5 February 1949 Blackpool 0 Stoke City 1

BLACKPOOL ARE OUT

George Mountford’s winner settled it

STOKE MOB HIM

Blackpool 0, Stoke City 1

By “Spectator”

ONE ERROR SEEMED FATED TO LOSE THE BLACKPOOL-STOKE CITY CUPTIE.

BLACKPOOL MADE IT AND LOST THE MATCH, GEORGE MOUNTFORD POUNCING ON A LOOSE BALL WHICH HAD BOUNCED OVER RON SUART’S HEAD AND SHOOTING INTO AN OPEN GOAL TO WIN THE CITY THE GAME IN THE 50th MINUTE.

It was on this frost-bound pitch less a football match than a lottery. The City took the one big chance and went into the fifth round.

The Blackpool forwards had sufficient of this game to have won it if, as a line, they had been able to master a stonewall Stoke defence in which Neil Franklin played with an undisturbed composure.

Not even the England right wing could make a great impression on this defence. Nor could the corkscrew one-man raids of McCall. Nothing could shake it, even in that last desperate quarter of an hour.

The Blackpool front line always played a shade too close, but that last grim, all-out bid deserved a goal.

The half-back line was the strong division of the team again, with Harry Johnston nearly the man of the match.

Rattles, bells, bugles

THESE all-ticket matches clear the roads before a game. I have not seen Central-drive quieter even for a League match an hour before the kick-off.

So early in the afternoon there were not fewer than 23,000 of the 29,000 inside the gates and making no end of a hullabaloo with rattles, bells, bugles and all those familiar instruments in the Cuptie symphony.

This time, too, Stoke-offered a less restrained opposition to Blackpool's mass mascots. Their supporters’ red-and-white colours were everywhere - in the stands, paddocks and on the packed terraces.

Spion Kop’s reception for the Atomic Boys, who produced for today a pantomime cow in the cast, recalled Wembley with all the rattles swinging and banners flying from them.

Donald Duck was there, too, dyed all in tangerine, and was released from his crate in the centre circle to a mighty cheer.

The teams who played a week ago were again in the field. Few people knew it but Blackpool might have been without two half-backs. Both Eric Hayward and Harry Johnston have been under constant treatment since last weekend’s game, and it was as late as yesterday before each passed his final test.

That was one of those pre match secrets which it was not considered politic to disclose until today.

The City again had reserves in the full-back line.

Throughout the night and early morning the south goal penalty area had been under a carpet of coconut matting, a ton and a half of straw and tarpaulin sheets, but, except under the goal area, it was almost as firm as ever.

Everywhere the frost had bitten into the turf and left a surface which all footballers hate.

SCENES OUTSIDE

I was outside the ground half an hour before zero hour. Hundreds were still packed near the entrances waiting for tickets, but l saw no black marketeers.

In the south-east corner 15 minutes before kick-off time there was such congestion that ambulance men were summoned, and the big police squads were mobilised to aid dozens of people over the barriers.

Teams:

BLACKPOOL - Farm; Shimwell, Suart, Johnston, Hayward, Kelly, Matthews, Mortensen, McIntosh (W), McCall, Rickett.

STOKE - Herod: Watkin, Meakin, Mountford (F), Franklin, Sellars, Mountford (G), Bowyer, Steele, Peppitt, Ormston.

Referee: Mr. A. E. Ellis (Halifax).

THE GAME

Both teams came from their dressing-rooms between massed ranks of mascots and to cheers which thundered to the skies.

Ronnie Suart was still wearing the plaster over his left eye which was a legacy of the first match between the teams.

Harry Johnston beat Neil Franklin when the coin was tossed, took the cold cross wind, and defended the south goal.

Stanley Matthews was in the game in the first half minute, called into it by Johnston and McIntosh, released the centre as the pass reached him, crossed a ball which skidded and bounced away from Mortensen off grass rutted and grease-glazed.

KOP EXCITEMENT

Blackpool attacked all the first minute, and in the second had Spion Kop in a ferment as Willie McIntosh hooked the ball away chased it, but could not reach it before Watkin had crossed into the open space and cleared far away.

The first time the City raided Shimwell tackled Peppitt with the sort of grab permitted only in rugby as the ball was rolling away from him.

From the free kick the City should have gone in front, George Mountford racing in to the ball as Ormston crossed it and. after half-a-dozen men had missed it, thundered it over the bar with half the goal wide open in front of him.

STOKE PRESS 

That was in the third minute. Afterwards, with every man in the south penalty area treading as delicately as cats on a garden wall. Blackpool’s goal was under constant pressure which led nowhere until Freddie Steele went after a forward pass and lost it only to a great tackle by Hayward.

NEAR THING

Full-back clears off Stoke’s goal-line

For the next five whirlwind minutes it was all Blackpool with Matthews constantly in the game, on a wing which at last won a corner.

The corner was followed by another, and from this one the City appeared to have a remarkable escape. Herod missing the ball as it was crossed from the flag, falling in a heap and being still out of action as a full-back cleared off an otherwise empty line. Blackpool were surging to the attack nonstop against a defence which could find no stud grip on the frozen turf and. except for the composed Franklin, was falling about like skittles in an alley.

Matthews shot one ball which Herod fielded on his knees a minute after this Stoke goalkeeper had raced out beyond his penalty area to win a race for the ball with the aggressive Mortensen.

FARM LEAPS

Sometimes the ball skidded away from the men. At other times it bounced as high as the crossbar: once, in front of Farm it bounced so high that the Blackpool goalkeeper had to leap to a great height to reach it as a Stoke forward hurled past him into the net.

Herod made one of those blood-and-thunder clearances from McIntosh which featured his game at Stoke last week as the offside whistle went a split second late and with Blackpool still jessing nearly all the time.

The football was as fast as I expected it to be, and better than I expected it would be on such a surface.

Ordered raids were few, but with the ball bouncing away from the men all the time that was pardonable.

With 20 minutes gone Blackpool were still attacking a lot, even if in breakaways the City often looked aggressive and menacing without being either when the goal area was reached.

FIVE-MAN RAID

Blackpool built one raid in which every one of the five forwards made a pass, and followed it with a couple of corners after there had been a senseless clamour for a penalty for an offence which was obviously unintentional.

Twice in breakaways, in spite of Blackpool’s pressure, the City threatened a goal. The first time Suart halted Peppitt without any sort of ceremony for a free-kick half a dozen yards outside the forbidden area.

The second time it required a neck-and-crop clearance by Hayward to put the brake on Steele.

In the 28th minute the City were as near a goal as either team had been.

It happened in another of those breakaways. Bowyer was in it, side-stepped a defender who was half off balance, out inside from the inside-left position. Out at him Farm dived, parried the shot, but lost the ball which in the end was hit out anywhere by a defence massing behind its goalkeeper.

STOKE FURY

On and on for a time the City pressed afterwards, pressed with such fury that Mortensen, racing back to aid his defence, came to earth and required the trainer’s attention in a position where the left back generally plays.

The Blackpool half-back line was as good as ever in defence and in racing up to attack, but repeatedly - and this again was pardonable today - too many passes were running away from the forwards, and the forwards were making too many missed passes among themselves.

COLLISION

Herod and McIntosh crash in race

Herod went down in a heap after McIntosh had collided with him in a desperate race after yet another pass which was yards too fast for anything except a greyhound.

For a long time before this incident nothing of any importance happened and little of importance happened after, except that Blackpool were battering away nearly all the time on a Stoke defence which never allowed a forward ta settle on the ball.

One little scene threatened for a few seconds after another of McIntosh’s challenges on the City's goalkeeper.

Peace, however, was soon restored, and it soon became the old story again of two defences seldom lifting their grip on the two forward lines. Free kicks were becoming a little too frequent as the interval approached.

McIntosh thrill

A minute before half-time Blackpool were near the lead, Kelly and Mortensen building a position with two fast forward, passes from which McIntosh shot from a narrow angle across the face of the City's goal, missing the far post. I should think, by about the width of the famous cat’s whisker.

There was not a lot in it in the closing minutes of this half. In the last few seconds Hayward made two grand clearances from a Stoke City forward line which still required a lot of watching.

Half-time: Blackpool 0, Stoke City 0.

SECOND HALF

After an interval which lasted nearly a quarter of an hour - I wonder why - Stanley Matthews in the first half-minute actually had a free-kick given against him.

Again the only comment can be “I wonder why.” The City were not over the halfway line in the first couple of minutes, and in that time Franklin made two fine clearances under pressure, and. from McCall’s pass McIntosh hit' a speculative shot wide from 20 yards.

“MORTY’S” FREE KICK

There seemed to be no vestige of a gap in either defence. Mortensen once zigzagged from one side of the field nearly to the other before being crashed to earth and, taking the free kick himself, shot fast and low into Herod’s arms.

That was in the fourth minute of the half. Less than half a minute later the City were in front

One of those errors which one defence or the other seemed certain to commit at some time or other cost the goal,

Away from the Stoke goalkeepers clearance a high ball soared out on to the right wing. Suart waited for it, hesitated, lost the ball as it bounced high away from him.

Away on his own after it went George MOUNTFORD, cut fast inside, waited until the deserted Farm came out to meet him, and from 15 yards out lobbed a ball which sailed high over the goalkeeper’s head into an empty goal. It all looked so simple.

PENALTY REFUSED

Within half a minute Blackpool had a demand for a penalty refused-a-demand so vehement that Mr. Ellis rebuked one man who protested against his refusal to say “Yes.”

Afterwards, the City’s forwards were as aggressive as a line which has taken the lead in a vital game always is.

Suart headed away one flying centre, following a Franklin free-kick which might have produced a second goal, and for a time Blackpool were in retreat.

But as a retreat it was brief. Johnston once nearly forced a path by sheer determination on his own.

Other raids followed until after Shimwell had picked up the ball under the impression that it had earlier gone out of play and forfeited a free kick, Blackpool's goal was in such peril again that a corner was conceded without any ceremony.

REFEREE’S ENTRY

It was desperate stuff shorn of all refinement with a quarter of an hour of the half gone.

Mr. Ellis made an entry in his little book after his whistle had gone for another challenge on the City’s goalkeeper by McIntosh.

FRANKLIN

Clears brilliantly from raiders

There was nothing in it with the 20th minute of the half passed. Stoke’s open front line was threatening every time it advanced

Yet, if Franklin had not brilliantly hooked the ball away from Mortensen, and McIntosh, with both forwards after him, it might have been 1-1 with two of the last 25 minutes gone.

In rapid succession afterwards Matthews and McCall made positions superbly for themselves before shooting wide.

There were signs at this time that the City were going to be driven into a battling rearguard action with the precious minutes ticking away.

STEELE SHOOTS

Yet in spurts and flashes the City’s forwards were still in the game.

Steele nearly settled it In one lone foray, swerving past two men before shooting a curling ball which Farm held only as he fell on both knees close to the near post.

There were still no signs that Blackpool could batter a way through a Stoke defence massing in a nearly impenetrable pack every time Blackpool’s front line swooped on it Fifteen minutes left and Blackpool were still losing but still gamely, grimly attacking.

A free-kick was forfeited perilously close to the City’s penalty area in one raid, but it led nowhere, the off-side whistling blowing as Mortensen hurled himself at a ball which Shimwell lobbed forward when everybody expected the full-back to shoot it.

IN WARS AGAIN

Again, too. Herod went racing out nearly to the corner flag and gave a corner as he collided full tilt with Rickett. Bare half chances were offering themselves but that was all.

The City’s defence appeared as firm as ever with the game entering on its last 10 minutes.

SHIMWELL TRIES

Seven minutes left and there was another free kick, closer than the first, to Stoke’s penalty area.

Shimwell took it, shot this time, hit a ball which ricocheted off the pack of men facing him before reaching Herod’s waiting arms.

Ultimately the ball was cleared but not until there had nearly been a free-for-all with the referee threatening all sorts of reprisals.

Free kick after free kick the desperate retreating City conceded. Meakin, who had limped out of the game, limped back to it to reinforce his defence, aided it to repel one raid, and hobbled to outside-left.

A GOAL!

No, Frank Mountford heads it out

Four minutes left and McIntosh with one foot stabbed the ball to the other and shot in the next split second.

They were cheering a goal as Frank Mountford leaped high across, headed out the rising ball as it seemed to be sailing away into the far wall of the net away from the City’s goalkeeper.

The last minutes were battled - there was no other word for it - with 21 men in Stoke’s half of the field and Farm watching it all from afar, watching his team go out of the Cup against a defence nearly impregnable. The final whistle ended one of the most remarkable rearguard actions I have ever seen played on the Blackpool ground.

As it blew every Stoke man leaped about in jubilation and half of them swarmed back to shake the hand of George Mountford, the man who had won the match.

Result:

BLACKPOOL 0, 

STOKE CITY 1 (Mountford 50 mins)

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It happened at STOKE: Reflections from the Cup

A FEW AFTER-THE-STOKE-TIE REFLECTIONS:

TALKING to George Farm about extra time. It is not the first time - but the first time in England - he has had to endure it. “And,” he admits, “that's the only word for it -  'endure'

The tension on a goalkeeper - and I suppose on everybody else - is a nightmare.

You know that one little error - and who never makes one? - and you can lose the match, without a chance of its being retrieved.

“No,” said George pensively I don’t want that to happen again.”

Who’d be a goalkeeper, in any case?

The penalty

"WHAT about the penalty?

I have met a dozen or two people who think the Blackpool goalkeeper hit Frank Mountford’s shot up on to the underside of the bar.

“I never saw it,” said Farm. He admits that he was surprised - as I was - when the Stoke wing- half ran from outside the penalty area full-tilt at the ball before he shot.

George Farm had been told - and so had I - that Frank Mountford was one of those who deliberately placed the ball wide of a goalkeeper, invariably on the goalkeeper’s left.

That’s what Farm prepared for.

“As it was,” he said “I never saw the ball at all. I’d a sort of instinctive sense that it was rising, that it might go over the bar - and that’s all.”

Was it a penalty?

Nearly everybody I met after the match said “No.” As I saw the incident - but, admittedly, I was not in line with it - it was a correct decision.

Blackpool spectators closer to the scene say that

(a) Freddie Steele was offside,

(b) He handled the ball - and in that case, obviously, there should have been a free-kick for Blackpool - and

(c) In any case, the tackle was fair. 

Offside goals

YET I could not agree with those folk who said that

Mr. A. E. Ellis, of Halifax, had a bad match. There’s been a lot of talk about the City scoring four disallowed goals.

In three cases the ball was shot over the line by a forward who must have suspected that the whistle had sounded earlier.

Twice that evergreen leader, Freddie Steele - and what a player he still is - nearly walked the ball over on the 100-to-1 chance that the referee had given him a clear course.

Who’s blaming Freddie?

Little Andy McCall went on to score Blackpool’s first goal against Sunderland three weeks ago go when he and everybody else was certain that no goal would be allowed. He shot it in - and the referee gave a goal. That can always happen. The wise forward puts the ball in the net if he has net heard the whistle.

Refs, please copy!

TWICE, I think, Mr. Ellis was in error. I did not think that Stoke’s inside - left, Stanley

Peppitt, was offside when he was halted in a scoring position not long before the end of the 90 minutes.

And I shall always think that there should have been a penalty for Blackpool when once Stanley Mortensen fell under a backward tackle in the area.

Otherwise, I have not a word of criticism about a man who ranks deservedly as one of the best referees in the country - and in those incidents he was a lot closer to the play than a critic in the Press box.

What I liked about Mr. Ellis was his repeated refusal, often in spite of a linesman’s frenzied waving of his flag, to give a free- kick for a handling offence when the ball had gone loose to a forward or half-back in the unoffending team.

That’s something several referees I have seen this season might copy, and - shades of that famous Wembley free-kick—he allowed both teams to take free-kicks with the minimum of delay.

Precautions

PRAISE for the Stoke City ground staff and the police.

To hear a few alarmists talking there was to have been a sort of second siege of the Bastille outside the Victoria ground before the game.

Thousands were to make mass demonstrations at the gates protesting at the allocation of the 47,000 tickets. Thousands of counterfeit tickets had been printed. Extra police had been mobilised - this, by the way, happened to be a fact - to stand as a barricade in front of the entrances if they were rushed.

The police took all these stories with the proverbial grain of salt, but they could not dismiss them, and it was chiefly because of them that an escort of police cars attended the Blackpool coach during the last 10 miles from Buxton.

All quiet

AND in the end everybody behaved with an exemplary restraint. An hour before the kick-off the streets were quieter than I have seen them at half a dozen League matches Blackpool have played this season.

This, too, was one of those all-ticket matches to which everybody went early instead of leaving it to the last minute and causing a congestion at the turnstiles which is one of the chief reasons for so many clubs refusing to promote all-ticket games.

Threequarters of an hour before zero the ground was packed.

Yet it was never too packed. At a casual glance there seemed sufficient living space for every spectator on the terrace fronting the main stand, and nowhere could I detect that ominous swaying which denotes saturation point,

No chances

SHOULD think that another 3,000, making it a 50,000 gate, could have been admitted without inviting casualties.

Still, Stoke City were in the Burnden Park disaster, and were not inclined to take chances - and I am not blaming them. And the police, in any case, would not have allowed them to take chances.

No, I am not blaming them. I am praising them for the superb organising of this match which could have been a riot if reasonable precautions had not been taken.

Stole the show

'THE ATOMIC BOYS” stole the pre-match show again. Manager Bob McGrory of Stoke was asked in advance if they would be permitted on the ground. They have not forgotten their unwarrantably hostile treatment at Burnley.

“Yes,” he said, “they can come if there’s riot many of them.” He was assured that there would be only a few. Between 20 and 25 arrived, which must have caused Mr. McGrory to wonder how exactly Blackpool defined “not many.” But he had no reason to complain.

For an hour and a half they had the people in a great state of merriment - and not, as I have already written, by mere buffoonery, but by a nonstop act which had authentic Chaplinesque comedy in it.

His tribute

THEY did not know it, but watching them was one of the greatest music-hall personalities of recent times.

"It was the funniest show I’ve seen for years.” Who said that? Mr. Georgie Wood, who these days prefers not to be called Wee.”

The few Stoke City mascots, I know, wondered what had hit them, were never in the hunt.

The chief mascot, a little man who resembles a jockey and who has probably come to Blackpool today, was content merely to lead out his team and for the rest simply sit and watch - and - laugh - at the gang from Blackpool who had invaded his own territory and banished him from it.

So it goes on

AS I left the Victoria ground they were beginning to queue for tickets for the replay.

One young man, standing near one of the gates, was calling to a companion. “When you get home,” he said, “tell mother to send on some tea and supper - and that camp stool - and that blanket I had last week.” I wonder how long he waited before learning that the tickets were not on sale until Tuesday. Probably he was there until Tuesday!

What a game this football is!

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BLOOMFIELD-ROAD 

MAY SOON HOLD 50,000

By “Spectator”

WITH 29,000 inside the gates and about half the population dismayed because they were not inside them, too, the Blackpool-Stoke City Cuptie this afternoon has introduced the familiar almost eternal question “When will Blackpool have a First Division ground?”

And that old friend, Echo, answers “When?” Or, in current vernacular “You tell me!”

Whatever Echo can tell you, can give the information that it should not be too Iona before the ground’s present capacity is increased by 15,000 or 20,000.

I do not want to be asked how it is to be done, because I do not pretend to know. But it is betraying no secret to disclose that for months negotiations have been in progress over a blueprint which will achieve this object.

Nobody can dispute the assertion in a recent leading article in “The Evening Gazette” that the municipality missed the bus long before Mr. Hitler was supposed to have missed another one when they allowed all the between-the-war years to pass without building the stadium which even in those times was an obvious priority in a town which had everything else to make it the provincial Wembley.

The vision

THE bus is missed, and no good purpose would be served today by chasing it or blaming the people who were too late for it.

One day, if I live all that long, I shall see the famous stadium rising like the vision resplendent, but in the meantime the thousands who these days are missing football matches they want to see cannot sit on its phantom benches and watch football matches which are not being played on its ghostly turf.

The immediate necessity - the Priority No. 1, 2 and 3 - is a bigger Bloomfield-road, which is at least in the realm of present-day practical politics, which the stadium unfortunately is not.

Developments soon

I AM assured that it can be done, that Bloomfield-road by various extensions and by the building of tiered stands can be made to accommodate about 50.000 spectators.

That, with all respect to those city fathers who talk glibly about a stadium for 150,000 people, omitting to mention the exact events in all British sport which would attract such a multitude, is of greater interest to the present generation than the other venture.

Developments may soon be announced. Obviously, after all that has t happened this week, that cannot be too soon.

I have nothing but admiration for all the club has achieved this week. To circulate 22,000 tickets among the 80,000, 90,000 even 100.000 people who wanted them was demanding a repetition of the Biblical miracle of the loaves and the fishes.

Criticisms

THAT the club was unable to work a miracle could be attributed merely to human fallibility. That the club was unable to please everybody was obvious and inevitable.

But the men behind the scenes - and three in particular, Mr. Richard Seed, the hon. secretary, Mr. Stanley Rowland, the assistant secretary and Mr. John Cobb produced and operated a system which was, I think, as equitable as human agency could make it.

Chief complaint has been that the issue of tickets should have been limited to one per applicant instead of two. The club’s answer is that for previous all-ticket matches there had never been a demand which warranted such a restriction.

Now, if there is a match next week, the issue will be one ticket per applicant when the tickets are sold tomorrow. Experience is a great teacher.

Remedies ?

ALL manner of remedies have been prescribed in a mail mountains high. One reformer demands the abolition of all ticket matches, apparently preferring the populace to squat outside the ground all night before a match. And he also demands a month’s boycott as a protest.

There are uncorroborated reports by the dozen about tickets being sold at fantastic prices in the black market, and one correspondent, asserting that boys and girls are the chief operators in this racket, thinks there should be a ban on the sale of tickets to children, implying, as I read it, that all those in Sunday’s queues were in a direct line of descent from the “Dead-end Kids,” and refusing to accept the fact that 50 per cent, of them were probably queueing for their parents, and 40 per cent, because they wanted to see the match themselves.

Only the other 10 per cent, were, I am convinced, out for illicit profits.

And while all this hullabaloo is raging the forgotten people - the thousands of Blackpool football fans who live in Lytham St. Annes and other outposts of the Fylde empire - make never a moan not, at least, on paper.

Lytham St. Annes—

IN the case of Lytham St. Annes there is not a bus or a train out of the town which reaches Blackpool before 10-0 a.m. on Sunday. The first train is not due into Blackpool South until after 10-45.

Passengers on the first bus a week ago were, I know, too late for the general public queues at the box-offices, and came home without a ticket.

Now there is something to be said for them, such a lot, in fact, that the opening of a box-office in St. Annes or Lytham or both, if it is practicable, is worth the serious consideration of the board.

But, in the general sense, I still think Blackpool made the best of a nearly impossible task a week ago, and, actually, there are other people who think so, too. Not all the mail is condemnatory. Some writers praise the club.

A tribute

ONE letter, written by Mr. J. Ormiston, from 2, Loftos-avenue, Blackpool, and containing four other signatures, thinks the club served the interests and convenience of the majority by instituting a Sunday sale of tickets, for the majority, say these writers, being working people, cannot queue on any other day of the week.

"The club," write these four contented citizens, “devised the best method of distribution - first come, first served with - one or two tickets - and cut racketeering to an absolute minimum.

Definitely a good show, Blackpool. Can we always have Sunday distribution or else the ‘drones’ will buy all the tickets while we are working.”

I am sending this letter to the club. They ought to frame it and put it on the boardroom walls - next to the blueprint for the bigger ground.

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Jottings from all parts 

BY "SPECTATOR" 5 February 1949

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Two in news

Two names which once made Blackpool football news were in last weekend's matches.

Eric Sibley, the full-back who a few weeks ago asked for a transfer from Grimsby - not because he was discontented with the Town, for no player ever is, but because Grimsby is too far from Blackpool, where he still lives - was at centre-half in the Grimsby team beaten by Hull City in the Cup.

And Bob Finan came back into Crewe Alexandra's attack and scored a goal against York City.

Bob will miss Louis Cardwell at Crewe. As 1 have announced elsewhere the ex-Blackpool centre-half, has been given a free transfer by the Alexandra and is now seeking another club. A player of the talent he still possesses should not be seeking one long.

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WARTIME GOALS

HOW many goals did Stanley Mortensen score for Blackpool in wartime football? I am often asked the question.

Many people, forgetting that he was seldom in the team until the war was two years from its end, think he amassed a prodigious total of goals.

The records reveal that including 1945-46 he scored 89, but still averaged more than a goal a match, which, even in wartime football, was no mean average.

In the First Division and the Cup Mortensen has scored 73 goals since football went on a strictly competitive basis again two and a half years ago. That, therefore, gives him a grand total before today’s Cuptie of 162.

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MEMBERSHIP GROWING

THE membership of the Blackpool Football Supporters Club is increasing week by week.

Old members should not forget to renew their subscription by sending 2s. 6d. to the registration secretary, Mr. F. Cross, 1, Wyre-grove, Blackpool, or calling at the hut at Bloomfield-road.

New members will be welcomed. and we are still disappointed that our numbers are well below those of other clubs.

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AT the Albert Hall, Blackpool, at 7-30 next Thursday night, the semi-finals and final of the players’ snooker tournament, organised by the Supporters Club, will take place, and Mr. Harold Holt will give an exhibition of trick shots.

The charge for admission is only 1s., and members are invited to attend.

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THE ladies’ committee are still holding their whist drives at the Liberal Club every Tuesday evening, and would be pleased to see more members there.

The next big event will be on March 17, when the St. Patrick’s Night dance will be held at the Tower.

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