BLACKPOOL : Farm; Shimwell, Suart, Johnston. Hayward Kelly, Matthews, Mortensen, McIntosh (W), McKnight, Wardle.
BOLTON WANDERERS : Elvy; Roberts, Banks (R), Howe, Gillies, Barrass, Moir, Hernon, Lofthouse, Bradley, McShane.
Referee: Mr. A. C. Denham (Preston).
THE GAME
Blackpool won the toss and defended the south goal, leaving the Wanderers’ defence exposed to the sun’s glare.
Ralph Banks, a full-back who had a couple of pre-war trials with Blackpool, halted Stanley Matthews with a sliding tackle the first time Blackpool raided.
POSITION LOST
Within a minute, with Blackpool still pressing, McKnight made a position for McIntosh, which was lost as the centre, preferring to release to Mortensen than shoot, found the inside-right offside with the pass.
There was a confident clearance by Suart, far away from Lofthouse to end Bolton’s first attack.
A big gap revealed itself in Blackpool’s right flank of defence, when the Wanderers followed this raid with another, Bradley sending Lofthouse into the open space where the centre-forward crossed a ball which Moir shot fast across the face of Blackpool’s goal from a position where he might have shot between the posts.
OPEN PLAN
On a direct open plan the Wanderers’ forwards were aggressive and progressive.
For a time Blackpool were completely outplayed and at sixes and sevens everywhere.
Under this uninterrupted pressure, and with the right flank scattered again, Kelly gave a corner with a pass back to Farm which went wrong, and before this corner was cleared Moir shot fast and wide again.
OFF THE TARGET
Wanderers attack, but keep shooting wide
The Wanderers’ attacks became almost monotonous. Invariably they ended with shots from impossible range which, at times, were incredibly wide.
Except when Hayward headed out a pass which, if it had eluded him, would have loft Lofthouse on an open course, all this pressure, in spite of its studied design and its speed, led nowhere.
Similarly, in front of the other goal, high passes and centres were taken in the air away from Blackpool’s small lightweight forwards.
DRAMATIC MINUTE
Yet Blackpool were near to the lead twice in one dramatic minute in one sudden breakaway, Elvy, the Wanderers’ goalkeeper, finding himself in the path of a ball hooked at him fast by McIntosh direct from Matthews’ long forward pass before Blackpool’s aggressive centre-forward, taking a long pass from the left, shot a ball which missed the far post with Bolton’s goalkeeper yards out of position.
McIntosh was near again as the Wanderers’ early dominance continued to wane, hurling himself through a pack of men and heading a flying ball inches wide.
Bolton’s forwards were now, with half an hour gone, only in the game in breakaways.
Yet in two of them a goal might have come. The first time Moir raced on to a wing which its full-back had deserted, cut inside and shot wide again.
In the next raid Shimwell had to make a desperate sort of clearance with two Bolton men racing in on him in a scoring position.
MATTHEWS HELD
It all seemed curiously unexcitable after the Cupties.
Seldom have I seen Matthews make as many wrong passes or seen him halted so often by a full-back.
Blackpool were no longer outplayed, but little else could be written about the game.
Hayward crossed fast towards another exposed wing to intercept yet another forward pass which Lofthouse was chasing into a scoring position.
Pass after pass by Blackpool’s wing half-backs and inside forwards went to men in white instead of tangerine.
The ordered football was still being played by the Wanderers, but the Wanderers continued to shoot anywhere except at goal, and still from artillery distances, Bradley thundering another ball high over the bar from 40 yards out with the other forwards calling in vain for a pass.
CHANCES MISSED
Yet chances were coming to Blackpool and being missed, McIntosh making Tone chance in a fast raid on the right wing and a centre which eluded Mortensen and left McKnight in a position where he was able to steady himself before shooting over the bar with the goalkeeper almost at his mercy.
Elvy made one brave, diving clearance to hold a ball headed low at him by Mortensen as the enterprising McIntosh darted in to Challenge him.
Blackpool were attacking a lot as the interval approached, finding gaps, and now and again with a swift interchange of passes making them, in a not too compact Bolton defence.
FARM INJURED
Carried off field on a stretcher
A minute before the interval there was an incident which threatened to be a Blackpool calamity.
A loose ball bounced towards Suart, slowly, too slowly, in the slime, and in front of the south goal the full-back passed back Moir went after it. In desperation at the forward’s feet Farm dived, went down and stayed down, stunned.
Moir fell too, and lay as still; was soon, however back in action.
Ambulance men were summoned as Farm in a grim silence was carried over the line and on a stretcher to the dressing-rooms.
JOHNSTON IN GOAL
For the last two minutes of the half Harry Johnston wore the goalkeeper’s jersey, and in the first minute made a brave clearance, dribbling out almost to the line as if he had forgotten that he was a half-back no longer.
And after all that Blackpool nearly snatched the lead with 10 men in the half’s last few seconds, Mortensen darting to a knee-high centre and hooking it so fast that it appeared to hit a full-back’s knees and cannon out off them with the goalkeeper impeded.
Half-time: Blackpool 0, Bolton Wanderers 0.
SECOND HALF
I went to Blackpool’s dressing-room during the interval. George Farm was still in great pain. It is a hip bone which has been hurt.
"I’ll come out later if I can, he said, and to Harry Johnston, You carry on for a bit. Harry."
So Blackpool’s captain and right half-back was still in the green jersey when the teams reappeared, and immediately Blackpool were off as if intent on winning even with 10 men, McKnight making position superbly for Matthews to win a corner in the first minute.
That corner was followed by another. Then the first time Bolton raided Johnston went haring out half way to the corner flag, lost the ball in an affray which ended with Moir limping and the ball crossing an open goal with no Bolton forward in position to walk it over the empty line.
FARM RETURNS
A minute later, in the third of the half, Farm came back and all the way to the north goal walked and trotted awkwardly to an escort of cheers.
Within a couple of minutes this Blackpool goalkeeper was nearly in the wars again as Hayward, this time, made another slow back pass, but not so slow that the crippled man could not clear it anywhere almost on the 18-yard line.
Elvy, snatching out a high centre by Wardle, and Farm falling on a loose ball while two chivalrous Bolton forwards allowed him to clear it, were the only two major incidents in the next few minutes.
GOALS FAR AWAY
With 15 minutes of the half gone goals, except in a few spurts and flashes by the two forward lines, seemed far away, even if once Matthews outpaced two men before shooting a ball which Elvy fielded on his knees.
Again, too, a minute later, McShane had to race back to his defence’s aid to halt Mortensen as the inside-right went away on one of his lone forays.
A minute after that Mortensen headed wide after Matthews’ centre had given him a great position.
For a time Blackpool were attacking persistently. Yet, when the Wanderers’ front line came into the game, Farm had to make a great clearance as Moir shot across him from an acute angle.
You could see as he held the ball that the Blackpool goalkeeper was still in pain every time he leaped to a centre.
It was still 50-50 and either team’s game with a quarter of an hour left.
There were occasional gaps in both defences, but the forwards could not break through them and a stalemate was threatening. The Wanderers made a great demand for a penalty when Hayward crossed Bradley’s path and halted him, and for a time after this they were often raiding.
Once, after one clearance which again Farm was allowed to make unimpeded, the referee had a word with him and obviously asked him if he were fit to continue.
Farm said “Yes,” and off the game went again with McIntosh making one lone raid, losing the ball and retrieving it again before shooting into Elvy’s arms.
ELVY SAVES
Then McIntosh heads in the winner
Five minutes were left and Blackpool should have gone in front as Matthews crossed to an exposed flank a centre which Wardle, in an unmarked position, shot low.
Elvy beat it out. Mortensen stabbed at it as it bounced awkwardly at him, missed the far post of an open goal by a couple of inches.
GAME WON
A minute later Blackpool had won the game. There was a repetition of the earlier move. This time Wardle crossed a ball which seemed to dip late in its flight.
At it, as it crossed him lower than knee height, McINTOSH dived to head inches outside the falling Elvy’s reach, his first goal for Blackpool.
And that put paid to it.
Result:
BLACKPOOL 1 (McIntosh 86 mins)
BOLTON WANDERERS 0.
NEXT WEEK: Liverpool tough morsel in Lancashire hotpot
BLACKPOOL are in sequence of all-Lancashire matches again.
Today’s game with Bolton Wanderers was the first of the series. There are four others in the next five fixtures on the card - Liverpool, Preston North End, Everton and Manchester City.
It will be Anfield next week, unless Liverpool have played a draw in the Cup at Wolverhampton today and require the enclosure for other purposes.
Last season’s, game on this ground was played in the evening, a few hours after the Grand National at neighbouring Aintree, and a few weeks only, too, before the Cup Final.
The first fact had little influence on the match. The second, I suspect, had a lot, for Blackpool were disinclined to take chances against a Liverpool team desperate for points, a team which in the end won by a couple of Albert Stubbins goals and deserved to win.
In the first minute Stanley Matthews nose-dived to earth in the penalty area - and immediately missed the only penalty he has ever taken for Blackpool.
Before the end of the half Joe Robinson had cleared a penalty for Blackpool, too, but afterwards the red-haired Stubbins, one of the best centre-forwards in the game, settled the match with a couple of opportunist goals.
It was at Anfield a year earlier that Blackpool had been in one of the most dramatic games I have seen since the war, snatching the points with three goals in the last 20 minutes after Liverpool had taken a 2-0 lead.
Liverpool were beaten 1-0 at Blackpool in September of this season, but still field one of those forward lines, direct, straight-for-goal, which, if it is not preoccupied with Cup-ties or anything, takes a lot of holding, and may give Blackpool’s defence a big test next weekend.
20,000 ‘SUPPORTERS’ MISSING TODAY
Great Blackpool football mystery - or is it?
By “Spectator”
NOT proudly, as the film trailers proclaim, but almost reluctantly, this column today presents “The Case of the Missing 20,000”
The synopsis of the plot is not at all complex.
A Cuptie of lamented memory - the Stoke City match - was played at Blackpool last weekend.
Blackpool had tickets for 22,000. The tickets were sold in an hour and a half.
For days afterwards there was weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth among 10,000, 20,000, even 30,000 people.
Scores alone wrote to this department complaining that they had been at the tail-end of the queues or had not been able to stand in the queues at all and had no tickets for the match.
And, almost without exception, they all declared that their attendances at Bloomfield-road, for even as long as half a century in many cases, had been one unbroken sequence, their loyalty to the club an example to the community as year succeeded year.
Their protestations were, in fact, sufficient to have melted a heart of stone, but they could not, alas, add one square inch to the cubic capacity of the Blackpool ground. So the gates were locked on them.
Something wrong
BUT there was always something wrong with this argument.
If all the people who asserted last week that they never missed a Blackpool game were speaking the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth there has been a miracle at Blackpool every fortnight for years past during the winter months.
For the 22,000 who acquired tickets said that they, too, were among the faithful who were never absent from Blackpool matches.
Add the totals, and the remarkable fact is established that the Blackpool team in its home games since the war - and even before the war - has been watched in every match by not fewer than 40,000 and even 50,000 people - and this on a ground whose total capacity, when the present restrictions are not operating, is 32,000.
Social occasion
WHY, if Einstein had heard about this he would have been able to write another thesis! And, obviously, the municipal guide book has missed something by not advertising it on its front page!
The truth is, of course, that it has not happened, that it could not happen.
The truth is that last weekend’s festival in Blackpool was less a football match than one of those major social occasions which all those people who never miss major social occasions decided to attend.
And so many of them were there, as they always are at Wembley. But, now that Blackpool are out of the Cup, they will never be there again until Blackpool are in the Cup again and facing another team with a few big personalities in it.
Thousands—
THOUSANDS of the people who were sold tickets will not be at another football match this season. They waited in the queues for the tickets, or they prowled in the black market in search of them and probably paid extravagant prices for them.
There is no law against that.
Thousands, too, who had no tickets and never saw the match will have no particular inclination to watch another match again for a long time - unless it’s Arsenal on Good Friday!
There are still, as I wrote last week, only 22,000 to 25,000 people who are the hard core of the Blackpool football public, and even fewer who are there at every match, however, the British climate may be behaving, whatever the position of the team in the League table.
Genuine grouse
IT is the hundreds, probably thousands of this faithful, long-suffering congregation who had a legitimate grievance when they missed the tickets for last weekend’s match. How can their interests be protected in the future?
I have not, as they say, a clue - not while Blackpool have a ground utterly inadequate in its accommodation for these big matches.
All sort of remedies are in the mail this week. One which is at least out of the common, even if, I fear, it may be completely impracticable, is advocated by a correspondent who thinks a lot of lip service is paid to a club’s regular followers at annual meetings and other similar events, but that nothing practical is ever done for them afterwards.
Ticket plan
HE thinks it would be possible for this plan to be put into operation:
(1) The board select a match in the near future which is not big box office.
(2) Without any preliminary announcement, tickets would be issued - one each - at the turnstiles to all the people attending the match, season-ticket holders excepted.
(3) The tickets would be retained until the Cupties come again next year, when they would entitle the holders to priority in the issue of Cup tickets.
“It is,” he writes, “the spectators who go to the ordinary League matches, week by week, who should qualify for tickets for the big games.
It’s the ‘fashionable set’ who gate-crashed the Stoke match, as they gate-crash every big match in Blackpool and everywhere else.”
Absent today
WHETHER his plan can be put into operation is questionable, but its chief purpose - the sorting of the sheep from the goats - and there are so many goats at Cupties! - must meet with general approval.
What happened today? That is where “The Missing 20,000” come in - or, to be exact, stay out.
For they will not have been there today as they have not been, could not have been, at earlier games.
I am not asserting that football should become a close preserve for those who go to matches every week. But those are the people who should be given preference when the big games are played, and at present they are not being given it, however good the intentions of a club may be.
IF a plan could be evolved which would ensure preference for them its author would earn the gratitude of all those people who go to football matches because they are fond of football as distinct from those who go only because something big is on.
Like those two women who stood in the Sunday queues a fortnight ago - and this is authentic - and told each other, 'I’ve never been to a match yet - but I must see that duck!”
He says "Hello" again
POPULAR visitor to Blackpool this week with the Burnley players who came for brine baths in preparation for today’s Cuptie with Brentford was FRANK HILL, former Arsenal and Blackpool player, and now manager of the Turf Moor club.
Best in the world
MET Neil Franklin for the first time before the Stoke City Cuptie last weekend. He is as unassuming as all the great players seem to be.
“They’ve been saying in Stoke all week that we were unlucky not to win the match” he said,
and added pensively, “But, you know, I’m not so sure about that!" Franklin’s opinion was that a draw in the first game was a fair result, that the City had no reason to complain about it.
What a player is this Franklin, out on his own among the centre halfbacks of today.
I shall not all this season see a finer clearance than one he made in last weekend’s match, when racing neck and neck towards his own goal with two Blackpool forwards he reached out at the bouncing elusive ball and still at full gallop hooked it back over his own head.
“The greatest half-back in the world,” Harry Johnston, the Blackpool captain, calls him.
He’s all that.
Jottings from all parts
BY "SPECTATOR" 12 February 1949
HALF A DOZEN letters in the mail - and all of them, inevitably, from Lytham St. Annes - approving my paragraph a week ago on this page advocating the opening of a ticket-kiosk in Lytham St. Annes when next there is an all-ticket match at Blackpool.
When tickets are offered for sale as early as 10 a.m. on Sunday there is no train or bus into Blackpool from Lytham St. Annes which arrives in Blackpool before 10-45.
The result is that all the Lytham St. Annes people are at the tail-end of the queues and can miss the tickets, as dozens missed them for the Stoke Cup-tie.
Unless, of course, they walk the five or six miles or cycle - and not a few of them did that a fortnight ago. But the rest were among the “also rans.”
The Blackpool board, I know, will give consideration to the proposal and, if it is practicable, may adopt it.
They know - as I know-how many hundreds of people come into Blackpool from Lytham St. Annes for the League matches week after week.
EDWARD MEDCALF, the Lytham East End wing forward, who played for Lytham in a Lancashire Combination match at Bootle on his 16th birthday last weekend, is already, I hear, attracting attention.
When Edward’s playing football he’s doing what comes naturally. His grandfather played for the Wolves long ago, and football has been his passion ever since he could walk.
Bad luck, North End
THE lower a club falls in the table and the less luck it has.
Blackpool found that out so often during the between-the-wars years. Now Preston North End are discovering that the gods of chance show no mercy to a team in the doldrums.
For Tom Finney, that great wing forward, to break his jaw in the Leicester Cuptie was the last straw.
Blackpool and North End are rivals. No quarter is given or asked when they meet - and they will be meeting again at Blackpool on February 26.
But Blackpool say today - and mean it - “Bad luck, Preston” - and hope the clouds will soon lift.
I am writing now, I know, for every one of the football public in these parts, and I am glad to learn that Finney’s injury is not so serious as first thought.
ON a busman’s holiday at Blackpool last weekend, standing unnoticed in the centre paddock: Mr. W. H. E. (call him “Bill”) Evans, of Liverpool, the fastest referee in the present-day game.
Will he have the Wembley match this year? That is one of those questions the discreet do not ask referees. I did not ask him. But, for his information, I hear that he is on the short list - if there is no northern team in the Final - and I think, too, that he might have been given this highest honour a year or two ago if this geographical consideration had not had to be taken into account when this particular appointment is made.
Bill Evans has his critics. Some people think he plays to that gallery, that his dress is too flamboyant, that ... you hear a lot of criticisms.
But I rank him among the first half-a-dozen in the country. He’s always up with the game - and that counts for a lot.
AFTER last weekend’s Cup defeat at Blackpool the joke is on -
The man living in Whitegate-drive who invited a friend from Hull to watch the City lose at Blackpool this weekend and has since had a polite letter declining the invitation, with the postscript, “I think I’d prefer to go to Stoke!"
***
The half - dozen Blackpool fans who went to last weekend’s match with blankets, camp chairs, vacuum flasks and packets of sandwiches, prepared to queue outside the gates for Hull City Cuptie tickets as soon as the Stoke match ended.
The Blackpool hawker who ordered a consignment of Hull’s colours to sell at a match which will now never be played.
But the joke would have been on him in any case, for the City play in amber, and if they had come to Blackpool today both teams would have had to make a change
NOW you know why there was a quarter of an hour’s interval at Blackpool last weekend.
Stoke City’s manager, Mr. Bob McGrory, asked for the studs in the Blackpool players’ boots to be examined. Blackpool asked for a similar examination in the City’s dressing room.
The referee was the inspector of the Blackpool studs. One of the linesmen was given the job of scrutinising the Stoke players’ boots.
One or two of the studs had to be shortened - they had worked out or been bared during the first half.
It’s always a problem - this question of studs when a match is played on a frozen ground. Manager Joe Smith of Blackpool recalls one game he played for Bolton against the Spurs when the Wanderers took the field in rubber-soled boots, and, as the ground began to soften, were sliding about all over the field.
“The ’Spurs should have murdered us in the first half,” he says. “But they didn’t score, and when we went back with studded boots in the second half we beat them 4-0.”
FEW people noticed it, but there was a little peculiarity in the dress of the Stoke City players in the Cuptie which warrants a comment.
All the Stoke players with one exception wore red-and-white hooped stockings. The exception was Neil Franklin the City’s captain and England centre-half, who Wore all-red stockings.
Sad men Stoke
You would not think anybody from Stoke could have been miserable in Blackpool a week ago. Yet I met half a dozen Stoke folk who were in the depths of melancholy as they boarded a bus to go home after a weekend beside the seaside last Monday.
They confessed, under cross-examination, that they had no great faith in the City winning at Blackpool, that by way of the consolation which they suspected they would require after the match they booked for a three-days holiday on the coast.
Then, on Monday morning, they read in the papers about the two and a half mile queue for tickets for the Stoke-Hull City tie today and the sell-out which the Stoke club announced.
“Now,” they lamented, “it’s a thousand to one we’ll never get a ticket for the match. We should have gone home on Saturday.”
These are among the few people I have ever met who thought they should have left Blackpool earlier than absolute necessity dictated
WEMBLEY IS OFF
IT a great blow to members of the Supporters’ Club when the team were defeated on Saturday. Quite a few had hopes of another trip to Wembley.
However, we know that the team did their best, and the vocal support for Blackpool, even if not so strong as at Stoke a fortnight ago. was quite good.
Keep it up and remember that local support is worth a lot to the team.
Membership
AS LONG as the club remained in the Cup the membership was growing each day. Now may I ask all old members and other followers of the club to renew their subscriptions or join. The more members we have the more we can do.
The next big social event will be the St Patrick’s Night dance at the Tower.
Tickets will be on sale soon.
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