BLACKPOOL: Farm; Shimwell, Suart, Johnston, Hayward. Kelly, Matthews, Mortensen, McIntosh (W), McCall, Rickett.
SUNDERLAND: Mapson; Stelling, Ramsden, Watson, Hall, Wright, Duns, Robinson, Turnbull, Shackleton, Reynolds.
Referee: Mr. R. A. Mortimer (Huddersfield).
THE GAME
The turf was so thick in' mud and slime that Harry Johnston had to catch the coin when he tossed it instead of letting it fall to earth.
Sunderland won it, and Blackpool faced rain and wind after George Farm had been given a great reception in celebration of his Barnsley achievements as he stationed himself in the north goal.
Twice within the first three minutes Blackpool’s England wing was in the game, Mortensen, from Johnston’s square pass, shooting a rising ball which Mapson appeared to deflect against the bar as he leaped at it before Matthews raced inside and shot low into the goalkeeper’s arms.
Blackpool’s football was built on this sort of direct action in all the opening moves.
GOAL DISALLOWED
It was from such another raid that Willie McIntosh in the sixth minute celebrated a goal a little prematurely.
The new centre-forward and Rickett, with a fast exchange of passes, created one of those open spaces into which Matthews can run so fast. Into it the outside- right raced, crossed a ball which was half repelled and, ultimately, cannoning out to McIntosh, left the centre-forward in position to shoot a rising ball which hit the under-side of the bar and bounced down over the line.
Mr. Mortimer gave a goal, reversed his decision on Sunderland’s protests as the man on the east line lifted his flag, presumably for an offside decision.
Before and after this Sunderland were outplayed by a forward line which was cutting Sunderland’s defence to ribbons, fast passes giving Mortensen position to cross a centre so fast that it missed every man waiting for it.
So early in the match I had the impression that Blackpool were fielding two centre-forwards today -McIntosh and Mortensen - each as direct and aggressive as the other.
Centre after centre raked Sunderland’s goal from a Blackpool right wing where Matthews was being given a lot of unaccustomed freedom.
Nor was the other wing out of commission, Rickett once tearing in, beating Mapson in a race for the ball and under his own whirlwind momentum crossing it fast into the side net of an empty goal.
Nothing of comparable importance had happened near the Blackpool goal all this time until a free-kick was conceded a couple of yards outside the area, and Wright fobbed it wide.
FARM A SPECTATOR
Afterwards, Sunderland were not as outplayed as they had been, even if, with 15 minutes gone, there had not been a test for Farm, who merely stood in the rain as a spectator.
Two minutes later Blackpool took the lead with a peculiar goal - a goal which revealed what a good referee Mr. Mortimer is.
There was a raid down the centre. A pass hit, by was hit down, by a Sunderland full-back, This full-back’s defence waited for the whistle. Instead, with a Blackpool man in possession of the ball. Mr. Mortimer waved play on and, with the ball still in his possession, McCALL almost ambled towards the deserted Mapson before casually shooting it wide of the goalkeeper’s right hand
Even the inside-left seemed unprepared for the immediate decision that it was a goal, but as I saw it there was nothing wrong with it at all.
SUDDEN FURY
Sunderland retaliated in a sudden fury, winning a corner on the right and, for a time, pressing continuously, but still without reaching shooting range of Blackpool’s goal.
It was 2-0 in the 26th minute.
This time the new forward was in the goal, McIntosh taking a pass from the left and side-stepping it inside to MORTENSEN, who shot slowly but with perfect composure inside the far post for his 10th goal of the season.
This Blackpool forward line was not only scoring goals today, but always seemed to be threatening to score them every time it pitted itself against a crumpling Sunderland defence.
Two nil in 26 minutes, and this against a team which until this match had not lost a goal at Blackpool since the war.
That showed that something had happened to a Blackpool forward line which did not have a lot of the ball for a long time afterwards, but still was menacing in every raid.
FARM SAVES
It was exactly 33 minutes before Farm was in the match with a big clearance. Then he fell full length to reach and hold a ball shot fast and wide of him by little Reynolds, the man who wears the smallest boots in present-day football, but who obviously packs a punch in at least one of then!
It was nearly all one-way traffic on to Blackpool’s goal in the closing minutes of the half, although an one breakaway, which ended in McIntosh out for the count Mortensen chased a ball half the length of the field, outpaced the full-back chasing him, and finished with a shot which shook the side net. McIntosh was led off limping before the game began again.
TEN MEN
Blackpool finished the half with 10 men and, in the last minute of the half nearly lost a goal as Duns raced away from Suart, crossed a ball which Turnbull headed in fast for Farm to make a great clearance.
Halftime: Blackpool 2, Sunderland 0.
SECOND HALF
Blackpool came back with McIntosh, his right leg bandaged, in the centre of the forward line again.
In the first two minutes of the half, after Sunderland’s opening raids had been repulsed. Mapson punched out Rickett’s centre superbly with two Blackpool forwards racing in on him
Three minutes later Sunderland made it 2-1 with a good snap goal, Turnbull enticing two men out of position before gliding forward a pass which ROBINSON took in the open space and cracked fast and low of the diving Farm’s right arm.
Sunderland were no longer out of this match, were definitely in it, playing football which their forwards had never approached in the first half hour.
Yet five minutes after Sunderland’s goal Blackpool should have been two goals in front again. McIntosh accepted a forward pass, hesitated as if waiting for the offside whistle, raced forward and in the next second was down in the mud from a tackle for which there could have been no other punishment than a penalty.
MORTENSEN FAILS
Mortensen, who has scored three penalty goals this season, took it, shot fast but straight at Mapson who held the ball on his line and was almost chivalrously allowed to clear it by the inside-right as he raced in.
Two minutes later, in the 12th minute of the half, Sunderland were level and a price had to be paid for this penalty failure.
It was a goal in two fast moves - a pass put to Duns, a low raking centre and REYNOLDS, racing in from the other wing, to stab the ball low in the net before a scattered Blackpool defence could position a man on him.
This was a great comeback by a team who for long periods had never been in the game before halftime.
SUART’S CLEARANCES
It might have been 3-2 for Blackpool inside another three minutes if McCall had not skidded in the mud and lost the ball within open shooting range of Mapson, although near the other goal Suart had to make two great clearances with Sunderland’s front-line racing again into the shooting positions which this line had never won earlier.
Twenty minutes left and the game was still open with Blackpool raiding desperately to retrieve a position which had been so unexpectedly lost.
SMOKE SCREEN
Fifteen minutes left and the game, for all practical purposes was entirely lost to the spectators on the west stand as an engine behind the stand released a smoke screen as thick as a London fog.
Out of this murk Sunderland appeared to be raiding repeatedly.
Then, out of it at the other end, with exactly 15 minutes left, Matthews raced away from one man, outpaced another, left a third standing, and from the line crossed a ball which MORTENSEN, leaping high to meet it, headed almost out of Mapson's clutching hands.
Another minute and McIntosh hurled himself after a forward pass and appeared to hit with a thunderbolt of a shot the Sunderland wing-half, Watson who, before the corner could be taken as the ball cannoned off him, had to be carried stunned off the field.
REFEREE WITHOUT COAT
While the trainers attended to him he was pillowed on Mr. Mortimer’s coat, the referee spending the next couple of minutes racing about the field in an immaculate white shirt.
Watson returned, and with the teams at full strength again Blackpool, in possession of the game once more, raided almost continuously.
Five minutes were left and in this topsy-turvy game Sunderland made it 3-3.
It was a remarkable goal which put the teams level again, SHACKLETON taking a forward pass, racing on for 30 yards and, in the end, lobbing over Farm’s head a ball which fell in the mud and crawled in slow motion just inside the far post.
Result:
BLACKPOOL 3 (McCall 18, Mortensen 26, 75 mins)
SUNDERLAND 3 (Robinson 50, Reynolds 57, Shackleton 85 mins)
NEXT WEEK: Into the Wolves’ den will go Blackpool next Saturday
A GROUND in the Midlands called Molineux Park may be a happy hunting ground for Wolves, but not for anybody else.
Blackpool are there next weekend. This will be Blackpool’s third visit since the war, and if Blackpool win it will be the first time for longer than that.
Last year the Wanderer’s centre-half considerately put the ball past his own goalkeeper before Johnny Hancocks shot one of his specialities away from Joe Robinson - the first goal this goalkeeper had surrendered after his introduction to the Blackpool first team.
A year earlier the Wanderers graciously permitted Blackpool to be in front at half-time, but then scored three goals in a quarter of an hour to win 3-1.
This season, admittedly, this team that Mr. Ted Vizard, of the old firm of Smith and Vizard, built and which is now being managed by Stanley Cullis, the ex- England centre-half, has been subject to a number of unexpected fadeouts.
One of them was at Villa Park on Boxing Day when the Villa won 5-1 before losing 2-5 to Blackpool five days later.
Working on those two results, Blackpool have a chance, a big chance, at Wolverhampton next weekend, even against a forward
line which is probably the fastest in the country.
But I still count it as one of Blackpool’s big tests, and if Blackpool come home richer in points than when they left it will be one of the big achievements of the season.
The Wolves won 3-1 at Blackpool last September, but that was one of those games when Blackpool fielded an under-strength team and strictly should not count. It was chiefly notable for the fact that in it Stanley Matthews scored his first goal for a year.
YES, WILLIE McINTOSH IS ENTITLED TO FAIR PLAY
By “Spectator”
I HAVE BEEN GIVEN OR GIVEN MYSELF SOME STRANGE ASSIGNMENTS DURING THE YEARS l HAVE BEEN REPORTING BLACKPOOL FOOTBALL.
Once I searched South Shore for three days - and nearly three nights for a Blackpool full-back, Jack O’Donnell.
After falling asleep in the cook’s galley of a Fleetwood trawler he was taken out to the Iceland fishing grounds for a fortnight.
I went searching for him when he returned from this remarkable odyssey. The Scarlet Pimpernel had nothing on Mr. O’Donnell during those three days.
Once, too, early in the war, when a team came to Blackpool with only 10 men, I met a young man outside the ground who affirmed that he had played for Sheffield Wednesday and Aston Villa, and on this uncorroborated testimony and my recommendation was given a game as the visitors’ centre-forward.
Blackpool won by a mile, and my centre-forward may once have had a kick at the ball, but if he had I missed it. I always considered that I should have come in on Blackpool’s winning bonus that day!
Yes, I have had a few peculiar commissions.
Spate of letters
BUT this week I have the most peculiar of them all, for I am briefing myself as counsel for the defence of a player who has not yet, at the time of writing played a game in Blackpool’s first team. That, I think, is the unmentionable limit. Yet it has to be done.
Ever since the news of the signing of William McIntosh was announced 10 days ago I have had letters in the mail by every post condemning this Scottish forward in advance.
The spate was reduced a little, but only a little, after he had scored a couple of goals for the second team at Blackpool a week ago, but still the question was asked, “Why have Blackpool signed him?”
Given a chance
TOM GARRETT, who may still be destined to make his name as a full-back and as nothing else, was given the problem position almost in desperation at Huddersfield after scoring a couple of goals in the Central League match at Leeds-road two days earlier.
Some people say he was a failure. Others - and Manager Joe Smith is among them -say that there was sufficient promise in his game to warrant another trial, and that in any case on a ground frozen and offering no foothold it was impossible to reach a considered judgment on him.
It is conceivable that he may solve the problem - for a time. Too many of these men converted into centre-forwards rise and shine and fade out again. One has only to quote the case of Malcolm Barrass at Bolton this season. There are dozens of others. Garrett may be the exception. It is time he was in First Division football somewhere.
Yet, whatever their future, these men serve a purpose, and such a purpose Garrett may yet serve at Blackpool. But if that happens it can only be a compromise. The Blackpool attack’s recent failures will not be remedied by one man, whether his name is Tom Garrett or Stanley Mortensen.
"Dumping ground"
I SELECT one letter from a dozen or two.
“Why. and for how long,” asks “Martonian,” is Blackpool to be the dumping ground of Preston players who cannot get a place in Preston’s team?” and, at the end of a little archaeological research, lists as “North End rejects” George Harrison, Bob Crawford, Frank and Hugh O’Donnell, and Jim McIntosh.
Strange that he should forget Alec Reid.
“ And now,” he concludes, “there’s Willie McIntosh.”
Still, this writer, in his own phrase, wishes the club in spite of this indictment all the best in 1949,” and, I agree, is entitled, as this is a free - or a fairly free - country to these opinions.
Is it fair?
BUT is he - and are scores who think as he thinks - being fair to Blackpool in general and to Willie McIntosh in particular?
George Harrison and Alec Reid were both signed by Blackpool when each was in the autumn, if not the early-winter, of his days, but those were times - the early '30’s - when the Blackpool directorate had to ask itself, whenever it contemplated an excursion into the transfer market, “ But what do we use for money?”
Bob Crawford was no reject. He came to Blackpool directly out of Preston’s first team with an unknown sequence of League appearances which he continued by playing 47 successive games for Blackpool’s first team from the day of his signing, September 17, 1932, until October 21, 1933.
And he was in and out of the Second Division eleven for the rest of the 1933-34 season.
Good return
NOW whatever Crawford cost - and it could not have been a lot - he was not an unproductive investment.
Nor was Frank O’Donnell. He reigned only a short time at Blackpool, but the £10,500 which the Villa paid for him enabled Blackpool to go into the market a month or two later and sign Jock Dodds from Sheffield United.
Hugh O’Donnell cost only a chicken-feed fee, and yet he was considered good enough to play in the last 13 prewar games of the Blackpool First Division team.
And, whatever may be said for or against Jim McIntosh, nobody can dispute that in his younger days at Blackpool he was one of the best young prospects in the club’s history - although I admit that this fact is immaterial to the present argument - and that since he came back he has given a service to Blackpool which too many people are too ungracious to acknowledge.
Record score
HE was leader of the Blackpool forwards in all the Cupties until the Final last season scoring five goals en-route to the Wembley where he never played, and a week after the Final he created a First Division record for Blackpool by scoring five goals on the ground of the club which, in the critics’ own phrase, had rejected him.
And there is a total of 25 goals entered to his name in the First Division since the war. So, if Jim McIntosh was a Deepdale reject, it would not be such a bad policy to sign a few others.
For what is a “reject”? It is not such a polite term in any case. If it is a player who is not in his club’s first team, nine out of every 10 men who are moving about the transfer market today
and at some fancy fees, too - should be given this designation.
Figures prove
FACTS and figures could establish that from First Division clubs with which we are concerned - scarcely a player has been transferred this season who was playing regularly for a first team.
Such men have been exchanged for other players, but not transferred. Blackpool could long ago have acquired a first-class centre-forward on those terms, could - if you want to know - have had Middlesbrough’s consent months ago to approach Wilf Mannion in an exchange for Stanley Mortensen.
It is only a few weeks ago that Blackpool offered three men for one Second Division centre- forward. In the end Blackpool had to buy, and Manager Joe Smith went to Deepdale and paid a big fee for Willie McIntosh, and the only reaction in certain quarters was “What, another man Preston don’t want!”
May be the man
IT is unjust to Blackpool. It is more unjust to the player - so unjust that today I am having to ask for fair play for a man before ever he has worn a tangerine jersey in a First Division game.
I can only hope that Willie McIntosh will soon silence his critics, if not today, then before many weeks have passed. For he may be the centre-forward Blackpool have been wanting for months.
In his first season in England two years ago, this Scot who played for St. Johnstone and was a Glasgow Rangers guest during the war scored 30 League and Cup goals for Preston.
I suspect that the policy at Deepdale since that time has been to remodel his game, to curb his natural aggressiveness. If he can begin all over again, as the direct, straight-for-goal forward he was when he left Scotland, he may be the man for a line which has had no such raider in it to complete its constructive, midfield football.
I hope he is. But whether he is or not he should at least be given the chance to show what he can do. Willie McIntosh has one answer to his critics - and I hope he has it in him to give it them.
Jottings from all parts
BY "SPECTATOR" 15 January 1949
Barnsley - and all that - "Spectator" dips into his Oakwell.....
and finds some Cuptie stories
THE last Cuptie was the Wembley classic in April. This - Barnsley v Blackpool - was one of 32, no headline match. Yet it still made news had in it names that people talk about.
There was Mr. Sam Gaskin, former Clifton Hotel manager in Blackpool in his working hours, always a football fan in his leisure hours, whose hotel in Manchester these days has become one of the game’s headquarters in the north.
Blackpool had tea there en-route to Barnsley, learned that three of the Cup teams were in residence - Charlton Athletic, Bournemouth, and Hull City.
Everybody was soon asking “Is Willie Buchan here?” - the Scot who went to Hull from Blackpool last season and this Cup weekend of 1949 scored one of the goals that beat the Rovers at Blackburn.
Jimmy’s way
AND How’s Jimmy Blair?” they asked. He is, so I told the same old Jimmy, such a grand footballer and always pretending to be so casual about it.
When, later in the day, the rest of the Bournemouth team went to a pantomime in Manchester, Jimmy went to bed. People who did not know him were surprised.
This was often his practice when he was away with Blackpool - and yet he would always have you think that it was of sublime indifference to him whether he played in a match or watched it.
They tell all sorts of tales of Jimmy Blair’s eccentricities. He spent one weekend I had with him in London dressed in a black flying suit.
He said it was cold, which it was, and he said a flying suit with a high fur collar was warm, which was no less indisputable.
That it was not strictly conventional concerned him not at all.
Latest story they tell of him - but this, I suspect, is fictional - is that he arrived at the Bournemouth ground a week or two ago, five minutes before the kick-off, riding a horse.
No, not even Jimmy would do that. They say, too, that on his day he is still one of the finest inside-lefts in football. That I can accept.
Mr. Downes
ONE of the first visitors to Blackpool’s hotel was a quiet, self-effacing gentleman who asked if he might have a word with Mr. Harry Evans, the Blackpool chairman, and Manager Joe Smith.
He introduced himself. He was called Mr. Richard Downes. You knew him as Dicky Downes, one of the great full-backs of all time, back in the Barnsley where he made his name, working these days as a caretaker at a factory which was making munitions in the last of the wars which were to end all wars.
He is a man charming and unassuming. He has forgotten his old glory. Football never will.
At the panto
TO the Barnsley pantomime to hear the worst joke I heard all the weekend. Said the comic: “I thought I’d never get a ticket for tomorrow’s Cup-tie - but Mr. Angus Seed to it!” Dear! dear!
After the pantomime I heard the best joke. It concerned Gordon Pallister, the Barnsley captain and left back.
Said Gordon, who had the unenviable assignment of watching Stanley Matthews the following day, when informed that the news-reel cameras would be at the match: “Well, if I never see Stan, on the field, at least I’ll see him on the pictures.”
That’s the sort of footballer they’re breeding in Barnsley these days. There are no delicate aesthetes among them. They still tear into a match like wolves falling on their prey. It’s part of the Barnsley tradition.
But there are no mean little ankle-tappers among them. They give no quarter, but they ask for none, and when they are beaten they don’t whine.
***
The cake
THERE was no whining in the boardroom after the match.
Instead, Mr. Angus Seed, the Barnsley manager - who can never have heard that joke or he would have taken to his bed! - made no ceremony of it, but quietly presented to the Blackpool delegation a cake iced in Barnsley’s red and white which had been made for Oakwell’s guests, win, draw or lose.
Oh, those boys!
AND before the match there had been the mascots, ‘Atomic Boys.’ This is assuredly the craziest gang in football.
Other mascots are content to parade up and down a cinder track, blowing bugles, beating drums.
These men disdain such conventional conduct. Half of them seem to be accomplished acrobats. One of them plays a one-man football match which is in the Sid Field manner. And no other gang has ever conscripted a duck into its service.
This duck made his first appearance at Blackpool on Christmas Day when it waddled about in front of the Blackpool team as it took the field.
For Barnsley its tail feathers had been dyed tangerine, and every time it rose from the grass after taking a rest there was an orange beneath it - as if it had laid a tangerine egg!
Everybody seemed to think this was a riot - including the duck, which at this rate will soon rivalling Mr. Walt Disneys Donald as a national celebrity.
Good temper
THIS was essentially a good- natured match, even if no punches were pulled on or off the field.
A couple of hours before the kick-off there was a scene in Barnsley’s main street which might have had unfortunate consequences, if everybody had not been in such an amiable temper.
Down the street came half a dozen Blackpool fans bearing a cardboard coffin inscribed, “Barnsley FC, RIP, January 8, 1949.”
Up surged a pack of Barnsley adherents. The coffin fell to the pavement. On it one Barnsley man danced and flattened it out.
It all ended with everybody shaking hands with everybody else.
A FEW other flashbacks:
Mr. Harry Evans, a brown-paper parcel under his arm, boarding the coach at Blackpool and indicating the parcel, saying “I hope they've to throw this into the incinerator.”
What was in the parcel? The tickets printed in advance in case there was a replay.
Nobody, I think, wanted a second match, although a draw to either team - whatever they might have said before the match - was infinitely preferable to a defeat.
George Farm, gravely accepting all the praise which was deservedly given him for his three master saves in the second half, just saying “Thank you” and looking almost embarrassed about it.
Nearly all the good footballers - and cricketers, too - whom I know are so modest.
Alec Munro, never uttering a word of complaint when told less than a couple of hours before the kick-off that he would not be playing. And nearly all of them are good sportsmen, too.
Still a back
THE grand 10 minutes Tom Garrett had when he went back into the full-back position. He will play anywhere, but he is still before everything else a fullback and in those dying minutes of the game proved it.
Somebody saying “I bet Allan Ure’s happy tonight.”
For the second year in succession the team which the ex-Blackpool trainer puts in the field had caused one of the day’s sensations. Last year it was Arsenal out at Highbury. This time Bradford won at Newcastle.
Just another football weekend - but there’s always something about a Cuptie which makes it that little bit different.
100-MILE HITCH-HIKE FOR STANLEY’S AUTOGRAPH
TWO young ATC cadets from Dudley (Worcestershire), who hitch-hiked 100 miles from their home town to Blackpool last night to get Stanley Matthews’ autograph as part of an ATC enterprise test, will start the return journey tonight with a big story to tell their pals.
They are 18-year-old Cadet Sergt. R. Hale, of Ivanhoe-street, Dudley, and Cpl. G. Costings, aged 17, of Parkhead-road. Dudley.
Today their football idol not only gave them his autograph but insisted that the two should stay for some food and a rest at his South Promenade hotel and afterwards watch the Blackpool v Sunderland match as his guests.
This was the story of their trip as told by Corporal Costings to an “Evening Gazette" reporter.
“Our first lift was in a newspaper van from Dudley to Wolverhampton at eight o’clock last night.” he said.
“Then we had a four-mile trudge to the outskirts of Wolverhampton before getting a ‘hitch’ in a lorry to Stafford.”
Another walk of about a mile was followed by a lift nearly to Manchester and this time, having got on the wrong road, the boys had to redouble their tracks to Lymm (Cheshire), where they got the Warrington-Blackpool road.
“Then we had another walk of about eight miles, got a lift to Garstang, and from there hitched’ our way into Black pool,” he added.
AND NOW FOR STOKE!
AGAIN Blackpool fans are to be denied a Cuptie at Bloomfield-road.
After the victory at Barnsley we hoped for a home draw. A visit to Stoke is a tough proposition, but the team will not lack support.
Announcements will be made in a short time about the travel arrangements by rail and bus made by the Supporters’ Club, and it is hoped to secure an allocation of tickets from the club for members.
Congratulations to Stanley Mortensen on scoring the goal at Barnsley. He has now scored in every Cuptie since the defeat at Sheffield by the Wednesday in 1947.
Good wishes, too, to Tommy Buchan, who was married on Monday
Monday’s dance
THE ladies are holding a whist drive and dance on Monday at the Albert Hall.
Old members are asked to renew their subscriptions to the club by sending their 2s. 6d. to Mr. C. A. Hay, 10, Swanage-avenue, Blackpool, or calling at the Supporters’ Club hut at the ground before or after any match.
Your assistance will save us the trouble of writing to ask for the subscription.
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