THE GAME
Portsmouth won the toss, but there was nothing in it on this quiet still day.
A free kick, when Mortensen went somersaulting over a halfback’s foot, and a Blackpool raid which continued on the new left wing, opened the game which was anything but quiet in its early minutes.
Blackpool built another grand raid, this time on the right, where Matthews gave Rickett a long ground pass which the little man took at the gallop before sending away McIntosh out on the wing where the pace of the ball beat the centre-forward.
Three free kicks were conceded by a retreating Portsmouth in the first three minutes.
Portsmouth in that time had not worked a raid which passed beyond Blackpool’s penalty area It was all fire, fury, and not a lot else in these opening minutes.
FIRST CORNER
The first time Portsmouth went down in a line, instead of in a sort of mass Powderhall handicap, a corner was won on the left after a heading duel which would have graced the recent Matthews-Johnston act on St. Annes Pier.
Farm snatched one loose ball away from the advancing Clarke, the man from the Albion, before, in the next minute, Matthews took a neat back pass from McIntosh, spurted away from his full-back, reached shooting position by sheer pace, and from it shot wide.
Blackpool’s football was good to watch, with the forwards interchanging positions rapidly and repeatedly.
Blackpool won a comer on the left, but it produced nothing material.
Portsmouth’s hit-or-miss forwards were being held at bay. Once Hayward, diving low to a long lobbed forward pass, took Reid’s boot on his head and was laid low for half a minute without anyone noticing it as a Blackpool raid surged to the other end.
SHOCK RAID
In the 16th minute the Blackpool goal nearly fell to a shock raid. A rebounding bill put Harris on side. Into an unguarded space the outside-right raced, shot a ball which Farm parried as it came at him at the pace of a bullet.
On to it Clarke hurled himself and was shooting into the gaping net as Shimwell crossed his path, smothered the ball and cleared it anywhere.
Backwards and forwards the teams battled. I have not seen a faster game this season - and I am counting last week's Newcastle typhoon.
Wardle shot over the bar at a great pace - a great shot this was - from another of those passes which McIntosh was serving out all the time to his wings.
Another minute and from Reid’s pass Delapenha showed that he could shoot, too, hitting from 30 yards out a ball which Farm held as he crouched low to meet it.
Hayward gave a corner after the coloured “Lindy” and his partner had made a raid - nearly the best raid of the match so far - and for a time afterwards Blackpool were going back without being too palpably outplayed.
In the 25th minute a Portsmouth goal was near again as Froggatt tore after a long pass, was foiled only by the courage of Farm who fell at his feet, punched the ball away as he fell, still sprawling, hooked it away from Clarke’s toe as it was spinning a couple of yards off the line.
The Blackpool front line was fading out with half an hour gone, but the defence still stood firm under increasing, almost savage pressure.
Froggatt and Reid, who can both hit a ball as fast as any man in England, had two shots which bounced out off the nearly impenetrable mass in front of Farm.
HAYWARD’S COOLNESS
Twice in rapid succession, Hayward, as assured as ever, passed back to the waiting goalkeeper with the persistent heavyweight Reid challenging him.
In this September heat in the middle of November the pace was beginning to tell. Yet in one attack which the Froggatt-Clarke wing built perfectly, the Jamaican “Lindy” made 45,000 people say “Ooh” as he shot wide from 30 yards out a ball which would have slain a goalkeeper if he had been in its flight.
Farm had to race out to the edge of the penalty area, with the vigilant Hayward shepherding him, as Harris went tearing after a Reid pass, which found one of the few gaps appearing in Blackpool’s oppressed defence.
In the next minute, too, Farm made a great punched clearance to beat a Scoular free-kick away, and before the corner was repelled Shimwell had to take a flying dive at the feet of Clarke as the inside-left was taking the ball into a shooting position.
Blackpool were being outplayed, utterly outplayed, as the end of the half approached.
Few passes were reaching the forwards - and scarcely one at all finding Matthews - with the two wing half-backs, strong in defence, being harried back to the aid of the men behind them.
And those men needed all the aid which could be given them in the half’s closing minutes as Portsmouth battered away, often staking everything on speed and the long pass, but still making progress at a great rate.
CHANCE MISSED
Yet with five minutes of the half to go Blackpool might have gone in front.
Johnston opened the raid with a throw-in, pounced on to the return pass, crossed a ball which Wardle, running in to meet it, glided on to Mortensen who, with the goalkeeper unprepared and out of position, shot wide as he fell.
Two minutes later. Mortensen. finding another open space - how this man can find them! - raced to it in the inside-right position this time, veered inside and shot a ball which Butler parried and beat out.
In the next minute Kelly beat his full-back, sent on a clear course his wing forward Wardle who crossed a high centre which McIntosh headed past Butler a split second after the whistle had gone against him for offside.
Never have I seen an outplayed team surge back into a game and dominate it so much.
Blackpool dictated every move in those last five of this mile-a-minute half.
Two corners Blackpool won in this amazing bid for a goal, the second conceded by Butler as he punched over the bar Wardle’s great rising shot.
From this second corner Blackpool nearly went in front again as Matthews hooked the ball into Butler’s arms as the goalkeeper sprawled on his line with the Portsmouth defence in utter confusion.
Half-time: Portsmouth 0, Blackpool 0.
SECOND HALF
After a 12-minute interval Portsmouth went off in the second half as if this unexpectedly long rest had done them a lot of good.
Twice in the first two minutes the Portsmouth left wing raided. Shimwell’s desperate tackle repulsed the first attack, and the second ended as Farm took a high centre from this wing, held it, and cleared it to a thunder of cheers.
This left wing continued to be aggressive, but nothing happened for a time near the closely protected Farm.
There was something bordering on panic in Portsmouth’s defence every time Matthews was given a pass and he was being given an increasing number with this half 10 minutes old.
Yet, as was repeatedly happening in this game, it was the attacking team that nearly lost a goal to a breakaway.
Twice in less than a minute It happened. The first time, breaking away from continuous Blackpool pressure, three Portsmouth forwards escaped.
One of them, the alert Delapenha, tore into an open space on his wrong wing as Blackpool’s scattered defence waited for the offside whistle, raced inside, was shooting as Farm fell bravely in front of him and the goalkeeper was at full length as the ball cannoned off him for a corner.
WIDE OF THE MARK
Direct from the corner there was a similar Blackpool raid. This time Matthews took a long pass out on the left wing, crossed a ball which left Rickett all on his own. Rickett cut inside and lashed a shot wide, when he had time, with no full-back near him, to settle on the pass.
Seven minutes were left and then came a sensation. McIntosh went after a loose ball. Rookes chased him and down the centre-forward fell to a clamour of protests.
The referee gave a penalty, which MORTENSEN converted with a swift low shot.
With only three minutes left Portsmouth made it 1-1.
There was a free-kick into a packed goalmouth. In and out the ball cannoned until HARRIS pounced on it and shot it low over the line to a cheer which they could probably hear out in the Solent.
Result:
PORTSMOUTH 1 (Harris 87 mins)
BLACKPOOL 1 (Mortensen pen 83 mins)
Did the shuffle in Blackpool’s attack come off?
The answer is "Yes” and “No.” The presence of McIntosh in the centre of the line, even if this tall forward is still not the aggressive forward the modern game requires, gave the line a balance which has been noticeably absent in recent weeks.
Both wings were repeatedly entering this game, and it was as a line and not as five scattered units that Blackpool’s attack advanced.
It made chances but it missed them, and there were no signs that Mortensen was as good as he can be on an unfamiliar wing.
The two wing forwards. Wardle and Matthews - and Matthews was not in this match as neglected as he has been - were the best of a line whose football gave Blackpool half this game and even a little more than half, and would have won it if there had been one marksman among the five.
The defence earned its bonus by the front it presented to Portsmouth forwards during 25 minutes of the first half when this fast aggressive squad might have won the game by a goal or two.
Hayward and Shimwell, and as the game progressed Johnston, were stars in the rearguard action which was battled grimly at that time.
And all - the afternoon Farm was as good as ever which is to say that he was very good.
A draw was fair, but Blackpool should never have last that late lead.
NEXT WEEK: City here next week with -
ANOTHER all - Lancashire match next week - Manchester City at Blackpool.
It will be only the second game between the teams on the Blackpool ground since the war. In the first, a year ago, the City made a 1-1 draw.
Stanley Mortensen had one of his goals and wing-forward Wharton, who went from Preston to Maine-road and has since been transferred to Blackburn Rovers, won a point for the City.
Frank Swift had another of those games in his own home town which makes people wonder how a forward ever shoots a ball past him, so completely does he seem to fill up all the space underneath the crossbar and between the posts.
He will be here again next week in a team which has confounded all the Jeremiahs by playing football of a class which they said it could never play and winning a greater number of points than they said it would ever win.
The City have still, however, lost too many matches away from home - five out of eight - and scored a mere nine goals in those eight games while 17 have been lost.
So, on contemporary form, Blackpool should avenge that lost home point a year ago and the 1-0 defeat at Maine- road which followed it, although form is worth so little in these topsy-turvy days that not a lot of notice should be taken of it.
For once there are comparatively few changes in the present-day team and the team that played in the corresponding match last season.
These were the Blackpool men in the 1-1 draw:
Wallace; Shimwell, Suart; Lewis, Hayward, Johnston; Matthews, Munro, Mortensen, McCall, McCormack.
New leader? - Then
IT’S BETTER TO SIGN ONE
By “Spectator”
NOW (AS THEY NEARLY USED TO SAY IN “IGNORANCE IS BLISS”) WE’RE BACK TO A CENTRE-FORWARD AGAIN
I knew it would happen as soon as Blackpool lost a match, as the Newcastle United game was lost a week ago, a match which might have been won if Blackpool had been fielding a centre-forward built and playing to the conventional design. people
Now all those demanded the banishment into Central League exile again of Jim McIntosh and hailed as an inspiration from on high the experiment of the Stanley Mortensen-Walter Rickett double-centre-forward plan are declaring “It'll never do!”
There were, I admit, ominous Signs that it would not do in a Newcastle game which was a Classic illustration of all that an accomplished centre-forward such as the new England leader, Jackie Milburn, can mean to a team.
So where do we go from here?
Some people say “Out into the transfer market.” Others demand another experiment.
No panic
AND at Bloomfield-road I am told “We’re not going to panic stations yet - after a couple of defeats."
What are the chances of signing a new centre-forward? For one, I think, may have to be Signed before many weeks have gone.
The fielding in the position of a forward as small as Rickett, game as a bantam cock though he may be, was only at its best on improvisation, for no centre- forward who stands only 5ft. 4in. in his boots can live in a game Which is being played less and less on the ground, where it Should be played, and more and more in the air.
The purpose he served, and can I suppose, continue to serve as a sort of decoy duck, wandering
hither and thither while Mortensen darts into the open spaces will produce results now and again, as it produced them on its first trial at Preston.
The price
PUT a price has to be paid even for these problematical benefits, for with an inside-right drifting into and out of the centre-forward position the inside-right’s partner, who in this case happens to be the best outside-right in Britain, is too often left marooned out on one-man wing.
Stanley Matthews has too often been condemned to a not-so-splendid isolation since he came to Blackpool without perpetuating a formation which makes it almost inevitable.
If for no other reason, the two - centre-forward game may have to be discarded with considerable rapidity.
What is the alternative?
They want Shimwell, Crosland there
SOME correspondents in the biggest mail I have had on one subject for a season advocate the recalling of Jim McIntosh, who, whatever his other limitations, they assert, at least brings both wings into a game when he is leading a line, a fact which I would be the last to dispute.
I know I shall be howled down from several quarters, but, if Mortensen is not inclined to play in the position, McIntosh, out of Blackpool’s present staff, is the man I would play there.
The majority of the amateur team-builders, however, demand that one experiment shall be discarded merely for the purpose of introducing another.
One writer, selected at random from others presenting a similar case, demands “Eddie Shimwell should be given the position. All that is needed is another Jock Dodds to stand in a scoring position and convert all those lovely passes from Matthews and others.
Height, weight
"ALL the necessary qualifications Shimwell possesses: height, weight and a powerful shot... My forward line would be: Matthews, Mortensen, Shimwell, Rickett and Wardle. Only if this were a failure would I recall McIntosh."
Half a dozen other writers nominate the centre-half Johnny Crosland for the problem berth, among them Hal Miller, the music-hall comedian who lives in Blackpool, but, touring the country, watches a variety of teams.
"I’ve seen Rickett play as a No. 1 winger at Sheffield and Wardle put in smashing games for Grimsby as an inside-left," he writes.
"A Rickett-Wardle wing is worth a trial. What would be needed then would be a centre- forward with height, speed and weight who can head a ball.
“The answer”
"BLACKPOOL have the man to answer all these requirements on their books already - Johnny Crosland.
“This forward line would be taller in front of goal, and only one man in it would be out of position. That man, as he proved at Wembley, has it in him to play nearly anywhere.”
So there you are - you pays your money and you takes your choice.
My only comment is that all these experiments appear to be based on an assumption which is scarcely complimentary to recognised centre - forwards - the assumption that nearly any player in the heavyweight class can play in a position which is one of the key positions in a team, and, in my view, a highly specialised one at that.
Full-backs, centre half backs, everybody in the game except goalkeepers, have been played at centre-forward at some time or other by selection boards guilty of a similar misapprehension, but few of them have been centre-forwards for long.
Phil Watson, the old Blackpool centre-half, is a classic case. In desperation Blackpool fielded him as a centre-forward in the relegation days of the early ’30’s. He scored a “hat trick” in his first match, but he never scored again.
Every man to his job is not a bad guiding principle in football.
Only way
AS I see it, Blackpool will only solve this centre-forward problem by the simple expedient of signing a centre-forward. And it is not as simple as all that, as Blackpool have found when they have gone searching for one, prepared to pay a high price.
Others have come and gone in the transfer market, as a number of correspondents declare in varying states of frustrated indignation, and it is not to be assumed that the Blackpool directors are not aware of the fact, and could and would have made a bid for them if they had been persuaded that they were the men required.
But repeatedly I am told at Blackpool’s headquarters that they are not the men, that centre-forward will not be signed unless he is a player of the class for which the club are prepared to pay.
Second-best?
THE time may come when Blackpool may have to be content with the second-best - and that may not necessarily be such bad business, either.
I have not forgotten that one of the greatest centre-forwards who ever wore the tangerine jersey, Jimmy Hampson, came from an obscure Third Division club at a fee which these days would appear in a balance sheet as petty cash
That time has not come yet. In the meantime, Blackpool I know, are seeking the first-grade article and seeking in vain, but refusing to be stampeded into one of those purchases which an impatient public would be the first to condemn if it were not as good as the label said it was going to be.
COMPLIMENTS to Johnny Crosland on his duel with Jack Milburn, the England and Newcastle centre-forward, a week ago.
He was a little depressed about that third goal, made no excuses, said, “If I'd left the ball alone it would have gone out of play."
As I saw it, he had no alternative. It hit him photographs confirm this and cannoned in off him without his knowing a great deal about it.
But, this incident apart, Crosland’s football against probably the fastest centre- forward in the game today was magnificent for a man who never meets a Jackie Milburn in the Central League.
He was never outpaced, never outclassed, had a match which makes you regret that he has to be content with Central League football at Blackpool nearly all the time.
I am still being told that he would be the answer to Blackpool’s prayer for a centre-forward if he were given an extended trial in the position. I wonder... I’ve been told that so often about so many other players.
BY "SPECTATOR" 13 November 1948
SHOULD it have been 3-2 instead of 3-1 for Newcastle United at Blackpool last weekend?
By letter, telephone and almost by affidavit I have been told this week that all the hullabaloo in the Newcastle goal late in the game last week, which eventually terminated in a free-kick for the United almost under the bar, was caused by a demand that the ball had been over the line.
Some eye-witnesses in the south stand and paddock say it was over by a yard, others by a foot, but that it was over while Jack Fairbrother. the Newcastle goalkeeper, was still clutching it, appears to be a unanimous opinion
Even one Newcastle fan writes to say it was - so in that case, suppose, it must have been!
Still, why all the commotion? The better team won. Nobody is denying that.
PETER DOHERTY is still rolling in the penalties.
The Irishman was one of the first men to evolve the technique which Willie Buchan and a few others have since adopted of making the taking of penalties look as easy as shelling those traditional peas.
He began it in his Blackpool days when the public watched him almost incredulously as he glided the ball slowly away from a goalkeeper instead - as was the custom then and still is among the majority - of apparently trying to blast a hole in the back of the net.
LAST half-back to score a goal against Blackpool in a League match before Jim Gordon’s at Middlesbrough the other day was John Harris, the Chelsea centre- half.
But in all matches the last goal - as Lytham correspondent reminds this department - was scored by Jim Anderson - in the goal which made it 4-2 for Manchester United at Wembley in the Final.
Nearly all the critics blame Joe Robinson for that goal, which was shot from 30 to 40 yards out.
Blame, I know, attaches to the goalkeeper for flinging out the ball into an open space where the half-back took possession of it, but when this half-back shot, the ball was deflected by another Blackpool player, and, to be fair, Robinson had not a ghost of a chance of reaching it after that had happened.
Epitaph to this goal: Both players at present are out of their club’s first, teams. How brief sometimes is glory!
I NOTICE That the new Continental importation, Viggo Jensen, has supplanted Willie Buchan, the ex-Celtic and Blackpool forward, in the Hull City attack.
That Douglas Blair, brother of Jimmy and once on the Blackpool staff, scored his first goal of the season for Cardiff City last weekend.
That Harry Eastham, who once left Blackpool on a £1,000 transfer to Liverpool, where at one time he promised to make his name in the First Division, scored for Tranmere Rovers at Stockport.
That the Rochdale forward line, which not so long ago had three ex-Blackpool players in it - Dick Withington, Hugh O’Donnell and Cyril Lawrence - has these days not one.
That Stanley Mortensen is Blackpool’s leading scorer again, even with only seven goals.
WATCHING Newcastle United win at Blackpool last Saturday was a footballer who must often in recent weeks have asked himself the familiar question, “What price glory?" and decided that the answer to it was “Noth-at all."
Called to the Newcastle training quarters at Cleveleys during week before the Blackpool match, Frank Houghton, a wing-half from Ballymena, was again put on reserve when the team was selected. Yet one day last April, when playing as a wing forward, he scored the two goals which put Newcastle back in the First Division, broke his right arm when he scored the second- and has never since played for the first team.
Houghton has no complaints. “It’s all in the game," he says. I know it is - but what a merciless game it seems to be sometimes.
***
STRANGE that Bob Pryde, the Blackburn Rovers centre-half, should have won his duel with Lincoln City’s Jock Dodds at Ewood Park the other day.
For years - all through the war - Jock had a hoodoo on this evergreen half-back. Whenever they met he led him a dance and scored every time - and not once or twice, either.
People have forgotten. I think, the incredible scoring achievements of Dodds in wartime football. He had over 70 goals in one season.
THE sad fate of William Whittaker, Huddersfield’s new half-back from Charlton, who deflected the ball past his own goalkeeper to give Chelsea the match a few minutes from time last weekend, recalls a similar melancholy baptism for a Blackpool goalkeeper.
It happened in January. 1932. when Frank McDonough, signed two days earlier from Thames, a Southern Section club in those days, stationed himself in the Blackpool goal for a home match with Sunderland and had the ball rocketed away from him by one of his own full-backs. Jack O’Donnell, before the game had been in progress a couple of minutes.
***
THEY think such a lot of Micky Fenton, the Middlesbrough centre-forward and Blackpool wartime guest, in the Ayresome Park boardroom that I was told in all sincerity by one of the Middlesbrough directors last weekend that the board were concerned that it had been permissible to award him only one benefit since he went to the club.
It must be a record - a board seriously beset by such a problem and a player playing 15 years with a club for one only benefit. Explanation is that a few of those 15 years were spent by Fenton as a junior when he could not qualify for a gratuity and for six years he was in wartime football - one or two of them at Blackpool - which also were not eligible.
But a second benefit is impending, and when it comes it ought to be - and will be - the absolute maximum.
DRIVE FOR MEMBERS
THE ladies’ dance and the big dance at the Tower were most successful, and to all who assisted in these efforts the Blackpool Football Supporters’ Club offer sincere thanks.
SEVERAL supporters travelled on the long trail to Portsmouth today. They are real enthusiasts.
But even if all cannot go away we can support the team vocally when at home. Last Saturday in the match against Newcastle there were many times when local voices were drowned by the enthusiastic Geordie fans.
Now, Blackpool fans let the players know you are there.
WE shall be making a great drive for membership very early in the new year, and hope that the 5,000 target will soon be reached.
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