THE GAME
Blackpool lost the toss, and losing the toss on this day could be serious. Burnley had the aid of the rising wind.
Neither team made material progress for a time, one short pass after another being intercepted by the alert defenders. At last a long pass was introduced and Wardle took it. sidestepped his full-back, and crossed a centre which Woodruff half hit cut for a clearance which his half-back completed.
Loughran immediately retaliated by crossing a free kick into a packed Blackpool goal area, where Shimwell took a bouncing ball and sent Burnley back in their tracks.
FAST OPENING
It was a fast opening, but incidents were few. It was too fast, and, for a time, still too close, even if Burnley were often raiding and twice in succession were halted by hairline offside decisions with which half Burnley’s population appeared to be in disagreement.
There was one brief halt in the continuing Burnley pressure, Chew having a cut lip attended to after a little passage for which Suart apologised.
A minute later, in the seventh of the half, Burnley took the lead with a goal which should have been prevented. Attwell, the wing half, crossed a centre. Out to it leapt Farm, who seemed to loose his grip on the grease- glazed ball.
For seconds, or so it seemed, the loose ball bounced in front of a gaping goal until up darted HARRISON to shoot it into an empty net with Blackpool’s defence in confusion.
Immediately the Blackpool front line went into action.
Two centres Matthews crossed. One of them Wardle appeared to lose as the ball skidded away from him in a shooting position. The other a Burnley defence, which seemed a little too excitable. cleared anywhere.
OVER THE BAR
The raids continued, forcing the game’s first corner in the 12th minute and from it an affray in the Burnley goal which ended in McCall shooting over.
This early Burnley goal had awakened Blackpool, who afterwards were no longer outplayed, but attacked almost continuously.
Burnley’s fadeout after snatching the lead was nearly inexplicable. Blackpool were making progress on both wings without, however, working such a position as Harrison had made for himself in a Burnley breakaway - a position from which Burnley’s leader hooked a shot only inches wide.
In another minute Hayward halted this aggressive leader superbly and in another minute, with the same switch-backing again with Burnley now in command of it. Farm held a ball shot at him at a great pace from 25 yards out by that opportunist forward Harry Potts, whose goal won this game for Burnley last season.
Wardle, who entered this game complaining of a shoulder strain, was in the wars as this new period of Burnley pressure still raged.
But as Blackpool came back into the game he created one position in partnership with Kelly which promised a lot until a fast tackle halted McCall as he raced to the last pass in a scoring position.
Even against the wind Blackpool were still constantly in the game, a goal threatening again as McIntosh, beating Strong in the leap for a McCall centre, headed backwards into the side net.
The second corner of the game came to this attacking Blackpool in the 24th minute with Burnley still in retreat for three of every four minutes, but still as firm and resolute in defence as Burnley defences always have been since the war.
Yet in spite of all these Blackpool attacks, it was Burnley who nearly shot another goal in the 30th v minute.
Then, for the first time, Blackpool’s offside trap went wrong. In desperation Kelly halted his man with a tackle not permitted by the laws. Over came the free kick. On to it Harrison pounced as it came out loose, was racing into position to score again as Farm hurled himself at the centre-forward’s feet, snatched at the loose ball, reached it, held it, and came crawling out of a swarm of men still clutching it.
ANOTHER ESCAPE
It happened all over again, too, in the next minute, but this time Johnston reached the bouncing ball on the line and, with Shimwell shepherding him and his goalkeeper sprawling in the mud, hooked it out of the jaws of an empty goal.
In action these Burnley forwards packed a heavyweight punch, Harrison forcing another path for himself, escaping Hayward for nearly the first time in the match in a direct duel and racing on alone to Blackpool’s goal.
But he was halted by Suart crossing and hitting the ball out anywhere for a corner.
It was Burnley’s first comer of the afternoon and it nearly produced a goal, the ball bouncing unexpectedly out of the mud nearly to the height of the bar before Morris hooked it barely over.
GREATER MENACE
At the end of 40 minutes I gave about 20 to Blackpool and 20 to Burnley, but it was the Turf Moor team’s forwards whose open, direct, smash-and-grab football held the greater menace.
Too many of Blackpool’s raids were going wrong with the last pass. It was at close quarters that Burnley wanted a lot of watching.
Twice Wardle, who seemed at times to be at half speed, lost the last pass With the rest of the line waiting for a centre and the Burnley defence massing into another of its nearly impenetrable formations.
Yet, three minutes before the interval, Blackpool were an unlucky team not to make it 1—1 as Rickett crossed a perfect low centre, and McCall, falling full length to it, headed the ball against the foot of a post with Strong yards out of position.
In the last minute of the half Matthews raced half the length of the field before crossing a centre which Strong seemed to lose, but which no Blackpool forward was in a position to take,
Half-time: Burnley 1. Blackpool 0.
SECOND HALF
Blackpool, with the wind blowing at their backs, made several raids in the early minutes of this half, nearly all of them created by the fast, constructive Johnston.
Yet, except for a ball headed backwards by McIntosh into Strong’s waiting arms, nothing of Importance happened.
Blackpool’s goal was in greater peril in Burnley’s first attack of the half. Harrison hooked the ball back from the line and Farm fell on it in a heap with Potts waiting in the centre-forward position to shoot it through.
This, however, was only an Interlude in Blackpool’s attacking which still continued and yet still forced no gap in Burnley’s firm defence.
It was, I think, significant that the next time Burnley raided Farm had to leave his goal again to snatch Potts’s neat pass away from Chew’s feet as the wing forward closed in on him.
NEW BALL
A new ball was ordered by the referee in the eighth minute of the half. In less than half a minute it was nearly in Burnley’s net. Johnston punted into the goalmouth a free-kick which bounced so high over the pack of men waiting for it that, in the end. Strong had to leap high out to it and clear it with three Blackpool forwards challenging him
Immediately, twice inside one dramatic minute, Morris missed goals which would have given Burnley the game.
The first minute the inside-right, with Harrison took the ball through Blackpool’s hesitating defence. He took the last pass from, the centre-forward and, with Farm alone in front of him, lost it.
The next half-minute this forward rejected another gift chance as Hays crossed a centre which, with half the goal gaping before him, Morris stabbed wide.
It will be a long time before Billy Morris lives down those two misses.
INDEFINITE PASSES
In the meantime the Blackpool forwards, still often in the game, could carve out no comparable openings against a Burnley defence swooping on and clearing every one of these indefinite passes which ended nearly every one of Blackpool’s raids.
There seemed, too, to be a minor panic in Blackpool’s defence every time the Burnley front line raced on it.
Hayward lost one ball, chased it, and in the end had to pass it back to Farm who, advancing to it, took it a yard outside the area where goalkeepers are permitted to handle the ball.
That happened in the 17th minute of the half and it cost a goal. Hays took the free kick with 10 of Blackpool’s 11 men lined up in front of him.
Out of this mass of men the ball cannoned, bounced out and back again, and cannoned for the last time to MORRIS who, standing nearly under the bar, had only to sidestep it over the line.
SETTLED IT
There were 28 minutes left which is a long time in all the ups and downs of a football match, but I think this settled it for there were still no signs of a goal in the Blackpool frontline in spite of an infrequent raid.
There were lectures for two Blackpool players and one of them appeared to be warned after a fray which, in the game’s pace and intensity, were becoming a little too frequent.
It was nearly all Burnley with the game entering on to its last 15 minutes. Morris missed one flying centre by inches with the Blackpool goal at his mercy again.
Then McIntosh broke away on his own and shot fast and low into Strong’s arms.
Blackpool attacked persistently in the closing minutes, but nearly every raid ended in the too familiar stalemate against a Burnley defence fast on the ball and remorseless in the tackle.
Matthews won a corner four minutes from time with one of the few shots which Blackpool’s forwards had made, and from the corner Loughran cleared off the line.
A minute later Shimwell laid out a Burnley man with a thunderbolt free kick, but still no goal would come. A goal, to be frank, had not often threatened to come.
The attendance was 38,124.
Result:
BURNLEY 2 (Harrison 7, Morris 62 mins)
BLACKPOOL 0
NEXT WEEK: It should be a home win - but you never know
VISIT to Blackpool of Sheffield United next weekend will awaken a few tragic memories. It was at the end of the corresponding match last season that the Blackpool chairman, Col. William Parkinson, JP, collapsed, and before the teams had finished dressing, had died in the club’s office.
It was a tumultuous sort of game.
It may be such another next weekend, for the United, who won 3-2 against Blackpool in the first match this season at Bramall-lane and did not win there again for a couple of months, are still too close to the relegation zone to be content to make a go - as - you - please pre-Christmas holiday of it.
Ever since the war home teams have won these matches. It was 4-2 for Sheffield at “The Lane” two years ago and 4-2 for Blackpool at Bloomfield-road. Last season Blackpool were beaten 2-1 at Sheffield and won 2-1 at home.
So, as the United took this season’s first game 3-2, it should be 3-2 for Blackpool next weekend. Or should it?
Football is not quite like that.
There have been a few signs in recent weeks that the United are coming out of the doldrums. One of the men lifting them out is the ex- England forward Jimmy Hagan, whose late and brilliant goal it was that won last August’s match and who scored United’s only goal at Blackpool last season.
Sheffield had won three games in succession before this afternoon’s match at Newcastle.
Half way: It might have been worse, and it could have been better.
BLACKPOOL’S FOOTBALL HAS LACKED
KNOCK-OUT PUNCH
By “Spectator”
TEMPUS (AS THE NOT-SO-ACCOMPLISHED LATIN SCHOLAR SAID) DON’T ’ALF FUGIT.
It seems no time at all since Blackpool went to Bramall-lane to open this present season of grace. Yet when this afternoon’s match at Burnley ends the first half of the club’s 1948-49 programme will be completed.
The day is, therefore, opportune for a review of all that has happened in this nonstop gallop since August 21.
It can be called the not-so-bad- as-it-might-have-been season. Or, from another angle, the not-as-good-as-it-might-have-been.
All those folk who were convinced after Wembley that Blackpool would continue to climb from glory unto greater glory had no end of a disillusionment in the first three or four weeks, when events occurred calculated to play havoc with their blood pressure.
As casualties beset Blackpool on an unprecedented scale the team’s fortunes fluctuated until on a graph they would have resembled a seismograph’s recordings of a few major earthquakes.
So it went on until the defeat on the First Division leaders’ ground at Derby on September 15.
Recovery
EVER since that time, which more or less coincided with the end of the casualty wave, the team have been re-establishing the position which was jeopardised in the first month.
They lost only two of the next 12 games, won at Preston, drew at Bolton, Chelsea, Portsmouth and Charlton, and achieved in the end that point-a-match average which may not win championships but which is a gilt- edged security against relegation.
It might have been worse after all those early misfortunes. And yet, in spite of them, it could have been better if the team had not lost eight home points out of 20.
My own view is that in all the circumstances Blackpool - and its public - ought to be content with the position which has been reached before the half-time bell.
An analysis of the records reveals that the team’s 30 goals in the first 20 games, while not admittedly a goal orgy, compares with only 28 at this time last season, and is only seven fewer than after the first 20 fixtures of the first postwar season, when Blackpool were fourth in the table.
The defence
IT is the defence whose record appears to invite the greater criticism. Its concession of 31 goals in 20 games compares with only 19 a year ago.
Yet for this decline there is, I think, a reasonable explanation, for 18 of those 31 goals were surrendered in that first black month at a time when the defence was having to be shuffled in match after match, and was vulnerable to shock raids.
Today, excluding the Newcastle match, Blackpool’s half-backs and full-backs and that accomplished goalkeeper, George Farm, whose class is now manifest for all to behold, have lost only four goals in six games, which is a record nearly without parallel in the division and sufficient to redeem those earlier failures.
No, Blackpool’s problems - and it would be futile to deny that there are problems - are still chiefly in the attack, which is still - with or without Mortensen - not scoring the goals it should score after the sort of football it often plays, and nearly always away from home, in midfield.
There is, I know, a famine in the land in goals, and it is not confined to Blackpool. That the First Division scoring list should be led by a forward who has put only 13 goals to his name with half a season gone is a grave reflection on the marksmen.
In the fashion
WHETHER there is any particular reason for it, whether defences have at last found the answer which has negatived the revision in the offside rule, I have neither the inclination nor the space to discuss.
But that there are too many men scoring too few goals in the contemporary game as it is played in the First Division is indisputable.
Blackpool, therefore, would appear to be merely in the fashion in fielding a team which has not a few of the game’s arts and grace, but not a knock-out punch. With that punch this team could rise fast in the division table.
Still, if that is on the debit side there is plenty in the credit column. Such items as:
The signing for less than £3,000 of a goalkeeper, Farm, already promising to be such an institution in Blackpool football as another Scot, Jock Wallace, became.
The big advance in the football of Ronnie Suart.
The recent restoration to his England form of Harry Johnston.
Consistency
THE REMARKABLE and too often unrecognised consistency of Eric Hayward.
The great promise of such recruits as Ewan Fentcn and Jack Wright.
The seven goals of Andy McCall, a scoring rate not spectacular, admittedly, but the highest recorded by a Blackpool inside-left since the days of Peter Doherty.
And last, although this can be taken as read - the genius, still undimmed, of Stanley Matthews.
Yes, it might have been worse. In all the circumstances it’s not been such a bad first half at all.
He’ll make it 100
COMPLIMENTS on an approaching anniversary. Harry Johnston will play next weekend against Sheffield United in his 100th League and Cup game for Blackpool since the First Division game was reintroduced after the war.
It will he his 100th game as Blackpool s captain, too, writes “Spectator.”
When he was invited to the captaincy two and a half seasons ago a few folk, who could think of him only as a young apprentice wing- half, which was his status at the war’s outbreak, criticised the appointment, said he had been in the game too short a time for such a post.
This half-back who a few months later was not considered too immature to play for England proved them all wrong. It was to his example I think that the team’s flying start in postwar football - and this at a time when nearly everybody was predicting a football depression in these parts - could be attributed.
“We'll show ’em,” I was told by him.
And they did show ’em, led the First Division for nearly two months.
AM OR PM?
Do Blackpool people prefer a Christmas Day match in the morning?
According to my mail the answer is “Yes,” writes “Spectator.”
For every two correspondents who have written objecting to the board’s decision to reintroduce Christmas morning games when Huddersfield Town come to Blackpool on December 25, there have been half a dozen approving of it.
The last time a First Division game was played on a Christmas morning in Blackpool was in 1931.
Jottings from all parts
BY "SPECTATOR" 11 December 1948
T'HEY were saying that if Stanley Matthews had scored for Blackpool last weekend after eluding five men in his path it would have been his greatest goal.
I beg to differ. It would have been a goal no greater than one he scored against Blackpool at Stoke two years ago. That I always rank as the masterpiece of all goals I have ever seen and I have seen a few thousand.
It was scored, too, on a ground resembling a swamp.
The maestro on that occasion corkscrewed from the halfway line, left half a dozen men prostrate in his wake and, reaching Jock Wallace, impudently walked the ball past that bewildered and semi-mesmerised Scot into the back of the net.
If I am ever to see a greater goal than that I shall have to live a long, long time.
***
VISIT of Stoke City to Blackpool last weekend recalled to a few of an older generation one of the greatest games ever played at Blackpool.
On Good Friday, 1922, the City came to town with an undefeated record of nearly three months’ duration, racing for the championship which was ultimately lost and for the promotion which a month later was won.
And Blackpool were in the doldrums. Everything happened according to the book in the first half, which ended with Stoke leading 2-0. Then a desperate Blackpool hurled its forces at the City’s defence, battered it to a standstill, and won in the last few minutes 3-2.
That was one of the finest games which that great-hearted centre-half, Andy Curran, ever played for Blackpool. And it was the beginning of a come-back which ended in two successive defeats of West Ham United and in Blackpool escaping relegation on the season’s last day.
A FEW statistics:
Only four centre-forwards have scored against Blackpool this season.
Seven goals have been scored by opposition inside-rights, seven by inside-lefts; and seven by outside-lefts. Four have been shot by outside-rights.
There has been one goal by a left-half and one converted penalty.
Eleven goals from the wings and 14 from the inside forwards. That’s not what you expect such an analysis to reveal in days when wingmen are the leading marksmen in half a dozen First Division teams. There’s a moral in it, I suppose, somewhere.
It is strange, too, that whereas Blackpool have lost only one penalty goal this season four have been scored - and two missed - by the team. And there’s a moral in that, too.
FREDDIE STEELE must be fond of playing at Blackpool. He was given a couple of goals in the match there last Christmas Day. He was given - or so it seemed from the Press box - another last weekend.
Nearly every time he has played at Blackpool - or against Blackpool at Stoke - this centre-forward who threatens to go on for ever hits the net.
The truth is, of course, that ne is still one of the greatest opportunists in the game. Not all his goals are as lucky as they seem to be at the time. He sees a chance when most other forwards would not recognise it under a microscope.
It is only a year ago that he broke a bone in a leg and was told that at his age it would probably finish his career. That is what expert opinion told him. Mr. Steele had other opinions.
IT was an old Staffordshire reunion at Blackpool last weekend. Every man in the City team, as I reported at the time, was born in the Potteries - and the total cost was exactly £110, equivalent to a signing-on fee of £10 a man.
That made 11 sons of Staffordshire. A twelfth was Stanley Matthews, a thirteenth Eric Hayward, who came to Blackpool from Port Vale, and a fourteenth Mr. Joe Smith, the Blackpool manager, who, as I record elsewhere on this page, was born at Dudley Port.
There’s been some good staff work at Stoke, recruiting this City team from one area.
Not every football nursery, know, is as rich in football talent, but it makes you think - makes you think this development of the home product could be on a bigger scale elsewhere than it seems to be, makes the squandermania clubs look not only improvident but ridiculous.
***
WHAT a shuffling and upheaval there has been week after week in Blackpool’s second team this season.
I was counting this week the players who have been fielded in this team since the end of August.
Already it has reached the formidable total of 31 in 20 games. Few of those men have made even a double - figure number of appearances.
Johnny Crosland has missed only two matches. The Mr. rest have been in and out of the team week after week.
It has been no enviable baptism for Mr. Sam Jones in his first season as a Central League team manager. But the Irishman has taken it all as it comes. “The first team must take precedence,” he says.
It is because Blackpool had so many men hurt in First Division football in the season’s opening months that this second team has so often had to take the field in so many patchwork formations.
The manager’s brother. Walter Jones, has had only four games, but has played every one in a different position.
BABE'S BAPTISM
AND there was another Irish-man there, too, Alec Steele, who played for his country - and for Charlton and Fulham - 20 years ago, and was as lyrical as only an Irishman can be about the football of Ewan Fenton, the babe of the Blackpool team.
“I’ve never seen a more composed player for a lad who’s been in the game so short a time,” he said. And so said nearly everybody else.
Few of them knew it, but this was the first time that this young half-back had not faced a wing containing an international when playing in the First Division for Blackpool.
In his four other games he had met Billy Steel (twice), Paddy Smyth of the Wolves, and Billy Liddell of Liverpool.
Quite a baptism.
So now Ivor Powell has left Queen’s Park Rangers. I am not surprised. But I am surprised. that he may go no further than Fulham. Ever since he played in Blackpool’s wartime team this Welsh international half-back has had an affection for the north country.
He married a Blackpool girl one of the daughters of Tommy Browell the ex-Hull City, Manchester City and Blackpool forward, who, by the way, Powell still often watches Blackpool and whose comments on the games he sees are shrewd and knowledgeable.
- AND COLCHESTER
AND after the match everybody’s first question was "How’ve they gone on at Colchester?”
Blackpool have always had an affectionate interest in this little club which rose unexpectedly to the stature of a Goliath early in the year. Before every tie last season which followed Blackpool’s dismissal of this gallant kittle team, Colchester, sent a message of good wishes to their conquerors and despatched a delegation to cheer them at Wembley.
Blackpool’s relationship with the United is, as a result, a little more than formal. It is strengthened, too, in the present tie by the fact that these days Ronnie Dix, Blackpool’s wartime guest, is playing for Reading, the club which meets Colchester in today’s replay, and Reading is also the club which Mr. Joe Smith managed before he came to Blackpool.
So there are a few folk in these parts who want Colchester to win and still don’t want Reading to lose.
Nothing whatever can be done for them!
Blackpool, by the way, go into the drum for the third round on Monday week. December 13. The third round ties are played on January 8, a week after Blackpool greet the New Year in Birmingham with a match at Villa Park.
The 13th - it's going to be unlucky for somebody.
FARE AT THE FAIR
AT the Jubilee Theatre, Coronation-street, Blackpool, next Wednesday afternoon the ladies are holding their grand Christmas fair whist drive.
Tickets are on sale at 1s. 6d. and it is hoped that this big venture will receive strong support.
The prizes, which it is hoped, will be presented by Mrs. Stanley Matthews, include turkeys, ducks, chickens, and puddings for the lucky table and wines.
Membership drive
A NEW membership year starts on January 1, when a great drive for members will be made. Will you please help by being on the list early?
You can send your application and 2s. 6d. to the secretary, Mr. C A. Hay, MBE. 10. Swanage- avenue, Blackpool, and at the same time give him your views on the club.
Stanley Mortensen
THE Supporters Club extend to Stanley Mortensen best wishes for a speedy recovery and hope that he will soon be back in the team.
The vocal encouragement given to the team at the last few matches has again shown definite signs of improvement. Keep it up, ’Pool fans, and let the team know that you are with them.
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