STOKE - Herod: Watkin, Meakin, Mountford (F), Franklin, Sellars, Mountford (G), Bowyer, Steele, Peppitt, Ormston.
BLACKPOOL - Farm; Shimwell, Suart, Johnston, Hayward, Kelly, Matthews, Mortensen, McIntosh (W), McCall, Rickett.
Referee: Mr. A. E. Ellis (Halifax).
THE GAME
Blackpool took the field between the massed ranks of their mascots to a reception which thundered on and on for minutes and made the greeting for Stoke seem almost funereal.
Blackpool won the toss, and, after a momentary hesitation, Harry Johnston decided to put Stoke into a goal which faced the sun.
Stanley Mortensen retired to the aid of the half-backs to halt Stoke’s first raid which was of brief duration and merely prefaced an attack by Blackpool in which twice Matthews was in possession of the ball and 47,000 people in the excitement which always attends this event.
Nothing happened, however, except that Rickett was dispossessed by a shoulder charge of the *old Corinthian vintage.
IN PERIL
It was the Blackpool goal which was first in peril, George Mountford racing away with the full-backs out of position, and cutting inside to a scoring position before Hayward crossed his path and in unashamed desperation conceded the game’s first corner in the third minute.
Nor was that corner cleared until Farm had held with serene confidence a ball headed high and fast at him by Steele.
Within a minute Kelly crossed a high falling centre which Herod, his cap pulled low over his ears, held in the glare of the sun and with a full-back leaping in front of him.
This game was being played at the pace of a typhoon as Cupties in the early minutes always are.
I think there was a greater order in Blackpool’s game, but there was not a lot in it and once Shimwell made a great flying clearance as Ormston raced into position for his partner’s neat hooked pass.
CATAPULTED
A minute later, too, Farm had to hold a-high centre from the left as Mountford tore in at him at such speed that the wing forward catapulted past him and tangled himself in the net.
A great raid built on the Johnston - McIntosh - Mortensen plan ended with the inside-right offside as he chased the last pass.
SUART HURT
Receives treatment for gashed forehead
Harry Johnston was magnificent in the first 10 minutes, never at rest, dispossessing his men with ruthless tackles and shoulder charges which Mr. Ellis was properly allowing both teams to employ.
Suart was soon under treatment for a gashed forehead which he was mopping with a handkerchief for minutes afterwards.
Stoke began to raid again in a succession of almost continuous attacks, but seldom got within shooting range of the Blackpool goal.
Yet as soon as Blackpool lifted this brief siege Matthews won a corner and from it Mortensen unexpectedly left in an open position, hooked a fast rising shot over the bar. That was in the 12th minute.
TOO FAST It was as near as either team had come to a goal. The football was fast - too fast. All the time the two defences were cutting attack after attack to ribbons.
Roving everywhere for the ball Matthews shot over the bar in. a Blackpool raid which was only an interlude in almost continuous Stoke pressure.
In another McCall zigzagged past two men, swerved past a third, and shot wide with Stoke’s defence for once ominously open.
There was still not a lot between the teams. Stoke’s raids outnumbered Blackpool’s, but that was about all. Stoke’s two reserve full-backs were a little excitable under pressure but with 25 minutes gone had been guilty of no major errors.
No goal was near for a long time. Then, in the 24th minute after a corner had been conceded on one flank, a high ball flew across Blackpool’s packed goal.
At it the opportunist Frank Bowyer, waiting in the inside-left-position, hurled himself, headed it so fast that George Farm had to almost hammer two of his own men off the line as he leaped to his right and punched it out to a thunder of cheers.
In Blackpool’s centre, waiting for passes which never came McIntosh was given one at last, chased it, and, with Neil Franklin pursuing him, lost if under a desperate tackle.
UNDER FIRE
With half an hour gone Farm was making clearance after clearance in a Blackpool goal grimly protected, but constantly under fire from a fast, aggressive City front line.
Few shooting positions were being surrendered, but under the pressure Blackpool’s football was losing a lot of its earlier composure. v
Willie McIntosh once had Franklin and his goalkeeper in a bit of a panic in a lone raid which ended in the ball bouncing loose, the Stoke goal open, and no one in position to exploit an unexpected gift chance.
Again, a minute later, in the 37th minute of the half, Rickett chased a forward pass, reached it on the line and crossed a ball which Mortensen leaped at and half missed as Matthews galloped in a split second too late to take it as it flew off his partner’s head.
STOKE LEAD
Penalty given against Suart
A minute later Blackpool were losing.
It was a goal which will be discussed for a long time. There was a random sort of raid down the centre, built to no particular pattern as so many raids had been.
I was of the impression that Hayward, who had been gallant and tireless in his protection of an oppressed goal, was for the first time a yard out of position.
Steele darted to the loose ball, raced forward, positioning himself for a shot.
Into the open space Suart crossed half a yard behind the centre-forward who, in the next split second, sprawled full length with Mr. Ellis pointing peremptorily to - the “spot” and not a Blackpool player protesting against the decision.
F. MOUNTFORD took the kick, raced to take it, from a position outside the area, scored with a shot which rose fast, hit the underside of the bar and cannoned down over the leaping Farm’s head.
For five minutes afterwards Blackpool’s goal was under a miniature bombardment.
Bowyer shot one goal from a position so manifestly offside that Farm never moved to the ball and there was not a ghost of a cheer to cheer it.
Shimwell conceded a corner a minute later with Stoke still storming after a second goal.
EQUALISER
Then, in the last half minute of the half, came a sensation.
The Blackpool right wing escaped. Into a space in which only a full-back stood, Matthews glided a forward pass. His partner Stanley MORTENSEN darted after it.
The full-back Meakin hesitated, made his first big error of the half, half lost the ball, was moving to retrieve it as the England inside-right swooped on it took it away from him, raced on alone, steadied himself, and with complete composure shot past the deserted Herod, a great opportunist goal.
That strengthened the record which an almost identical goal gave to this great shooting forward at Barnsley - goal in every one of nine successive Cupties.
There was only time to centre the ball before the hall-time whistle went.
Half-time: Stoke 1, Blackpool 1.
SECOND HALF
Off they went again at a pace as great as ever.
Farm scooped up a long for ward pass which the fast, alert Bowyer was chasing in the first minute of the half.
In the next minute, too, after an ominous hesitation among the Blackpool half-backs, Suart, wearing a plaster as big as an eye shade, made a desperate, gallant clearance to concede a comer as Steele tore after a forward pass which was rolling fast again through Blackpool’s defence.
IN RETREAT
Blackpool were in continuous and, at times, almost desperate retreat. Stanley Matthews once appeared at left-back of all positions and passed a bouncing ball back to his goalkeeper.
Again, too, Farm crouching near one post, leaped like a cat to snatch away a right wing centre as Bowyer hurled himself at the flying ball.
So for minutes it went on. this hammer-and-tongs Stoke pressure, interrupted only twice as McIntosh made vain one-man forays into a defence in which Neil Franklin was waiting for every forward pass.
GOAL DISALLOWED
Seven minutes of the half had gone and the City had a goal disallowed. It could have been such a great goal, too.
On a wing-to-wing front Stoke’s five forwards advanced. On to the last squared pass Steele darted, shot a ball which Farm held as he fell but lost and watched crawl over the line as the City celebrated a goal a little too prematurely.
A split second before Steele had shot the linesman’s offside flag had lifted.
Slowly this storm began to subside. Back into the game surged Blackpool and one man in particular.
The man was Mortensen who, with nobody watching him pounced on a loose ball, outpaced three surprised men, cut inside, and shot a ball which Herod punched into the air and held as it fell almost into his clutching arms again.
BLACKPOOL’S TURN
For a time afterwards Blackpool, whose forwards were still being given plenty of passes by the nonstop Johnston, were in the game a lot, won a corner on the left which Rickett sliced into the side net and for minutes, in fact, with 20 minutes of the half gone had the Stoke defence in retreat.
On and on Blackpool raided in this see-saw match, the City’s dominance waning completely for a time.
Matthews once left his fullback standing in one of the nonstop procession of raids, reached the line and hooked inside a ball which seemed to skim off Mortensen s head and skid away from McIntosh with the centre- forward in the jaws of a goal which, at this time, was in constant peril.
Twenty minutes left and Blackpool were still attacking. The game was trembling on a hair- trigger balance. I had the impression at this time that Stoke’s bolt had been shot in that all-out 20 minutes earlier in this half.
MATTHEWS
Roves all over field,
has them guessing
There were signs now. too, that Matthews was intent on repeating his miracle act in the League match between the teams last month.
All over the field he was roving, once corkscrewed into the centre, eluded a pursuing fullback and, with Franklin dancing on his toes in front of him, found a gap and into it shot a ball which nearly i grazed the bar.
ONE-WAY TRAFFIC
Fifteen minutes left and Stoke’s forwards were scarcely in the game.
Once, Farm had to make a great punched clearance as the ball came in at him off the head of one of his own full-backs. Otherwise the game was moving nearly all the time on the City’s goal as the closing minutes ebbed away.
Eight minutes to go. A goalkeeper alone kept Stoke in the Cup.
Matthews took Johnston’s throw-in, pivoted with it, crossed a ball which McIntosh hit as it fell in front of him, stood in amazement as Herod leaped at it, reached it and in mid-air punched it away,
Another minute, and as another centre was crossed from Blackpool’s right wing, Mortensen hurled through the air at it and headed sideways a ball which was flying away from Herod as a fullback on the line headed it out.
Another minute and with Herod out of his goal McIntosh headed inside a ball which Franklin cleared off the empty line.
Those were three amazing escapes for the City in three dramatic minutes.
Score after 80 minutes:
STOKE 1, BLACKPOOL 1
(Extra time being played)
EXTRA TIME
Blackpool continued to raid in the opening minutes of extra time.
Peppitt lifted the ball over the Blackpool bar and the offside whistle went.
The heroic Suart, with blood streaming from under his plaster, had to be attended again. Herod snatched away Matthews’ centre from Mortensen with the game still surging on his goal.
Shimwell made a great clearance as the City in an all out breakaway stormed for a couple of minutes in front of Blackpool’s goal.
As the pressure continued Farm fell full length to a Peppitt shot passing wide of him, and before the raid had ended Steele had the ball in the Blackpool net, but was refused a goal as the referee seconds earlier had blown for a trainer to attend to a prostrate Stoke forward.
Half-time: Stoke 1, Blackpool 1.
Second Half
McIntosh forced Herod to a full-length save after Kelly had made perfect position for him. Blackpool won two corners in a minute. Herod was in constant action.
Watkin was hurl and went on the wing.
In last minute Steele had goal disallowed for offside.
Result:
STOKE C. 1, (Mountford 39 mins)
BLACKPOOL 1 (Mortensen 44 mins)
(After extra time)
NEXT WEEK: Such a nice change if they could heat Bolton!
THE team that cannot lose at Blackpool will be at Blackpool next weekend - if there is no replay with Stoke.
Ever since the first of the world wars, Bolton Wanderers have been coming to Blackpool, once in the Cup, often in the First and Second Division, and yet, have still to lose a game on Blackpool turf.
The games since the second world war have merely continued the sequence. It was 1-0 for the Wanderers two years ago - after Blackpool had made a 1-1 draw at Burnden Park - and last season Nat Lofthouse, the centre- forward for whose signature Blackpool have repeatedly made offers, scored a goal to make a 1-1 draw of it and to preserve the famous undefeated record.
You can call the Wanderers one of Blackpool’s bogey teams - at Blackpool. At Burnden Park it is often different.
Stanley Mortensen scored his elusive 100th League goal for Blackpool there last September in the first game George Farm ever played for the club and made it 2-0 a few minutes later. It was only a late goal that enabled the Wanderers to snatch a point out of a 2-2 game.
Yet, home and away, the fact remains that Blackpool have yet to beat the Wanderers since the war. According to the law of average Bolton’s immunity from defeat on the Blackpool ground and this other less formidable postwar record will have to end some time.
CROWDS TOO BIG FOR THE GROUNDS
The one simple fact about those Cup tickets
By “Spectator”
WHEN, exactly 15 years ago today, Blackpool played Stoke City in a Cuptie on the ground of this, afternoon's match 30,091 spectators paid £1,896 to watch the game.
People were walking in as the teams came out. Tickets were issued for one stand only, and Blackpool sent hundreds back out of their quota.
That was only 15 years ago Football was the great national game of the winter months in 1934. The newspapers devoted twice the space to it they are able to give it today. There were people who said that England at that time was football mad.
Over 30,000 people had once been present at a Blackpool match. It was estimated that there were not fewer than 1,500 from Blackpool at this Stoke Cuptie.
Nothing is as illustrative of the amazing mushroom growth of this game called football as a comparison of the 1934 background with all the clamour which has prefaced today’s second meeting of these two clubs.
There have been 47,000 people, not a scattered 30,000, packed inside the Victoria Ground this afternoon.
Ticket queue
NOBODY could pass the turnstiles without a ticket, and every one of the 47,000 tickets was sold 10 days before the game. Applications to Stoke alone lor stand, paddock and ground tickets reached the almost incredible total of 150,000, which represents a Wembley-and-a-half.
Dozens of Stoke people, it is reported, paid their fare by rail and coach to Blackpool to stand in the ticket queue 10 days ago when Blackpool offered ground tickets for public sale.
Less than £2,000 was taken at the gates for Stoke City v. Blackpool in the Cup 15 years ago. I should think that between £5,000 and £6,000 was in the bank this week before ever the teams took the field.
This, I know, is an exceptional case. The return of Stanley Matthews to the town where he won his fame made this match big box-office from the second the two teams came one after the other out of the little bag at Lancaster Gate.
Winter mania
BUT it is all symptomatic of the midwinter madness which infects the population as soon as the Cup ties come round. They called it the national winter game in 1934. In 1949 it seems to be the national winter mania.
The inevitable consequence of it all has been a mail to this column writer during recent days which has had no parallel since the pre-Wembley weeks of last season.
I will be frank and admit that when I heard that Blackpool’s quota of tickets for this, all ticket match would be between
11.000 and 12,000 I said they would never be sold in Blackpool.
Barnsley sent Blackpool 9,000 tickets for the tie at Oakwell three weeks ago. Blackpool sent
3.000 back four days before the match.
Yet. a fortnight later, when Blackpool are allotted 11,000 tickets for a match at Stoke every ticket is sold and a box office which was expected to remain open five days has. to put up the shutters at the end of less than five hours.
AND not only are those 11,900 tickets sold, but, according to my postbag, and according to all the people I meet, thousands of other people who wanted tickets cannot buy them and hundreds because of it are in a state of indignation, suspecting all sorts of jiggery-pokery behind the scenes.
Now what is the truth of it all?
Blackpool’s regular football public today has increased from a prewar 17,000 or 18,000 to about 25,000, So even if every one of the 11,000 tickets sold in Blackpool had remained in Blackpool, which, admittedly, is questionable, there would still be about 14,000 people who may have wanted to go to Stoke this afternoon and have instead had to stay at home.
That is a simple arithmetical fact which is to be regretted but cannot be disputed.
Yet it will not, I know, be accepted by the people who have been writing by the dozen to this department.
They write -
“SILENT RATTLE" writes: I am a ground season-ticket holder, but I am also a worker and could not queue for a ticket at the time specified.
“I dare gamble that if I go to Stoke on the chance of buying a ticket before the match there will be some of our fellow-towns men touting them for sale.
“There is only one name for them - SPIVS.”
J. R. Brent, F. Taylor and G. Hargreaves, who claim to represent “100 - odd fans,” complain about the allotment of 640 tickets only to the Supporters Club.
"Never,” laments a Ribble- road correspondent, “ have so many tickets vanished so quickly in so short a time among so few.”
“Spion Kop Fan” of Poulton thinks everybody should queue for Cuptie tickets and that Sunday should be the day of sale.
Mr. Luke McDonald, of Reads- avenue, who came from the Potteries to Blackpool two years ago, asserts from his own personal knowledge that Stoke people came into Blackpool last week to queue for the tickets when Stoke had issued the “ Sold out” notices.
Precautions
BUT he can, apparently, detect no venal sin in such conduct. Nor, to be frank, can I.
The fact remains that I am assured at Blackpool’s headquarters that the credentials of dozens of applicants for tickets were scrutinised last week, that in certain cases identity cards were asked for and produced, and that whenever it was established that the applicant had come from Stoke a ticket was refused.
Earlier, too, every season- ticket holder on the club’s books was given priority for one ticket, and as a season-ticket remains the only certificate, which definitely identifies a regular week-by-week patron, even if, as the club knows, there are thousands of others, it was at least ensured that their legitimate claims should be met.
Profiteers
SINCE those priority classes were served there must, I know, have been the professional profiteers who stood in the public queue and hired their agents to stand in it, too and acquired sufficient tickets to make a nice little profit on the side.
There were many people who came from Stoke - there were two coaches from Stoke in one of the public car parks on the day of the sale - and some of them went back to Stoke with tickets.
All this happened, and was, as far as I can see, more or less unavoidable. Yet even if some master plan had been formulated which guaranteed that every one of Blackpool’s 11,000 tickets went to Blackpool and Fylde people, there would still have been the surplus 13,000 or 14.000 who might have wanted tickets and could not be supplied with them.
It’s just-the old story again of - pouring a quart into a pint pot - it just won’t go in.
NEARLY ALL WRIGHT
IF there is a finer captain or a finer wing half in contemporary football than Billy Wright I should be glad to know his name, writes “Spectator If ever one man won a match for his team it was the England half-back at Wolverhampton last weekend. He was never at a standstill in the first half when the Wanderers. were being outplayed, was as defiant in retreat as later he was assertive in attack.
One of his greatest admirers is Harry Johnston, the Blackpool captain, who lost his position in the England team to him when Wright teas moved to the Blackpool man’s flank.
Johnston was so little aggrieved about this that when it happened his only comment teas "Well, they couldn’t leave Billy Wright out.”
Jottings from all parts
BY "SPECTATOR" 29 January 1949
TO hear some folk in Blackpool talk - and to read what a few of them have written - you would think that hundreds of tickets out of Blackpool’s allocation of 11,000 had gone back to the Potteries for this afternoon’s match.
You would not think so if you went to the Potteries, where the general complaint, as I heard it last weekend, was that too many tickets had been sent to Blackpool - and that none at all had returned.
The ticket-hunters were everywhere at Wolverhampton, and at Newcastle - under - Lyme, where Blackpool had dinner after the match, there was such lamentation, such weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth about the distribution of the tickets that Blackpool’s complaints seemed by contrast a mere formal diplomatic remonstrance.
I was told of half a dozen firms, who, when the City’s block booking plan was announced, had applied for '600 tickets each - and these were firms employing thousands - and been sent in one case 50, in another 20, and in another half a dozen.
They could nearly have filled Wembley twice if all the people who asked for tickets had been sold them.
THEY claim at Wolverhampton to have the fastest team in the country. The Blackpool defence, after meeting this typhoon a week ago, will not be inclined to dispute it.
Yet the strange fact is that the fastest man in this fastest of all teams moves about less than any other man in it.
For the ace sprinter at Wolverhampton is the goalkeeper, Bert Williams, the man whom Harry Hibbs trained at Walsall until today he is nearly as good as the maestro who tutored him.
It is said of Williams that he is one of the few present-day footballers who can approach even time over 100 yards. A lot say they can. Few of them can knock more than a fraction off 11 seconds.
ARE Blackpool playing the off-side game to excess?
I ask the question because at the end of the Wolverhampton match a week ago one famous commentator in the Press box was lamenting that they were, asserting that it was a confession of weakness, saying “This Blackpool defence on this show is good enough without it.”
There may be something in it. I have still a suspicion that the setting of the offside trap gave Jimmy Dunn the position from which he scored the winning goal for the Wanderers.
And one of Mr. George Sheard’s census charts appears to confirm the impression that Blackpool are addicted to this strategy. The chart for the Wolverhampton game reveals that whereas the Blackpool for- wards were offside only once during the game the Wanderers’ front line was eight times halted in its tracks by the offside whistle.
Is it being overplayed? Maybe it is. Yet for forwards who persistently find themselves in offside positions I can express no sympathy.
The offside trap is so easy to outwit. That, of course, is why it is suicidal to play it too often.
FRANK O'DONNELL, the ex- Scotland, Preston, Blackpool, and Villa forward, had, I hear, been out of football for a year before he took his recent post as player-manager at Buxton.
Few people knew that he had come back into the game until he was invited to broadcast on the eve of his first game for his new club last weekend.
The Blackpool players were unaware of the fact until they went to the Buxton ground for training last week, and there met the man who after only a few months as Blackpool’s centre-forward shortly before the war went to Aston Villa for £10,500, which is, I think, the highest price ever paid for a Blackpool player.
Frank O’Donnell is one of the gentlemen of the game. I hope that he establishes himself at Buxton, where, I know, they are prepared to give him every encouragement and are no end proud of their enterprise in signing him.
He played his first game for his-new club at centre-half.
***
WATCHING Blackpool at Stoke this afternoon - was one of the youngest - if not the youngest - captain in League football.
Basil Hayward, brother of the Blackpool centre-half, is only 20, but recently he was made the Vale’s captain. Nobody is prouder of the honour than his brother, who will tell you that Basil is one of the best centre half-backs in the country.
From all reports he is, too, already being talked about in the Potteries as the inevitable successor to Neil Franklin.
Writing of these two brothers, the Blackpool centre-half, Eric, probably possesses a record for a League footballer, which few people know about.
When he was in the RAF during the war - and often In India travelling hundreds of miles by air between one match and the next - he once played 65 games in 82 days.
HARRY GELDARD, whose name the theatre public in Blackpool have come to know and respect during Jack Rose’s repertory season at the South Pier, is, I hear, the cousin of Albert Geldard, the England Everton and Bolton wing forward.
TICKETS A PROBLEM
THE committee of the Blackpool Supporters Club thank all members for their continued support and regret that the small allocation of tickets for the Stoke Cup-tie to the club was quite insufficient to meet the numerous demands.
In the event of a replay next Saturday or Blackpool progressing further in the Cup we shall again try and secure an allocation of tickets for the benefit of members
Do not forget that at 7-30 on February 10 at the Albert Hall the semi-finals and final of the players’ snooker competition sponsored by the Supporters Club will be played.
The club now have a registration officer, to deal with all new subscriptions oil. renewals. Send your 2s. 6d. to Mr. F. Cross, 1, Wyre-grove, Blackpool, and a receipt will be returned immediately.
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