WOLVERHAMPTON WANDERERS: Williams; Kelly, (L), Pritchard; Crook (W), Shorthouse, Wright. Hancocks, Smyth, Pye, Dunn (J), Mullen.
BLACKPOOL: Farm: Shimwell, Suart, Johnston, Hayward, Kelly (H), Matthews, Mortensen, Garrett, McCall, Rickett.
Referee: Mr. J. Briggs (Cheadle).
THE GAME
Blackpool, who played in white, had whatever little aid the wind offered when Harry Johnston won the toss.
The Wanderers were in Blackpool’s offside trap in the first 10 seconds, but raided continuously afterwards, Shimwell making a couple of fine clearances on a left wing, which eventually escaped and had to be halted by Hayward crossing to the exposed flank.
This Wolverhampton left wing was constantly in the game as the Wanderers continued to attack almost without interruption, and at the great pace at which these Wolverhampton teams always play.
HOOKED WIDE
Rickett hooked the ball high and wide after Johnston’s long throw and Mortensen’s pass had given him the first scoring position which had offered itself to a Blackpool forward.
Shimwell’s long, confident clearances featured these opening minutes which, in spite of the game’s speed, were more or less eventless.
Hugh Kelly cleared a Billy Wright free kick in the sixth minute, and in the next Blackpool should have gone in front.
Johnston hurled from the line a ball which fell into the Wanderers’ goalmouth where Mortensen, standing almost under the bar and apparently as surprised as everybody else by the length of the throw, missed the bounce of the ball and a goal with it.
That was a big escape for the Wanderers who would have celebrated it by snatching the lead two minutes later if Hugh Kelly had not headed away Mullen’s Jong centre with three men waiting for it in scoring positions Still, Blackpool were no longer being outplayed. McCall shot a long way wide in one raid in a accession of raids which were all being built without the aid of Stanley Matthews who, at the end of 10 minutes, had, scarcely had a pass, and when at last he was given one had the ball taken away from him by Pritchard to a cheer which you could have heard half a mile away.
In the next minute the Wanderers were near the lead again as the ball, cannoning twice, at last reached Pye who shot it at Farm and appeared to hit the goalkeeper’s knees as the Scot in Blackpool’s goal came out in desperation to meet him.
The Wanderers were storming to the attack again with 20 minutes gone - storming in mass formation.
Twice Hancocks raced inside on the right wing before crossing menacing centres which Hayward and Johnston in succession headed out. Then, on the left wing, Dunn preferred to head the ball out to his partner when he could and should have shot with 50,000 people expressing profound disapproval. . .
All the passes to Garrett were sailing through the air, and five out of every six the shadowing Shorthouse cleared.
Yet Blackpool, in one fast five-minute spurt of pressure, were three times near a, goal, At the end of the first raid Garrett leaded backwards into Williams’ hands. The second finished with Rickett shooting a rising, swerving ball which the Wanderers’ goalkeeper held magnificently as he re 11 to his left,
The third raid, with the Wanderers’ defence appearing at times to be all at sea, ended in Garrett heading to his left a ball which Mortensen, catapulting at it, brushed inches wide of a post.
HIT A POST
Except when Hancocks cut inside and hit the outside of a post with a thunderbolt of a shot. Blackpool were playing football which was repeatedly stampeding the Wanderers’ curiously excitable defence.
In the end this defence lost a goal in the 31st minute, and lost it because it took the line of least resistance against one raiding forward.
The forward was Mortensen. On a zigzag course he raced into a mass of men, passed two of them and fell in a heap under the ruthless tackle of the third.
Nobody disputed the free-kick which Mr. Briggs gave half a dozen yards outside the penalty area. SHIMWELL was called up to take it, shot fast and low a ball which passed Williams left hand as the goalkeeper, probably unsighted, fell to it.
It was the Blackpool full back’s first goal since his penalty at Wembley. It gave Blackpool a lead which was not undeserved None of the fire but a lot of the order went out of the Wanderers’ football after this goal.
Minutes of pressure produced only a free kick, conceded by Shimwell almost on the penalty area line, which Mullen thundered wide of a post. Otherwise the Blackpool defence was as firm as, under pressure, the Wanderers seemed inclined to panic.
VIGILANT FARM
The only time, as the interval approached, that the Wanderers appeared near a goal was when Suart took a clearance, hit Hayward and the ball bounced back into the vigilant Farm’s hands.
Blackpool were nearer a goal with six minutes of the half remaining, Rickett hooking wide one of Matthews’ perfect centres at a pace which left Williams standing and watching.
Blackpool’s little outside-left was shooting again in the next minute, shooting from Mortensen’s pass a ball which Williams held brilliantly as it rocketed at him.
All the time until the interval Blackpool’s football was good to watch - fast and direct with the ball often ranging from wing to wing.
Whatever command the Wanderers had ever established was waning and had been almost lost when the half-time whistle went.
Halftime: Wolverhampton Wanderers 0 Blackpool 1.
SECOND HALF
The Wanderers went off as if Intent on hammering Blackpool to a standstill in the early minutes.
It is the Wolves’ old technique and it nearly came off. Twice Farm was in action, beating out centres which were curling in from the left wing inside the far post before, in the fourth minute of the half, Blackpool were fortunate not to lose a goal.
It all prefaced a corner - the Wanderers’ first of the match.
The kick was repelled, cannoned about from man to man and, in the end, reached Hancocks who, racing with it, hit a ball which cracked against the face of a post and must nearly have splintered it.
On and on in shock raids the Wanderers stormed. Mullen shot wide before two corners were won in a minute under such hurricane pressure as the Blackpool defence has not faced for a long time.
WHIRLWIND
Both inside forwards were called back to repel this whirlwind which, however, continued to rage until, with 10 minutes of the half gene it began to subside almost I should think; under its own momentum.
Farm made one great diving clearance as the ball came in fast at him off Suart’s head.
A minute later Kelly went down in a tackle, limped out of the game and a minute later hobbled back at outside-left.
Still the Wanderers raided, even if it was not the blitz it had been. After 10 minutes as a wing forward Kelly became a half-back again - a half-back in a team which now was not only facing an aggressive forward line but rain, too.
With 25 minutes of the half gone it was still almost one-way traffic on Blackpool’s goal.
FADE-OUT
Tool's forwards make little headway
Now and again there was a Blackpool breakaway, but it was infrequent. When at last Garrett went after a forward pass the offside whistle halted him.
The Blackpool forward line could make little progress and it was a half-back Johnston, who at last called Williams into action with a rising curling shot which the goalkeeper held near a post.
Yet a minute later a long pass by Mortensen enabled Matthews to win a corner and, for a while, the Wanderers were in retreat for the first time in the half.
That did not last long. Soon the old story of a forward line hurling itself in vain on a defiant defence was being told again.
Fifteen minutes were left and Matthews sent Rickett away with a peach of a pass which the outside-left shot into the side net.
WANDERERS LEVEL
Another minute and the Wanderers scored the goal which had seemed inevitable all this half.
There was a raid on the left, built by England’s Billy Wright - a swift exchange of passes - a long low centre by Mullen, and PYE, who was in position for it, shot low inches inside a post as Farm, unsighted, fell full length to his left at it.
It was a grand goal and nobody could say that the Wanderers did not deserve it.
All out for a goal to win the game the Wolves went afterwards, with little Johnny Hancocks, the man with the thunderbolt shot, in the centre.
Four minutes were left and Blackpool’s great rearguard action was all in vain as DUNN took a forward pass in one of the few open spaces which a battered defence had left all the half, raced on unchallenged, steadied himself as he passed the penalty area line, and shot a great goal to win the game for the Wanderers.
Result:
WOLVERHAMPTON WANDERERS 2 (Pye 76, Dunn 86 mins)
BLACKPOOL 1 (Shimwell 31 mins)
NEXT WEEK: STOKE CONFIDENT IF THEY CAN HOLD THE TWO "STANLEYS” MENACE
NO sporting event for very - many years has made so profound an impression on North Staffordshire as Stoke City’s home FA Cuptie with Blackpool next Saturday, writes our Stoke-on-Trent. football correspondent.
It is quite the biggest thing that could have happened to Potteries’ soccer, for, apart from the clash of these traditional rivals in the most glamorous of all football tournaments, the virtual homecoming of Blackpool’s Stoke-born and reared Stanley Matthews - still a local idol - supercharges No. 1 talking point.
Two queries posed every minute of every day are:-
Can Stoke City make the grade to the fifth round?
Have Stoke an effective answer to the Matthews-Mortensen right wing?
The Potteries’ club’s attitude is that it would be more logical - and certainly more pertinent - to reverse the queries. They feel that if they can satisfy themselves on the second point, the first point will automatically sort itself out satisfactorily.
Stoke, however, are not making the error of viewing Blackpool as a two-man team.
They place Matthews and Mortensen at the head of their danger list, and confidently consider that if these acknowledged specialists can be controlled victory will be just around the corner.
Normal style
Have Stoke a plan for meeting this Matthews-Mortensen menace? Manager Bob McGrory rejects all suggestions of special tactics and prearranged plans.
“Stoke,” he says, “ will keep to their normal style and shun any fancy schemes. We are a good football side, and, if our play comes up to general standard, we should get through the round.”
Stoke rate Mortensen as a bigger problem than Matthews, and it is certain that left-half John Sellars will make the mercurial inside-right his special Cuptie target
A surprise may be sprung in regard to the choice of left-back to oppose Matthews. Co-candidate with McCue, the normal choice, will be reserve team left-back Harry Meakin, who had two successful matches against Matthews last season
Apart from this possible move, plus the return of Mould to right-back after injury, Stoke’s team will be the usual line-up
It is a side which on form must be given a shade of odds fancy, especially on the basis of Stoke’s home performances this season.
In League games, only two teams have won at the Victoria ground this term - Portsmouth and Manchester City - and Charlton are the sole side to have drawn.
Stoke have also done well in the goal-scoring line, with 30 against 16 in 13 home games - Blackpool’s defence will have to find a few answers to this slick Stoke attack, not overlooking the scoring records of inside-right Frank Bowyer - 18 goals up to today - and centre-forward Fred Steele - 14 up, and playing as well as at any stage of his career.
The half-back service of Neil Franklin and company is another potent factor which brightens Stoke’s prospects, but when all is weighed and paid for this spectacular clash is as unpredictable as any of the fourth round ties.
May the better team win. Stoke think they will - in spite of Matthews and Mortensen.
STAKES ARE HIGH AT STOKE
Cup win can avert a Blackpool anti-climax
By “Spectator”
WHO’S GOING TO WIN IN THE CUPTIE AT STOKE NEXT WEEKEND?
I have been called a defeatist and in certain quarters almost ostracised because I wrote immediately after the fourth round draw that the City were one of the best teams in the country.
I actually wrote that in the circumstances it was conceivable that Blackpool might lose on a ground where 10 visiting First Division teams have already lost this season.
To hear some people talk I might have been a second Haw-Haw, guilty of high treason, for recording these two simple facts.
For it is a fact that the City are a good team, must be a good team and at home are, according to the First Division chart, about the best team in the land.
So why adopt the posture of the ostrich, which is not a very elegant posture in any case, bury your skull in the sand, and say that next weekend Blackpool cannot lose?
Which is what a lot of people are saying.
Changing opinion
TALK about the weathercock of public opinion.
All these folk - or nearly all of them - who are chattering blithely about Blackpool winning at Stoke in a canter were as recently as Christmas asserting that Blackpool were heading for the last relegation round-up.
It must, I suppose, be Cup fever, which often causes high temperatures and induces a mild delirium in a few of the patients.
Now I am not saying - or have ever said - that Blackpool will lose. Blackpool could win not only on the principle that anything can happen in a Cuptie, but because Blackpool can still play football away from home that people who have seen the team only in the home games simply will not credit. The Victoria Ground, too, is one of those big grounds where invariably Blackpool play their best games.
Another classic?
STANLEY MATTHEWS, in a familiar environment, playing in front of a public that once idolised him and will again be expecting - or should it be fearing? - one of his classic games, could turn the scale as he turned it when the City were at Blackpool last month and he showed his old team what a master he still can be.
There will be Willie McIntosh, in addition, leading the Blackpool forwards, and all that this new forward can mean to the Blackpool front line was revealed in his first half-hour against Sunderland. He may be the man who is destined to cross all those “t’s ” and dot all those “i’s ” which have been left uncrossed and without a dot on them in recent months.
The Scot himself was not as satisfied with his game as nearly everybody else seemed to have been in the Sunderland match.
New man keen
“IT’LL take a little time,” he said, “to settle down, to accustom myself to Blackpool’s formation. The ball was coming to me in this first match as it has not come for months at Preston. But I think I’ll soon fit in.”
McIntosh’s presence could make a lot of difference at Stoke, for he is a player intent on making good with his new club, who has come to Blackpool consumed .by an almost fierce impatience to prove to the Deep- dale people that he should never have been discarded by them.
At a time this week when they were shaking their heads in the dressing room about the knee he twisted in a tackle in the first half of last week’s match, he was asserting “Why, I’ll be fit for Wolverhampton - there’s nothing so certain.”
He refused to contemplate the prospect of missing even one match for his new club.
Beyond price
THESE are the men every club wants. These are the men, too, who are beyond price - yes even the price which Blackpool paid in this case - in the hurly-burly cockpit of the Cup.
So Blackpool can win, even with Neil Franklin marshalling the Stoke defence, as for years he has marshalled England’s, and Freddie Steele, the centre-forward who threatens to go on for ever and in the process nearly always scores against Blackpool, and the new ace marksman, Frank Bowyer - and one or two others in a Stoke team not glittering with big names but a team in the sense that Manchester United are a team.
And, I repeat, I never said they couldn’t.
But what I did say, and what I repeat, is that it would be suicidal for Blackpool to enter the match thinking it is to be anything except the major task it assuredly will be.
The danger
IF ever the facile optimism which is raging for some inexplicable reason in the town is ever allowed to infect the team the consequences may be unfortunate.
Not that I think they will be allowed to - not with such an old Cup warrior as Manager Joe Smith on the premises.
His first reaction when he heard of the draw was “It’ll be a tough match - you bet it will.” And he has not amended that opinion. He will tell his men to go out and win a match which has excited Blackpool as I have not known the town excited about a game of football since Wembley.
He’ll tell them
HE will send them out a confident team, too, for I know no man in football who can persuade a team that it can win a match with greater conviction than the Blackpool manager can summon, and without trotting out all the old platitudes which mean precisely nothing at all.
But he will impress his men with the magnitude of the task and not be guilty of all those you-can’t-lose sentiments which have been circulating in the town in recent times.
There are big stakes on the table for Blackpool in the Potteries next weekend.
It is not merely that it is always better to remain in the Cup than to be dismissed from it, but in Blackpool’s present League position, which is outside the championship race and not menaced by relegation, there would not be a lot left for the remainder of the season if the club were to take a knock-out in' the Cup.
Wembley glamour
A BLACKPOOL public that lived gloriously on the glamour, of Wembley last season and has now worked itself up into a similar grand passion again would find three months shorn of all these excitements no end of an anti-climax.
It would be like sitting down to snoek after a dinner in Dublin. And nobody seems to be all that fond of snoek, except Dr. Summerskill, and she lives neither in Blackpool nor Stoke.
Blackpool can escape this fate by winning this match. But all those people who say that it’s won already know little about football or else have decided that it’s nice to be an ostrich sometimes.
WANTED - A PENALTY EXPERT
NOW who takes the penalties for Blackpool? Not Stanley Mortensen again, I think, after his failure in the Sunderland match.
Blackpool have been awarded seven penalties this season.
Eddie Shimwell, the first full - back ever to score a penalty at Wembley, missed the first in the opening five minutes of this season's first match.
Since then Billy Wardle has converted one and Mortensen has shot three and missed two.
Now, I suppose, somebody else will have to be nominated for the task of shooting a ball past a motionless goalkeeper from 12 yards, which ought to be simple but, on these figures, scarcely seems to be.
Solution appears to be to put one man into intensive practice to copy the slow- rolling technique of Peter Doherty and Willie Buchan. It’s not infallible, but it's near enough.
Jottings from all parts
BY "SPECTATOR" 22 January 1949
HIT "PEAK" FORM
SO BLACKPOOL have gone away this week into new quarters. “It’s not special training,” says Manager Joe Smith. “It’s just a rest.” That, I know, is all it is.
It was different before the war. Blackpool teams went for weeks at a time to Cleveleys Hydro whenever a crisis was threatening in the club’s affairs, which was about once every two or three months.
They went, too, to Derbyshire, where the men have spent four days this week, and up to the north-east coast.
Other teams came to Blackpool to take the town’s famous dustless breezes. Blackpool fled from them as if they were the plague.
And it was seldom that these migrations served their purpose. Why, once after a week at Redcar, Blackpool went to Southport for a Cuptie and lost to a Third Division team.
It was, in fact, seldom that this special training, as it was called, appeared to make any appreciable difference to the team. So it went out of fashion.
YET there was one occasion when it justified itself. And that was after a few days at Buxton, too.
The players went there as a prologue to the famous last-day- of-the-season match at Sheffield in 1931. People have forgotten this match, which always is overshadowed in the history books by the dramatic escape from relegation with Albert Watson’s £10,000 goal at Blackpool a year earlier.
But it was a greater achievement in 1931, for this match was played away from home, and it was a game which had to be won, not, as in the 1930 fixture, only drawn. And Blackpool won it after losing a goal in the first two minutes, Tom Douglas, Jim McLelland and Monty Wilkinson shooting goals to take the match 3-1.
There must have been something in the Buxton air that time.
Man with golden feet
A HUMBLING reflection, but it is a fact that if Sunderland had not gone to Newcastle and paid £20,050 for Len Shackleton, Blackpool today would have had 27 points in the First Division table before today’s game at Wolverhampton instead of 25.
In both Sunderland games this season - at Roker Park in September and again at Blackpool last week- end - this man with the golden feet - or they ought to be golden at such a price - has scored a late equalising goal which, with all respect, no other Sunderland forward could have scored.
The Roker Park goal was the greater of the two. But at Blackpool the Sunderland inside-left made to appear simple a goal which was anything but simple, which is the essence of the great artist, and that is what Len Shackleton happens to be.
BUT this Len Shackleton is not the only artist in this Sunderland team. There is another, even if there is nothing comparably glittering about him.
Willie Watson, the Yorkshire cricketer, was, in my opinion, one of the best inside-forwards in the game until at Roker Park they converted him into a halfback. Now at wing-half he’s nearly of international class, for he still glides forward those passes which made him such a good inside man, and he labours like a nigger in defence.
I put Willie Watson among the first half-dozen wing halfbacks in England - and among the first half-dozen inside forwards. And Sunderland had not to pay £20,000 for him.
NOR had they to pay it for Jackie Robinson, another player, who always looks class when he takes the field against Blackpool - and not only, I suspect, against Blackpool.
He was captain of the Sheffield Wednesday team that met Blackpool in the 1943 Cup Final. The Wednesday were level 2-2 after the first match at Blackpool, and I shall always think that if all the Wednesday’s strategy had not been based on the conception of the Wednesday being not a team but Jackie Robinson and 10 Others the lead might have been won in the second match.
***
WHENEVER I go to the Molineux Grounds at Wolverhampton, where I have been today, I smile at the innocents who tell you that Blackpool have a ground closer to the centre of town than any other club in the First?
They should travel about a bit - these experts.
You can walk from the main street in Wolverhampton to Molineux in less than five minutes. St. James Park is even nearer to the centre of Newcastle.
And it’s a shorter distance from Stoke railway station to the Victoria Ground, where next week’s Cuptie is to be played, than from Talbot square to Bloomfield-road.
There are one or two other grounds as centrally situated - as the estate agents would put it.
WHAT a ground they have at Wolverhampton, too, a deluxe enclosure nearly all built out of the thousands which Major Frank Buckley made for the Wanderers after he had left Blackpool.
It was at Molineux that there was installed one of the first - if not the first - of those H. G. Wellsian devices which record the number of customers passing through each of the ground’s 40 turnstiles, so that at a glance it Is possible to estimate the exact number of people inside the ground and to close a turnstile by the ringing of a warning bell when there is too close packing in the region near it.
There is a therapy room which resembles something out of Harley-street. They even have their own cobblers’ shop.
The half-time score board is illuminated, and even the crockery in the boardroom is in the club’s colours - and so are the coaches which take the Wanderers’ teams to away games.
YOU hear people saying “Stanley Mortensen’s not scoring as he was last season.” They are all wrong.
The England and Blackpool forward has scored 12 goals in his first 18 games this season, including the Barnsley Cuptie.
Last season his first 18 games produced only 10 goals. So he is actually two goals in front of his last season’s record.
If you’d wanted to make a bet on that before these figures were published you could have made a bit of money.
THEY are all talking about Stanley Matthews going back to play in his home town when Blackpool meet Stoke City in the Cup next week.
Everybody seems to be forgetting that Eric Hayward will be back home, too. It seems to be an old English custom to forget this centre-half.
Yet when he takes the field for the visitors in front of a 47.000 crowd there will be a few among the
47.000 who will not have seen him play before, and thousands who watched him when he was a comparatively unknown half-back, at Hanley with Port Vale.
This Cuptie will be Hayward’s 95th League and Cup game for Blackpool since he came back from India after the war. He has missed only a couple of first team matches for Blackpool in the last two years.
So I think he warrants a paragraph, too, about the local boy making good and coming back famous. I know Stanley Matthews thinks he does. You can’t blame him because so often the limelight switches on him.
GOAL RATION
WHEN Blackpool played a 3-3 home draw with Sunderland a week ago it was only the second time this season that the forwards had scored three goals in a home match. The first time was in the 3-0 defeat of Everton on October 9.
Since that October match Blackpool’s total of goals in six home games had been only five goals - one against Birmingham, one against Newcastle United, one against Manchester City, two against Stoke City, and none against Sheffield United and Huddersfield Town.
When six came in one game last weekend it was almost a goal revel for a Blackpool public who have seen only 33 First Division goals on the Blackpool ground all this season.
It’s about time this famine ended. Sufficient is rationed these days without rationing goals,
Cheer them at Stoke!
'THIS time next week we shall know the result of the game at Stoke. To the officials and players we extend very best wishes for success in this match.
The demand for tickets has again been exceedingly heavy, and the small allocation to the Supporters Club was quickly exhausted. In the event of a replay it is hoped again to secure some tickets for the benefit of members.
The demand for coaches and train tickets is heavy and Blackpool will certainly not lack support. Let the team know you are there.
The ladies whist drive on Monday was, as usual, a success, but we should like these social events to receive a little more support.
Snooker contest
WE are again running a snooker competition among the players. The semi-finals and final have been fixed for Thursday, February 10, at the Albert Hall.
We hope fb see a big number of members at this event. Mr. Harold Holt has promised to give an exhibition of trick shots.
Old members are again reminded that the 1949 subscriptions are due. They should be sent immediately to Mr. C. A. Hay. 10. Swanage-avenue, who will also welcome applications from new members. The fee is still 2s. 6d.
Leave a Comment