BLACKPOOL: Farm: Shimwell, Suart, Johnston, Hayward, Fenton, Matthews, Rickett, McIntosh, McCall, Wardle.
SHEFFIELD UNITED: Smith, Bailey, Cox, Hitchen, Latham, Cockroft, Thompson, Brook, Collindridge, Hagan, Jones.
Referee: Mr. E W. Baker (Manchester).
THE GAME
Blackpool won the toss and attacked the north goal. That was no mere figure of speech either.
The forwards attacked almost without interruption in the early minutes, one neat exchange of passes on the left in the first 30 given a position within range of the Sheffield goal which was lost as a bouncing ball eluded him.
There was one Sheffield raid abruptly terminated by the offside whistle, but repeatedly in the first five minutes Blackpool were advancing nearly all the time. Rickett zigzagging away in one lone spurt which ended when he had only another man to pass.
A similar little foray by McCall into a massed defence met a similar fate.
Once, Collindridge made a bare soft of position for himself before Shimwell’s do - or - die tackle halted him.
Otherwise it continued to be one-way traffic on the Sheffield goal with Matthews glittering and sparkling in the gloom.
But no scoring position presented itself. It seemed again to be all a little too close, even if with 10 minutes gone the United had seldom been over the half- wav line.
A demand for a penalty was refused when one of McIntosh’s neat headed passes appeared to
There was nothing compact about Blackpool’s defence. when in a breakaway in the 24th minute this outplayed United took the lead.
It was goal-scoring made simple. There was an advance on the left. Hagan, that master tactician, saw a man on the other wing standing completely unmarked, gave him a neat, square pass and the unmarked man, THOMPSON, with a complete assurance merely shot low into the net with no Blackpool man within, half a dozen yards of him.
It was a parody of a score 1-0 for Sheffield at the end of half an hour.
Yet, in spite of Blackpool’s pressure, which was still almost continuous, a goal seldom seemed near.
Once, McIntosh, in a flying leap, missed by inches a great centre by Wardle and in another raid the aggressive little Rickett shot a ball which rocked Smith back on his heels as he parried it.
For the rest, Blackpool seemed to be making singularly hard labour of it against a team whose defence was strong and fast into the tackle, and whose forwards in breakaways required watching.
HAGAN INSPIRES
Jimmy Hagan was the man inspiring every Sheffield attack. As the interval approached there were more of them, too many opened by passes from Blackpool’s half-backs and full-back going to the wrong men.
In one of these raids the United nearly made it 2-0, two or three shots cannoning out off a massed defence before Jones hit full tilt a ball which passed Farm and was hooked off the line by Shimwell.
That was three times in the first 3b minutes that a half-back or full-back had cleared off the line with a goalkeeper beaten.
There was not a lot in it for the rest of the half. In fast, open raids, against a defence which never seemed too confident, Sheffield's forwards played direct football without any nonsense about it.
There was so little nonsense about the Sheffield defence, too, that after giving several free-kicks against one man in it Mr. Baker gave him a lecture and entered his name in his book.
Blackpool should never have been losing at half-time.
Half - time:
Blackpool 0
Sheffield United 1.
SECOND HALF
Blackpool opened the second half raiding nonstop again.
One fast, direct advance stood out in all this pressure - a long clearance by Shimwell and a deflected pass from it to Matthews who cut inside and shot a ball which Smith half beat out and retrieved as it was bouncing away from him.
All that in three moves. Too many other raids had too many moves in them.
All the time too many free kicks were still being conceded by the United
Matthews found himself the centre of a wrestling match on the line for one, and Johnston had his feet summarily swept from under him for another.
Twenty thousand people, who had not a lot to cheer about, even if Blackpool’s football had a greater virility in it at this time, made a lot of noise as they hooted and jeered.
For a time, and often afterwards, Matthews became an inside forward with Rickett. on the wing, creating raid after raid with long passes which were remorselessly tearing Sheffield’s defence open.
HEADED WIDE
It was all in vain. So back the outside-right went on the wing outwitted two men, reached the line, and crossed a centre which McIntosh headed outside, with everybody thinking it was a goal at last and a few thousands cheering it prematurely.
If Sheffield had been overplayed in the first half they were being nearly overwhelmed with 15 minutes of this half gone. But still goals would not come.
Now the chances were being made but there was no one to convert them.
Again, in the 16th minute of the half, the Sheffield goalkeeper was beaten, this time by a Wardle centre which was curling inside the far post as Cox leaped into the gap and headed it off the line
There were only two goalkeepers in the programme, but there seemed to be about half a dozen in the game.
Twice, in breakaways, the Sheffield front line won corners off a Blackpool defence which still seemed strangely unsettled under pressure, but for the rest it was still raid after raid on a Sheffield goal which seemed fated never to fall today.
Rickett shot into Smith’s arms direct from another of Matthews’s inviting centres, and from yet another off this assembly line McCall headed down a ball which the Sheffield goalkeeper held with complete assurance.
Time after time raids were built in midfield and went wrong off the last pass.
UNITED’S SECOND
A price had to be paid for it all. In the 25th minute of the half Sheffield went away with another open raid - the sort of raid which had been too seldom in Blackpool’s game - and made it 2-0.
Again the Blackpool defence seemed to hesitate. A clearance was half hit.
On to it Collindridge pounced, passed inside a ball which JONES shot so fast that it hit the roof of the net and came out again before anybody, except those near, knew that it was a goal.
Immediately Rickett and Wardle exchanged positions, but it made no perceptible difference for Blackpool still raided and still seldom looked like getting a goal
Two minutes from time, with Blackpool’s front line faded out and the defence scattered, COLLINDRIDGE raced into a great gap to hook inside from a narrow angle a third goal greeted in silence by a disillusioned crowd.
Thousands had already left the ground and were on their way home.
Result:
BLACKPOOL 0.
SHEFFIELD UNITED 3 (Thompson 24, Jones 70, Collingridge 88 mins)
NEXT WEEK: Happy Christmas, Peter!
But, please, some points in the stocking, Blackpool
Two games in three days are the Christmas rations for professional footballers this year. This is one sort of rationing at least which will meet with their approval.
Blackpool’s fixtures are a morning game with Huddersfield Town at Bloomfield-road on Christmas Day and an afternoon match at Huddersfield two days later.
Peter Doherty’s team are down in the doldrums again, will enter both these games desperately seeking points.
It is a long time since a Huddersfield side won at Blackpool. Two years ago, in the first match that Peter Doherty played for the Town, the Yorkshire team had all the game but still were beaten 2-1, George Dick scoring once for Blackpool and Willie Buchan converting one of his slow- motion penalties.
Last year Bob Hesford, who these days is on the casualty list and has not played for months, refused to fall for this little deception again, and beat out another of the Scot’s shots from the “spot.”
But in the second half the Blackpool forwards ran riot, George Farrow shooting another penalty and Murdoch McCormack scoring those two goals which put his name into the headlines.
A week earlier the Town had won 2-0 at Huddersfield. A year earlier Blackpool had won there 3-1.
History and contemporary form, therefore, are both against the Town. Yet these Huddersfield men won at Newcastle three weeks ago, and a team that can do that can do nearly anything.
IT SHOULD BE A CUP WIN
The modern Barnsley need not daunt Blackpool
By “Spectator”
ON A GROUND IN YORKSHIRE CALLED OAKWELL A FOOTBALL MATCH IS TO BE PLAYED ON THE AFTERNOON OF THE EIGHTH OF NEXT MONTH.
The home team are in the lower half of the Second Division table. The visitors are about halfway up the First Division. Nobody could call this big box-office.
It promises to be no classic.
Yet nearly everybody in Blackpool has been talking about it since two o’clock last Monday afternoon and will continue to talk about it until it is played in three weeks’ time.
This is what they call the siren’s lure, the magic at the Cup, investing a commonplace game with a glamour which it possesses only under false pretences. The immediate reaction in Blackpool, too, has been as strictly in accordance with tradition.
The first man I informed “Blackpool go to Barnsley in the Cup” said “Well, that’s the finish for Blackpool!” I have been told that all week, and people everywhere in these parts will be repeating it until the match approaches a little nearer.
Opinion will change
THEN, for it always happens in A this sequence every year, the weathercock of public opinion will veer round the compass completely until on the eve of the match they will all be saying ‘It’s in the bag - we can’t lose!”
There are no half-measures, no compromises, about the views of the football public when the Cup-ties come.
What do I think?
I am usually one of little faith. When I was told by the famous gipsy a year ago, “Blackpool wilt be in the final and will lose to Spurs!” I should have said “Sez you!” if I had known the Romany for that inelegant phrase.
Yet Blackpool reached the Final, lost gloriously in it. and out of the 64 teams in the lists at the time of the prophecy the ’Spurs became one of the last four.
Luck of the draw
I HAVE had no session with the A seer this time. Yet, even if I am not pretending that Blackpool have those qualities which a Cup team are supposed to include in their armament, I cannot forget that they had not those qualities a year ago.
The luck of the draw gave Blackpool home ties in the first three rounds, and it is a fact, and still remains a fact, that Blackpool have not yet had to play - except in the Wembley match last April - a First Division team in the Cup since the war.
Yet other teams last season fell by the wayside with almost comparable good fortune attending them.
So in theory, for whatever it is worth, Blackpool could make a Cup name again this time.
I think Blackpool should win at Barnsley.
In Cup-ties the Oakwell team have been living for years on the reputation they achieved before the first world war, when, under the iron discipline of Mr. “Bill” Norman, who was later to come to Blackpool, they humbled a few of the mighty of the day and to the present generation are still being presented less as a football team than as 11 man-eating terrorists.
There is still nothing at all genteel in the football the present Barnsley team play in the Cup, and as the Oakwell men have not. in contrast with Blackpool’s home sequence last season, had one tie at home since the war and every time have lost on a First Division club’s ground, there is no way of assessing all that they may yet be able to accomplish in front of their own people.
Lesson learned
BUT it should not be sufficient to upset the applecart of a First Division team which by that time should have Stanley Mortensen in its attack again and which should never again be guilty of the sort of football in a Cup-tie which invited defeat at Sheffield two years ago.
Blackpool learned a lesson at Hillsborough in 1947 which has not yet been forgotten.
Yet, whatever happens on the field, there will be little £ s d in it for Blackpool.
Bath the Sheffield clubs and Rotherham United will be at home on January 8. They will take thousands off the gate.
And, in any case, Oakwell is no Maine-road or Goodison Park, its present record which was maximum pre-war capacity, being 40,255 people who watched a Cup-tie with Stoke City in 1936. It is questionable whether that figure will be reached, even in these boom days, next month.
The money in it
OBVIOUSLY, therefore, if Blackpool want to make some money out of the Cup this year, they will have to cross this hurdle. There may be a gold mine on the other side of it, even if the odds are piled high against a Wembley in two successive years.
Blackpool, I repeat, should cross it. even if it may appear a bit of a Becher’s Brook to those who still seem to think that at the name of Barnsley every Knee should bow.
I was meditating this week, by the way, on the short span of the professional footballer’s career when I unearthed from the records the Blackpool team last to play at Oakwell.
Only 12 years ago
THAT was in February, which is less than 12 ago. These were the men who wore the tangerine jersey in a match won by Barnsley 2-1.
Wallace; Blair (DJ, Witham; Farrow, Cardwell, Hall, Watmough, Hampson, Finan, Jones (T.W.), Hill.
Not one of those men remains in Blackpool’s service today, unless Danny Blair, who has an honorary managerial post with one of the club’s nursery teams, is counted.
And except for Louis Cardwell and Bob Finan, who are on Crewe’s books, not one still plays in League Football.
So brief is the glory.
On Hill and Moor
MR. FRANK HILL - “Mr.” these days even if he still prefers to he called “Frank” - is soon settling down at Turf Moor and getting results a s Burnley’s manager.
I never doubted that he would, writes “Spectator.” The best managers are always the men who made their own name on the field before they became managers. Players, being human, are never too fond of being lectured and instructed by armchair tacticians.
Mr. Hill, who was Blackpool’s captain in the last promotion season of ’36-37, maintains the strict discipline which Mr. Cliff Britton instituted at Turf Moor, has his men training morning and afternoon three days a week. And in this training they rehearse every move in the game, not merely study it on blackboards and in theory, but put it into actual practice.
The covering in the Burnley defence alone justifies all this tuition, is one of the reasons for the team’s postwar success.
SANTA CLAUS
A FEW of the Blackpool players are going to act as Santa Claus at the Victoria Hospital next week.
At the invitation of the Supporters' Club they are visiting the hospital on Wednesday afternoon, will tour the wards, leave toys for the children, and fruit, books and other gifts for the other patients.
A collection of these gifts is being made at the ground where, until Wednesday, all contributions will be gratefully received.
Jottings from all parts
BY "SPECTATOR" 18 December 1948
An old Lancashire superstition went west a week ago.
For years Arthur Woodruff, the Burnley half-back, has taken the field as the last man in the Burnley team.
He has been known to loaf about in the tunnel from the dressing room for a minute or two to ensure that he should be last out of the passage.
He has always said that Burnley lost if he was anywhere except at the tail of the team.
Something went wrong on Saturday. He trotted into public view with a perceptible gap between himself and the man in front of him. Then, a few seconds later, to Mr. Woodruff’s manifest concern, two other Burnley players, who had been delayed en route, followed him.
That should have been a death sentence on Burnley in this match. Yet Burnley won 2-0.
It just shows you what all these old fables are worth - even, if the heresy can be pardoned, the playing of “Bananas” as Blackpool come on the field!
I THINK Burnley have avenged those wartime humiliations which Blackpool inflicted during the 1939-45 epoch.
Nearly every time the clubs met Burnley’s skeleton teams, recruited from here, there and everywhere, had to bow the knee and bite the dust when they met Blackpool’s all-star cast.
Between November 13, 1941, and March 21, 1942, there were three matches in this sequence.
Blackpool won the first 9-0, the second 13-0, the third 6-0. Jock Dodds had seven goals in the last two games.
Twenty-eight times in three matches Harry Holdcroft, the Preston goalkeeper, a Burnley guest during the war, went into the back of the net for the ball.
Now, since First Division football has been restored, Burnley have played three games with Blackpool, won the lot, and never allowed the Blackpool forwards to score once.
You may have to wait a long time in football, but invariably you get your own back.
IT was a good constructive speech which I heard Mr. Joe Smith, the Blackpool manager, give to the officials of the Blackpool and Preston boys’ teams last weekend after their match at Blackpool.
He praised them for their service to the younger generation of players, told them - a self-evident fact which is not always appreciated - that there would be no League stars tomorrow if there were no young footballers being trained today, "But,” he said, “in every boys’ match I see I notice that few of the players have yet learned to ‘trap’ ball.
They can do a lot with it once they have it under control, but they are not learning to bring it under control fast enough.”
Otherwise, Mr. Smith implied, these boys were as good as boys were in his own day, which, when you come to think of it, is quite a compliment.
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.
STILL scoring in Scotland: Ken Dawson, the left-wing forward who was Blackpool’s problem player when he came to the club from Falkirk in 1938 with a big scoring reputation and yet could not score at all in English football.
At the end of three months he asked in despair to be allowed to go home again, and Blackpool, generously losing a lot on the deal, transferred him back to Falkirk, where he immediately began scoring again.
Even today, 10 years later, ha is still hitting the net so often that one paper devoted a special article to him the other day,
***
I NOTICED in last weekend’s Cupties
That Murdoch McCormack, the ex-Blackpool forward, scored a goal for Crewe against Millwall in an Alexandra team which took the field without two Blackpool exiles, Bob Finan and Louis Cardwell.
That little Scunthorpe United who lost to Stockport County, were again captained by Geoff Barker, the former Villa and Huddersfield full-back, who was a Blackpool wartime guest.
That Stanley Mercer the St. Annes centre-forward, shot one of Mansfield Town’s two winning goals against Northampton Town in an extra-time tie.
That Tom Lyon, another former Blackpool forward, was again one of New Brighton’s stars in the goalless game with Bradford City.
ANOTHER centre-forward off Blackpool’s prospective list:
Andy Donaldson, the Newcastle reserve leader, who has cancelled his transfer request at St. James’s Park, is apparently content to act as Jackie Milburn’s understudy.
Blackpool made no direct approach to Newcastle for him but watched him once or twice, and would,
I think, have been prepared to offer big money for him.
ALL those notes which Mr. Cliff Britton took at Blackpool when Everton were beaten 3-0 in October - and he filled half a notebook - were not scribbled in vain.
Two days later Mr. Britton went back to Goodison Park to become manager of a club, in whose royal blue colours as a player he had achieved lasting fame. Week after week afterwards he instructed the Everton defence in a plan which would close all those gaps - or nearly all of them - which had been opening in it.
Everton had conceded 38 goals in 14 games. Today only four have been lost in the last seven.
So much for all those people who deride off-the-field plans, who made a joke of Colchester’s “M” plan in last season’s Cup-ties.
That formation, I know, was given such excessive publicity that it became a music-hall joke.
But I still prefer the planners to the casual “it’ll-be-all-right-on- the-day” apostles.
MR. GEORGE SHEARD’S stopwatch was in action again at Turf Moor a week ago, recording those lost minutes.
I am beginning to think that not so many are lost as the people who are advocating free-kicks instead of throws-in are asserting.
This was no classic at Burnley.
The ball seemed to be out of play nearly as often as it was in.
Yet according to the stop-watch there were 30 minutes’ football in the first half and 28 in the second.
In other words, the customers, who had paid for a game of an hour and a half, saw only 58 minutes. But nobody seemed inclined to complain - except the Blackpool visitors - and they were thinking less about the lost time than the lost match.
I MET one of football’s grandest sportsmen again at Turf Moor a week ago.
Mr. Tom Clegg has been serving Burnley for so many years - and so many of them, too, as chairman, that he has become almost an institution.
I made my first acquaintance with him in the days of long ago, before the war, when Burnley used to visit Cleveleys Hydro for pre-Cup training. Never have I met a man in football, unless it is his old friend, Mr. Harry Evans, the Blackpool chairman, who can be as gracious and uncomplaining in defeat, as unaffected by victory.
Mr. Clegg actually came climbing up those narrow stairs to the Turf Moor Press box a week ago to assure himself that the Press had everything they required for their comfort and for the transmission of their messages.
Why, I have met a few football directors who could not even tell you where the Press box was on their own grounds - who did not know and did not care, either, although they were a lot fonder of seeing their names in the papers than ever Tom Clegg has been.
SO-ALL THE BEST!
THE Blackpool Football Supporters’ Club extend Christmas greetings to the directors, players and officials of the parent club.
The ladies’ committee’s whist drive on Wednesday was a great success, and to all who helped thanks are extended.
Early in the New Year it is hoped to run another players’ snooker tournament. The semi-finals and final will, it is hoped, be open to the members.
Membership drive
JANUARY 1 is the date for the renewal of subscriptions.
The committee are going to make a great drive in the New Year. Will all old members please assist by sending their 2s. 6d. for renewal immediately?
The secretary, Mr. C. A. Hay, of 10, Swanage-avenue, will be pleased to send the receipt.
Every effort will be made to announce very shortly full details of any outings organised by the Supporters’ Club to the Cup-tie at Barnsley.
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