
HOW these teams get about! In four successive away games, including the recent match at Chelsea, Blackpool fixtures include two games in London, one at Portsmouth and one at Middlesbrough.
The total mileage for these four games is 1,782, which shows that it’s not only to Tipperary that it’s a long, long way.
For a First Division programme from August to May Blackpool have to travel between 5,000 and 6,000 miles these days. Portsmouth’s total - and they travel everywhere by coach, too- is two or three times that figure.
THE BIG DANCE NEXT WEEK
AFTER the success of the dance promoted by the ladies at the Jubilee Theatre, Blackpool, on Wednesday night, we are all looking forward to next Friday, when the big dance will be held at the Tower.
It is hoped that all followers of the club and their friends will support this venture.
In conference
THIS weekend the chairman and secretary are representing the Blackpool club at the conference of the Federation of Supporters Club at Brighton, and a great effort will be made to persuade the federation to hold their next annual meeting at Blackpool.
Good wishes are offered to the new arrival at Bloomfield-road - Douglas Davidson. We hope that he will soon settle down among us.
Testing time
IN the event of the arrangements being made for increased accommodation at Bloomfield-road the Supporters Club will naturally make every effort to support the parent club.
It will be the real testing time for all members in supporting the committee in various efforts to raise funds.
The secretary, Mr. C. A. Hay, M.B.E., will always be pleased to hear from members on any point of interest for the benefit of the club. Show your interest by writing to him at 10, Swanage- avenue, South Shore.
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