BLACKPOOL: Farm; Kennedy, Suart; Johnston, Hayward, Kelly; Matthews, Mortensen, McIntosh (W.), McKnight, Wardle.
PRESTON NORTH END: Gooch; Brown, Walton; Horton, Waters, Robertson; Finney, Beattie, Morrison. Knight, Langton.
Referee: Mr. E. Ellis (Halifax).
THE GAME
Harry Johnston, who is making a habit of winning the toss, won it again from Tom Finney.
Preston were put into the north goal into which the sun was shining. Malcolm Kennedy’s first clearance was sufficiently assured and such a length that it produced a Blackpool raid.
This raid, too, might have produced a goal, for one of those great gaps, which always seem to be gaping in Preston’s defence these days, opened again and into it Wardle glided a perfect pass.
DESPERATE TACKLE
McKnight went after it, lost it under a desperate tackle by Waters which was punished by a free-kick. This led nowhere, Mortensen passing to Kelly, who was repulsed by sheer force of numbers before he could reach it.
For a time North End were retreating, McKnight from his partner’s throw-in raking Preston’s goal with a high-flying centre before Hayward brilliantly halted a solitary raid by the Preston forwards.
A minute later Langton escaped Blackpool’s right wing of defence before crossing a centre which Farm punched out with three Preston forwards challenging him.
After Matthews had gone to earth under a tackle by Waters, which left him limping, Mr. Ellis during the half minute the forward was under treatment called the Preston centre-half and examined the studs in his boots.
McINTOSH SCORES
It was not for a few minutes afterwards football calculated to excite the populace, but in the end it produced a goal and a good goal, too, for Blackpool in the 14th minute.
One pass by that architect of goals, Stanley Matthews, made it. Again the Preston defence was about as wide open as a high street.
Into the gap England’s right wing forward lobbed an enticing pass. It was the sort of pass Mortensen will always chase.
He chased this one, in the next couple of seconds was alone in front of the goalkeeper, shot a ball which bounced out off the falling Gooch, cannoned to WILLIE McINTOSH. who darted to it fast before shooting it low past the sprawling goalkeeper.
MclNTOSH’S No. 2
And an ugly scene prefaces it
Two minutes later it was 2-0. This goal came with 28,000 people in a ferment.
Out to challenge Matthews raced Waters. Down went the England outside-right, jerked himself on to his knees and fell again.
Up came Mr. Ellis to give a lecture to the Preston centre-half and simultaneously to call the Blackpool trainer to his crippled man.
There was an ugly scene for half a minute with one Blackpool man threatening Preston's Irishman, but, ultimately, with Matthews still being treated over the line, the free-kick was taken.
Johnston took it and again a goal came and looked so simple, almost a duplicate of the first, Gooch half parrying the ball, falling as McKnight tore into him and leaving open a goal into which McINTOSH shot his second goal in two and a half minutes against his old team and fourth in succession for Blackpool.
ANOTHER REPRIMAND
Another minute and another Preston player, Brown, the fullback, this time, was being reprimanded by the referee with the customers howling in fury.
Ultimately, after this purple patch, tempers calmed again and for a time the North End forwards raided a lot and in the process played some good, fast direct football
It ended in a goal in the 25th minute, and a peculiar goal it seemed, opened by a left wing centre which, after cannoning about, eventually reached BEATTIE who, with not a Blackpool man moving to him, had all the time in the world to choose the part of the net he intended to hit and, with Farm at his mercy, hitting it from less than half a dozen yards out.
PRESSURE CONTINUES
The North End pressure continued, too, with Langton fast and direct on the left wing.
Once, taking a short forward pass, he shot a ball which Farm could only beat out and watch fly inches outside the far post of his goal.
Those two snap Blackpool goals had not depressed Preston but seemed, in fact to have Incited North End to football such as the front line had never played.
Suart was keeping close watch on the elusive Finney, was passed once or twice, but was still standing about 50-50 with this grand forward with 35 minutes of the half gone and Preston still attacking almost continuously.
LANGTON HELD
Kennedy, on the other wing of Blackpool’s retreating defence, was not being outclassed either, once raced fast across Langton’s path to give a corner but to halt the wing forward as he raced into one of those positions where he can shoot a ball as fast as any man in England it was a subdued Matthews, who was watching all this, a forward who seemed to have been reduced to half speed.
Not that any other Blackpool forward was in the game for a long time. North End’s pressure was not building many shooting positions, but it was being designed all the time on fast, crisp passes which had taken the command of the game completely out of Blackpool’s grip.
In the closing minutes of the half Farm half parried and in in a flash cleared a low raking centre by Finney to which Knight was racing in at a great speed.
In the next minute Johnston had to cross fast to this aggressive Preston right wing to halt Finney summarily again.
North End bore no resemblance to a relegation team in the last 20 minutes of this fast, at times tempestuous half.
A minute before the interval and it was as near 2-2 as it had ever been as the ball cannoned out to Beattie who over a pack of men, shot it back again and watched it nearly graze the bar with Farm impeded on his line and not within yards of it.
Half - time: Blackpool 2, Preston North End 1.
SECOND HALF
In the first minute of the half Kennedy unashamedly gave a corner with a Preston forward at his heels in pursuit of a long forward pass, and before the corner was cleared Farm punched a falling centre over the bar as the whistle went against Morrison, the forward leaping with him at the flying ball.
Matthews was a semi-casualty, padding up and down Blackpool’s right wing with his left ankle bandaged.
Soon, there was another casualty as Willie McIntosh, in Blackpool’s first raid of the half, fell under Waters’ tackle with boos and jeers thick in the air.
PANDEMONIUM
In the end, with a minor pandemonium raging behind the barriers. Blackpool's trainer and an ambulance man carried off the centre-forward, and for minutes afterwards there was a storm every time Preston’s centre half approached the ball. Blackpool, a team of nine men and one cripple, were still - and pardonably - going back, but nothing of importance happened for a time in front of the alert Farm.
After five minutes’ absence McIntosh limped back, his right knee bandaged, and immediately Blackpool celebrated this restoration almost to full strength with a couple of raids.
In one a free kick was forfeited on the left which Mortensen headed as it was crossed wide, but so slow of Gooch that the goalkeeper reached it as he fell on his line.
INCHES WIDE
The second ended in Kelly crossing a ball which McIntosh, bravely for a half crippled man, headed inches wide of the post in a nose dive almost on top of North End's goalkeeper.
For another couple of minutes the centre-forward retained his position.
Then, on an order from the trainer and obviously with reluctance, he hobbled out on to the left wing, leaving Blackpool with two limping wingmen and the three other forwards playing wherever fancv and the position of the ball dictated.
There were still three raids by Preston to every one by Blackpool.
In one of them Knight should have levelled the scores, shot instead from a position presented to him by a rebounding ball just within the reach of the falling Farm who clutched at the ball and held it with Preston's thousands preparing to cheer.
With 20 minutes left Preston were still attacking, still surging forward for a goal precious beyond price to a team in the relegation belt.
FARM’S SAVES
And still the goal would not come. Farm snatching at a succession of centres and forward passes in one massed raid with even the disabled McIntosh racing back to the aid of his defence.
Great again today was Blackpool’s goalkeeper - he had to be.
When at last Mortensen went away on one of his old familiar solo raids yet another free-kick was conceded by a Preston defence still apparently prepared to take the line of least resistance whenever its goal was menaced.
Willie McIntosh crashed to earth again in another Blackpool breakaway, seemed to refuse to leave the field as his trainer came out and talked to him.
EQUALISER
Two minutes from the end a Preston man, Robertson, took the count and this time it was a Blackpool man, Wardle, who had to listen to a lecture.
The free kick, taken after nearly a minute’s delay and in the last 90 seconds of the match, was fatal.
Walton lobbed it forward into a packed goal area. Farm appeared only to half hit it out. LANGTON darted to it, hit it back, watched it skid inches Inside the post with Johnston diving in vain at it.
Result:
BLACKPOOL 2 (McIntosh 14,16 Mins)
PRESTON NE 2 (Beattie 25, Langton 89 Mins)
This was a game which I shall be glad to forget.
Blackpool played threequarters of it with 10 men and a cripple, and half of it with nine men and two cripples and yet, in the end, lost a point only in the last minute.
For 60 minutes it was a rearguard action by a skeleton Blackpool force as desperate and uncompromising as the circumstances compelled it to be.
Every man in this retreat was resolute and fearless against a Preston team one or two of whose men forgot a few of the game’s courtesies - which is putting it politely - in the relentless hunt for points.
At full strength Blackpool were always winning, good as the Preston forwards always were in approach, for yet again Preston’s defence always seemed inclined to panic and often was wide open.
Farm was as good as ever, seemed in error only when he half hit out the last of the dozens of balls which had been crossed or punted forward on his menaced goal.
I rank Kennedy as definitely the sort of full-back this game demanded. In every other position from wing-half to goal there was nothing wrong in the defensive sense.
In lone flashes Stanley Mortensen was at times the direct aggressive forward he still can be.
After the first half-hour, however, it was not a game for the forwards - not at least for the Blackpool forwards.
An all-out defence won a point and nearly the match, and in this defence Hugh Kelly showed that he can play football on a day when too little of it was being played.
NEXT WEEK: It's “Good” ison Park for Blackpool
BLACKPOOL teams seem to be fond of Goodison Park. There appears to be something in the Everton air which suits them, writes “Spectator.”
Last year’s game was won there 2-1, Stanley Mortensen and George McKnight shooting a couple of goals within a few minutes of each other to give Blackpool a lead which was seldom afterwards in serious jeopardy.
A year earlier, in an Easter game, Tom Jones put a goal past Ted Sagar, the evergreen Everton goalkeeper, to present Blackpool with a point in a 1-1 draw, but Blackpool, as I recall, had earlier had sufficient of that game to have won this point without any assistance if the forwards had only been able to finish.
Blackpool always look class at Everton.
And Everton, in spite of one unexpected 3-0 triumph at Blackpool in 1947 - a triumph which was almost entirely engineered by a certain big Scotsman called Jock Dodds - seldom look anything of the sort at Blackpool.
Admittedly, only 10 men stood in the path of an avalanche when Blackpool won 5-0 in the home game last season, and the Goodison Park men, when they were beaten 3-0 on the Blackpool ground last October, were in the doldrums from which it has required the inspiration of Mr. Cliff Britton to lift them.
But, definitely on the horses-for-courses theory, Blackpool should at least be a good “X” for the coupons next weekend, even against an Everton team which these days has no longer a defence as wide open as the famous barnyard door and a forward line which can at least score on its own ground.
HOME AND AWAY MYSTERY
Barracking does not explain it all
By “Spectator”
ONLY A FEW HUNDRED BLACKPOOL PEOPLE WATCHED THE MATCH AT ANFIELD A WEEK AGO.
The other 20,000, who for a variety of reasons can attend only the home games, are still either a little sceptical of all the good reports about the football that Blackpool played on Merseyside or asking “How is it they're never the same at home?"
How is it? You’re asking me, and I don’t know the answer.
It was not exactly a wonder show that Blackpool presented at Liverpool. But by comparison with a few of the games played during recent weeks at Blackpool by this enigma of a team it had nearly everything in it which the Blackpool public is seldom privileged to witness.
There was an order and a self- confidence in the team’s football which it has scarcely ever revealed in home games this season. There was an authentic class in it which seems to be reserved exclusively for matches outside Blackpool - and the greater the distance from Blackpool the greater the class. Or so it often appears.
Since November—
IT is one of the curiosities of this season’s football, which has been sufficiently curious without it.
Observe what has happened in Blackpool football during the last three months. Since the beginning of November, excluding this afternoon’s match, the first team have played eight games at Blackpool, including the Stoke City Cuptie.
Of those eight games two only have been won, three lost, and the remaining three drawn. And in those games the forwards have laboured for exactly 12 hours to score eight goals, three of them in one match, the Sunderland engagement. In three of the eight they have not scored at all.
During this period eight matches have also been played on tour. One only has been won, but four have been drawn, and the forwards have scored nine goals, which, if not such a lot, is at least one more than has been scored at home.
Joy and despair
NOW this makes no sort of 1 sense of the theory which is the basis of all pools forecasting that the odds must always be, and unquestionably are, on the home team.
It has merely made Blackpool the pool promoter’s joy and the pool investor’s despair.
Taking the entire season, the position borders on the fantastic.
For whereas Blackpool have scored only 16 goals in 14 home games - Birmingham and Huddersfield Town in the First Division-alone have scored fewer at home - 25 goals have been scored in 15 away games, which is a total surpassed in the Division by only. Newcastle United and Manchester United.
Blackpool think in truth that there is no place like home, but not exactly in the sense intended by the composer of those lines.
For it would almost seem that the present Blackpool team would prefer to be anywhere else except at home, from Newcastle in the north to Portsmouth in the south.
Convincing case
BUT the fact remains that not one player transferred from Blackpool since the war is playing today in First Division football, and only four, Dodds, Eastham, Sibley and Dick, are in class higher than the Third Division.
So, if the Blackpool board wanted to defend its postwar policy in transfer sales - and the board, I am convinced, is not persuaded that its policy requires defence - these facts alone would make a convincing, nearly unanswerable, case.
But teams, winning teams, are not built by selling, but by buying, or, alternatively and preferably, by building from young material, which, actually, is the keystone of Blackpool’s policy, unspectacular as it may be in these days when the stars alone are given headlines.
The critics
THERE must be some reason for it, for this hoodoo.
The players think they know the reason, and when you talk to them will tell you without any reservations exactly what it is.
They complain that the Blackpool public, or, at least, a small but voluble section of it, are too critical, that always there are one or two men in every team fielded by Blackpool whose presence these critics appear to resent almost as a personal affront.
The opinions of these critics, add the players, are scarcely expressed in confidential whispers, and as a result not a few footballers who have worn the tangerine jersey in recent years have been glad to take it off for the last time and begin to wear a different colour elsewhere.
Now there is an element of truth in this complaint.
Blackpool as a team cannot expect to command the “my team, right-or-wrong” brand of loyalty which most other League teams command. Geography and everything else is against it.
BLACKPOOL’S population is cosmopolitan, its football allegiances necessarily divided.
And, for myself, I prefer it that way, for, touring up and down the land, one becomes a little tired of the mass adulation of the home team which invariably expresses itself in a resentment of every decision given against it.
By virtue of its semi-impartiality the Blackpool football public probably has a higher critical appreciation of the game than most other football congregations.
Put, unquestionably, it has a higher percentage of members of the Ignoble Order of Narks.
The Greeks probably had a word for them, and, being Greeks, it would not be a particularly polite word. In this day and age they are called barrackers, and they are, wherever they may be, a species not to be at all highly esteemed.
They have done damage at Blackpool. They have given the Blackpool football public an unenviable reputation in various parts of the football parish.
Baffling
AND now and again they have made ordinary players bad and indifferent players worse, and have even ruined at Blackpool the career of one or two good prospects who have had to leave the club before they could make good at all.
That has happened and is still happening today. But whether it accounts entirely for the team’s- failure to play at home the football which so often it plays away from home remains questionable.
It may be, and probably is, a contributory factor. But it is, I am convinced, nothing else.
The real reason baffles all explanation. Probably in the end they’ll have to call in Paul Temple to solve it. Lesser mortals merely admit that they simply don’t understand it.
LANCASHIRE SEQUENCE
IT is a peculiar sequence in which Blackpool are now engaged in the First Division. Seven successive games played in Lancashire is nearly a record for a Blackpool team.
The first was the Bolton match a fortnight ago. The seventh will be the visit of Charlton Athletic on March 26.
But afterwards there will be plenty of miles to travel, with a visit to Newcastle on April 12 and an Easter weekend which includes a match at Birmingham on Saturday and a game at Highbury two days later.
There cannot now be another interruption of Blackpool’s League programme because of Cupties or even replays.
Jottings from all parts
BY "SPECTATOR" 26 February 1949
YES, ROCKY SCORED
I NEVER knew, until I had a chat the other day with Mr. William C. King, one of the pioneers of St. Annes football that Alex Roxburgh, the former England .and Blackpool goalkeeper, who is now with Hyde United, was once in the St. Annes team.
Nor was I aware that he is one of the few goalkeepers who has ever scored a goal - penalties excepted.
“Bill” King can recall the match. It was St. Annes v. Wesham.
“Rocky” made one of his long clearances. Probably it was down wind. The ball cleared the centre-line, the 18-yard line, sailed towards goal. The Wesham goalkeeper made a leap at it, brushed it with his finger tips before it entered the net.
Who was the Wesham goalkeeper? His name was McKenna. He lived in Blackpool, played afterwards for Leicester City, and, in this particular match, must have decided that it was his unlucky day, for before the game ended he had his jaw dislocated.
NEARLY everybody knows that Alec Roxburgh was not always a goalkeeper, that he learned the craft in a shooting-in gallery at the Blackpool Pleasure Beach.
But few people know where he played before he made the goal his natural habitat. He was a left-half. and. I am told, always preferred to play there.
I can think at random of half a dozen Blackpool players who came to the club in one position and made their name in another.
Jimmy Hampson arrived from Nelson as an inside-right. Walter Grant, his inseparable companion. who as a full-back played a greater number of successive games for Blackpool between the wars than any other player except George Mee. was a centre- half when he was signed.
Jack Everest came from Rochdale as a centre-forward and was converted into a full-back.
There is Ronnie Suart in the present team - a centre-half who became a full-back. And Eric Longden, an inside forward when he signed for Blackpool and a wing-half long before he left.
The list could be continued.
EXACTLY a year ago today.
Blackpool were playing at Fulham in the Cup and winning and entering the semi-finals for the first time.
Harry Freeman, the Fulham fullback, collapsed early in the match and left the field after 20 minutes.
Stanley Mortensen and Jim McIntosh scored the Blackpool goals.
The Blackpool full-back and half-back lines playing today were in that match at Craven Cottage, but Joe Robinson, who is at Blackpool no longer, was in goal.
George Dick, who has gone to West Ham, was at inside-left, and Walter Rickett was his partner.
ANOTHER goal and Bob Finan, the ex-Blackpool forward, will have completed his century of goals in League football.
It is surprising how few players have ever reached three figures.
This Scot from Yoker should soon be among them; for he is back in Crewe Alexandra’s front line, and now and again his name appears in the marksmen’s column, in spite of the fact that these days he is an inside forward and making the goals instead of scoring them.
When Mr. Joe Smith came to Blackpool as manager in 1935 and was told that the club had a centre-forward problem he played Finan in only one practice game and said “There’s a problem no longer,” put him in the centre of the forward line, and watched him score 34 goals in his first season in the Second Division and 27 the next year.
The joke - if you could call it a joke - was that Finan had come to Blackpool as a centre-forward two years earlier and rarely been fielded there.
***
POLISH AND POLISHED
I WROTE a week or two ago that Blackpool were watching a Polish wing forward. Joe Praski, who was playing for Jeanfield Swifts, the junior Scottish club which supplied Hugh Kelly and Ewan Fenton to English football - and Alec Forbes, too, the Arsenal and Sheffield United wing-half.
The Pole is not coming to Blackpool after all. Notts County have signed him, think this 22-year-old raider will soon be making the grade in big football.
If he had come to Blackpool he would have been the second Pole to play with the club since the war.
The first was Adam Wolinin, who caused a minor sensation when he was given a couple of games with the second team soon after war, never signed as a professional, and in the end faded out of the scene.
Where he went I don’t know, but he showed a lot of promise at the time.
I always remember the team of Poles who played a match or two at the St. Annes-road Greyhound Stadium early in the war. For battle, murder and sudden death I have never seen anything to equal them.
A few of them could play good football, too.
***
TIME marches on. According to the record books it was 18 years ago last weekend that Blackpool signed Jim McClelland, the tall inside-forward from Preston. He has since had a son playing for Blackburn Rovers.
“Big Jim” made his name at Bolton, played his first game for Blackpool against the Wanderers and scored, too, in a 3-3 draw, celebrating the goal, I bet, with the little double-shuffle step-dance which was his own eccentricity whenever he shot a ball into the net.
He is nearly forgotten in these parts today. Yet Jim McClelland gave great service to a losing Blackpool team in the First Division, and he could, at least, do something which so many contemporary stars seem unable to do - he could convert penalties.
His total of penalty goals at Blackpool is still a club record.
***
Is offside off?
HAS the Blackpool defence decided at last that the offside game is an expensive luxury? It’s beginning to look like it.
Examination of Mr. George Sheard’s census for the Liverpool-Blackpool match a week ago reveals that the Liverpool forwards were in the offside trap only twice during the first half and not even once in the second.
Similarly, the Blackpool front line was once only in the entire match brought to a full-stop by the offside whistle.
Was this match tough! Mr. J. Williams, the Bolton referee, was a little inclined, I think, to make the punishment a little in excess of the crime, and now and again seemed to detect crime when the intention was innocent.
The fact remains, however, that he gave Liverpool 12 free-kicks for fouls and Blackpool 10, all of which was sufficient to create the impression that it was less a football match than a rough-house.
Yet it wasn’t as bad as all that, and, in fact, ended in handshakes all round.
LET THEM KNOW
NEXT Saturday Blackpool are away to Everton, and on March 19 will be at Maine-road against Manchester City.
Many members of the Supporters’ Club will be making these short journeys to see the team in action, and they should not forget to let the team know they are there.
The membership still leaves a lot to be desired. It certainly amazes me that a First Division club with an average gate of over 20,000 cannot raise 2,000 members for its Supporters’ Club.
Even some of the non-league clubs supporters’ clubs can boast of over 5,000.
The Blackpool enrolment fee is only 2s. 6d. per year. Send yours today to Mr. F. Cross, 1, Wyre-grove. Blackpool.
Membership cards
MEMBERSHIP cards will be sent out to members in the course of the next week or two, and the new supply of badges should be available at the end of March if not before.
The date for the players’ snooker tournament semi-finals and final is still in abeyance. It will be announced in the Press as soon as the final arrangements are completed.
Meanwhile, don’t forget to make a note of the St. Patrick’s night dance at the Tower.
Tickets will be on sale in a few days.
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