BLACKPOOL: Farm: Shimwell, Suart, Johnston, Hayward, Kelly, Hobson, Mortensen, McIntosh, Davidson, Adams.
CHARLTON ATHLETIC: Bartram: Shreeve, Lock, Fenton, Phipps, Forbes, Hurst, Lumley, Vaughan, Purvis, Duffy.
Referee: Mr. J. Tregellas (Birmingham).
THE GAME
Harry Johnston, who has lost the toss only twice this year, won it again.
Blackpool defended the south goal which was soon being menaced and, in fact, was in peril before Shimwell shattered a left wing raid by the Athletic and completed it with a clearance of great length.
HIT SIDE NET
That clearance actually created a raid on Blackpool’s right wing and the raid nearly ended in a goal, for after Johnston’s long throw-in had been beaten out by Sam Bartram the Charlton goalkeeper fell and Hobson, shooting the ball back fast, hit the side net of a goal which had only a full-back on its line,
All that happened in the first minute. There was a threat of a goal every minute afterwards for a time.
Vaughan, Charlton’s fast centre-forward, seemed to be outpacing Hayward in the London team’s next raid, was veering to goal as Suart crossed his path.
But Suart could not completely hold the leader who, in the end. squared a centre fast across the face of a Blackpool goal where not one of his partners was in a position to meet it.
FAST GAME
It was fast, straight-for-goal football by both teams.
Bartram scooped up and cleared one ball shot at him by Hobson after Mortensen’s pace in a zigzag foray had scattered Charlton’s half-backs and fullbacks.
GREAT RAID
Farm saves and sets them cheering
There was not a lot in it. Yet in the seventh minute Charlton were near to the lead in one great raid in two moves which Hurst ended with a centre.
Vaughan met it - and shot straight at Farm, the goalkeeper falling on his knees, clutching the ball and clearing to a tempest of cheers.
All Charlton’s football was based on the fast direct pass, and it was good while it lasted - and it continued to last.
Once Bartram, who was a centre-forward before he became a goalkeeper, raced out beyond his own penalty area to make the clearance of a full-back, and a couple of minutes later Mortensen shot wide of a post from a speculative range.
CHARLTON IN FRONT
Yet when the Athletic took the lead in the 15th minute it was a goal which I think was deserved and was, in fact, the product of one of those swift passing raids in which the London club’s forwards had been specialising from the kick-off.
The Blackpool defence invited the goal by its failure to post a close guard on the Charlton right wing.
Into the open space Hurst raced, ran a dozen yards unchallenged, crossed a perfect falling centre which LUMLEY headed past Farm in a great leap at the flying ball.
For a time afterwards the Athletic were faster on the ball everywhere, playing as good football as I have seen for months.
COLLISION
Yet once Adams escaped with a rebounding ball, cut inside at a great pace, and shot with such venom that as the ball seemed to be curling out of Bartram’s reach with a full-back impeding him, both Charlton men collided on the line and, in the end, cleared it less by design than accident.
Twice Hayward had to go desperately into the tackle to halt the aggressive Vaughan, once racing all the way out to another exposed wing on Charlton’s right flank.
Slowly afterwards the Charlton tide, which had been flowing in the first 20 minutes on the Blackpool goal, began to ebb.
POOLS TURN
But they were not so impressive
Adams was as persistent and fast as ever, prepared to go after anything on Blackpool’s left wing.
In one raid he won a comer, and the comer had not been cleared before Hobson, the recruit on the other wing, had shot fast into Bartram’s hands.
Blackpool for a time were in the game a lot, but never looked as impressive as the Athletic had been earlier.
One accidental collision between Davidson and Shreeve had a happy ending, the fullback, after being given attention, taking the Blackpool forward’s proffered hand and giving him a friendly pat on the back.
Everybody approved that little gesture.
There was still plenty to approve in the football, too, which was still of a class not too common these days - fast, but not subordinating everything else to speed.
CHARLTON AGAIN
It was nearly all Charlton again for a time with the Athletic’s forwards racing repeatedly on a not too compact Blackpool defence as the interval approached.
Adams and Mortensen alone in Blackpool’s front line seemed able to outpace Charlton’s defence which was fast on the grass and fast in the tackle.
On half-time the Athletic were retreating again and twice Adams’ centres cannoned inches beyond the reach of one of his forwards in the jaws of Charlton’s goal.
None of Blackpool’s raids reached anything approaching a definite conclusion.
After all the promise of this half’s opening it had become nearly a stalemate by the interval, although in the last half minute Bartram made a grandstand save to beat out for a corner, which could not be taken, a great shot by the shooting Adams.
Half-time: Blackpool 0, Charlton 1.
SECOND HALF
The Charlton forwards’ passing was again as precise as ever in the opening minutes of the second half.
When Blackpool at last had a scoring chance, Adams took his partner’s perfect pass, closed inside, shot and hit a full-back with the three inside forwards waiting for a centre.
FORTUNATE
Charlton were fortunate not to lose a goal a minute later in a raid which Shimwell created and Davidson completed with a short sharp shot which hit Bartram’s leg as he jerked It out instinctively.
Blackpool’s pressure was continuous afterwards, a comer on the right prefacing a series of raids in which Davidson introduced the long through pass repeatedly.
MORE CORNERS
Another two corners came on this Blackpool right wing and. in fact, except when Shreeve thundered a free-kick inches outside a post, the Athletic were almost completely outplayed for the first time during the afternoon.
Yet another corner, the fourth in eight minutes, was conceded by Charlton’s retreating defence on Blackpool’s right wing.
From it, too, Adams was near to a goal again, Bartram taking his shot magnificently a foot above the line in a flying dive.
All the time this Adams was shooting, shot again at a pace which would have beaten any goalkeeper on earth, missed again only by inches.
It was becoming almost a continuous Blackpool assault, interrupted only by Charlton breakaways which still had plenty of purpose in them, Farm making one do-or-die clearance with the ball curling under the bar and a forward tearing in on. him.
“MORTY” IN CENTRE
Johnston carried off injured
With 15 minutes of the half gone Mortensen had moved into the centre-forward position, presumably seeking to make some sort of impression on centre-half, Phipps, who had closed every path all the afternoon to McIntosh.
Five minutes later, and for the second time within a couple of minutes, Johnston went down in front of the centre stand, this time stayed down, and had to be carried off the field.
Left with 10 men and with Davidson among the half-backs, Blackpool’s attacks inevitably began to wane, and for a time nothing of any importance happened.
Johnston was soon back, but only as a quarter-speed passenger on the right wing and with only 20 minutes left Blackpool’s prospects were fading fast.
GETS ROUGH
As the end approached it threatened to become a bit of a rough house with tackles a little wild and often unashamedly reckless.
Scarcely anything was left of a Blackpool forward line in which only one man, Adams, was in the position where he had opened the match.
Ten minutes from time the game was petering out.
Blackpool made a grandstand finish, but it was all in vain.
Result:
BLACKPOOL 0,
CHARLTON 1 (Lumley 15 mins)
Half an hour’s good football by the Charlton forwards won this match.
During those 30 minutes the Athletic’s front line was as good an attack as I have seen for a long time, with every man in position and every man making the correct pass and making it fast.
While it lasted it was good, and it sufficed to win a match in which the Blackpool forward division, even at full strength, never revealed a comparable decision.
Adams was shooting all the time, which was sound policy when few others seemed inclined to, and Mortensen, in flashes and spurts, took a lot of holding.
But as a line it had little cohesion, with McIntosh mastered in the centre and Hobson held in a grip as firm.
Yet again the half-backs were the best line, with Hayward as resolute as ever in a match in which for too long Blackpool left Charlton’s right-wing wide open.
Blackpool made a gallant rugged fight of it and actually finished with both full-backs up among the forwards.
Ultimately Charlton finished holding a lead, which good football had won, by football which had desperation and nothing else in it.
NEXT WEEK: I’LL BE JUST LIKE OLD TYNES
BLACKPOOL will play a match next week at St. James’s Park, the Newcastle United stadium, for the first time for 12 years.
A lot of water has flowed under the Tyne bridges and almost a generation of players has come and gone since the Newcastle-Blackpool match in the Second Division on January 23, 1937.
Blackpool entered that game three days only after losing a Cup replay at Bloomfield-road to Luton Town. Everybody was saying, “They’re cracking - they'll lose promotion after all."
And Blackpool, who have been subject to this sort of unpredictable behaviour for half a century, went and won 2-1 at St. James’s Park, and by the season’s end lost the Second Division championship but still qualified for First Division status.
The files reveal these 22 men were in the 1937 line-up:
NEWCASTLE UNITED: McPhillips; Richardson, Ancell, Gordon, Carver, Garnham, Park, Smith, Cairns, McMenemy, Pearson.
BLACKPOOL: Wallace; Witham, Blair (D.), Hall, Cardwell, Farrow, Watmough, Hampson, Finan, Jones (T. W.) and Hill
Not one of the 22 is serving with either club today. Two only are still in League football as players - Bob Finan at Crewe, and the wing-half, Jim Gordon, who will be coming with Middlesbrough to Blackpool after Easter.
The forward who scored both Blackpool’s goals in 1937 is today a First Division club’s manager. The name is Frank Hill, his present headquarters Turf Moor.
TOO MUCH FOOTBALL WILL TAKE TOLL OF PLAYERS
By “Spectator”
THE DANES may be wrong, but they think the Blackpool football team is wonderful. Two years, in succession Blackpool teams have toured Denmark at the end of the English season.
Now, I hear, Denmark visit. But Blackpool have the invitation.
I think it is a wise decision.' For nearly three years the Blackpool first team have been playing football almost continuously.
Two successive close seasons have been cut to less than a couple of months each. It is time these players had a rest from the game.
There is talk of a short tour of Ireland when the present season ends early in May, but if the board approve the proposal, which is not yet certain, the team will be out of England for only a week or 10 days.
The players’ vacation this time will in any event be nearer three months than two. And that, I submit, is as it ought to be.
Too long
THE football season is already too long. It infiltrates - if that is the correct word for an assault by storm- into the end of one cricket season and is still unashamedly in possession for two or three weeks after the next has opened.
I shall be told that the public demand it, but already there are signs that the public are tiring of these interminable football serials which begin with public practices in the middle of August and go on and on until nearly the middle of May.
Blackpool are fortunate this year that three of their last four home matches have in them teams concerned with championship and relegation problems.
Portsmouth, the Division leaders, are here on April 9, which, by the way, also happens to be the day of the England-Scotland match at Wembley, when Blackpool, probably deciding that they are not as fortunate as all that, may have to take the field without ‘‘The Two Stanleys."
- And Arsenal
ARSENAL, who are still not out of the championship hunt, and, in any case, will still be seeking one of the first four positions in the table and the talent cheques for which they qualify, are Good Friday’s visitors.
On April 23 come Middlesbrough, one of the relegation zone’s desperates.
There is not a lot left afterwards, except fixtures with Stoke City and Burnley, who, according to present indications, will be playing, as Blackpool now play until the season's end, for a mere £2 bonus a match, with neither exultation nor despair as the invisible stakes.
Still, it could be worse, even if Blackpool in the next few weeks will find, I fear, that all those stories at Cuptie time of the 30,000 people who never miss a match in the town will be exposed as the moonshine I said they were when they were being circulated.
The Moral
HOW many were at the Charlton match today? My estimate before the match was played was 20,000. I was not, I bet, a couple of thousand out.
The moral is that a football club out of the Cup and not in either the League race or the bottom-of-the-table cockpit can attract some of the people all of the time but not all the people all of the time.
A year ago football interest in Blackpool climbed to the peak as the season neared its end and remained there until the last week - but Blackpool went to Wembley last year. Two teams only can go there. Four teams only can even reach the semi-final.
The remainder, outside the first half-dozen and the last three or four in the table, merely play
for time for the last month or two season after season and play it out when the public are beginning to think they have seen sufficient football for a long, long time.
England tour
YES, the season is too long. It is too long for the men who play it and for the people who watch them play.
Yet two of Blackpool’s men will not have finished it on May 7. Stanley Matthews and Stanley Mortensen have been told already to prepare for the England team’s tour of the Continent which will include games in Sweden. Norway and France.
One or two others on Blackpool’s staff may be given similar orders.
I happen to know that the football of Eddie Shimwell at Maine-road a week ago impressed both the England selectors at the match.
And the time must assuredly come when Harry Johnston’s name will be seriously considered by an international selection committee, for long ago he redeemed the admittedly indifferent game he played against Scotland at Wembley two years ago, and is, in fact, playing today football of England class.
Overtime
IT is improbable that four men from one club will be taken on one tour, even if Lancashire the other day had no hesitation in choosing four of Blackpool’s '"A” team for one match.
But two already are certainties, and the other two rank at least as possibles.
These four would not complain if they had to play three or four weeks’ overtime - not if they were playing for England.
But it still remains my view that too much football is being played and that one day it will take its toll of the men who are playing it as unquestionably it is beginning to reduce the attendances of the people who watch it.
The Danes will be sorry that they are not going to see Blackpool again this year. But nobody else with a sense of proportion ought to be.
Jottings from all parts
BY "SPECTATOR" 26 March 1949
WELL Blackpool Reserve will not have to apply for re-election to the Central League next season.
Seven points from the last five games have lifted the team out of the bottom-of-the-table doldrums.
No fewer than 38 players have been called on for this team since the beginning of the season, no fewer than six goalkeepers among them.
Except for Johnny Crosland and that improved full-back, Gordon Kennedy, men have been in and out of the team, which has never had two successive games with an unchanged personnel.
That it should have lost so many points in the first half of the season was in the circumstances almost inevitable. That it should have won sufficient since to have climbed at least out of the valleys on to the foothills is an achievement which deserves notice.
***
THERE is one man out of football today who should not be out of it.
Louis Cardwell went seeking a club in vain after Crewe Alexandra had given him a free transfer a month or two ago. Now, I hear, he is working outside Blackpool but still has his home in the town, and, if I know him, it would hot take a lot to persuade him to if wear a football jersey again. Louis Cardwell is one of the few Blackpool-born men who made a name in Blackpool football between the wars.
He was the fringe of international class when he went to Manchester City for a £6,000 fee in 1938, and, if the war had not come, the fame for which he was destined might not have eluded him.
I still think Some club could profitably employ the services of a man who is still too young to have played his last game.
STRANGE when a Scot is appointed to act as trainer for a team from England playing in Scotland. It shows what a good trainer he must be.
And Johnny Lynas of Blackpool is a good one, deserves the high honour accorded him by his selection for the Football League team that played against the Scottish League in Glasgow on Wednesday.
Johnny has never a lot to say for himself. But he puts a Blackpool team into the field every week as fit as a team could be, and he has the respect of all his players.
He spent three and a half years as a captive of the Japs during the war, was appointed Blackpool’s chief trainer when he returned - he was the assistant before the war - and quietly and efficiently has been justifying his promotion ever since.
One of his boyhood rivals when he played football was Manager Matt Busby of Manchester United.
They were among the principals in another little argument at Wembley last April.
WHO goes down from the First Division? North End’s chances are not so good.
Preston, without a match today, have, nine games still to play five away, four at home.
Sheffield United and Huddersfield Town have still to visit Deepdale. If those games are won Preston may still escape. If they are lost - if they are only drawn - North End will probably be in the Second Division next season.
The other two home games are Stoke City and Bolton Wanderers. The. five teams still to be visited are Wolverhampton Wanderers, Aston Villa, Stoke, Manchester United and Liverpool - a formidable array.
Can North End do it? The odds are against it, but it’s not over yet, and, in spite of the melancholy memories of that match at Blackpool last month, Blackpool want to play Preston again next season, and, as the Deepdale men enter on their last lap, say “All the best” - and mean it.
***
COMPLIMENTS to the editor of the Manchester City programme.
It was one of the first programmes I had seen for a Blackpool away match this season which spelled all the Blackpool players’ names correctly.
“Suart” was “Suart” and not Stuart.” “Hayward” was not Haywood,” and “Shimwell” was not - with all respect to the Minister of War! - “ShinwelL”
Half a dozen times this season I have seen Mortensen’s name as Mortenson.” And for the first time, too, in the biographical sketches of the visiting team, the correct fee Blackpool paid Sheffield United for Eddie Shimwell was given. The figure was £7,000 - and not, as I have seen repeatedly, £9,000.
A FLASHBACK in the Manchester City programme last weekend gave the Blackpool team that played against the City at Maine-road last season.
Less than 13 months separated the two games, and yet only one Blackpool forward, Stanley Mortensen, appeared in both matches.
Three of the five who wore tangerine jerseys at Maine-road on February 21, 1948, Jim McIntosh (Everton), George Dick (West Ham United) and Murdoch McCormack (Crewe Alexandra) are no longer at Blackpool.
A fourth, Alec Munro, spends as many weekends scouting for the club these days as playing for one of its teams. They come and go. . . .
STANLEY MATTHEWS gives himself another two seasons in first-class football. Peter Doherty, when I was talking to him the other day, gives himself one.
All those reports about the Irishman being on the short list? for several managerial posts are a little premature. ‘“But,” he admits, “if the chance offered itself to enter management I should be inclined to take it.”
He is in partnership in a poultry firm in Blackpool, but, in his own words, “I love football so much that even when I’ve played my last match I still don’t want to go out of the game.” game could not, afford to lose him.
But these days he is finding that however willing the spirit may be - and who has ever had a more willing spirit in football? the flesh is weak.
Strained tendons behind an ankle, legacy of a simple accident while training, kept him out of Huddersfield’s team for the critical match at Middlesbrough last weekend.
Sad tale from Everton
It was Blackpool's biggest defeat since Sunderland won 5-0 at Blackpool on January 18, 1947.
It was the first time Blackpool had lost five goals in an away match since the war.
Eddie Wainwright's four goals made him the first forward to score four against a Blackpool defence since Jackie Robinson had a similar total in the 1947 Sunderland match.
Everton had lost 10 goals to one in the three previous matches with Blackpool.
And - most amazing fact of all - there were 25,548 people at the match. Which shows what punishment Englishmen can take!
IN DEFENCE OF CITY
IT was no disgrace for young Albert Hobson to be held by Eric Westwood, the Manchester City and Football League full-back at Maine-road a week ago.
Stanley Matthews will tell you that this full-back is one of the best - if not the best - he has met this season, was given few chances by him when the City played at Blackpool in November.
Eric's partner, Bert Sproston, will never play in an England team again, but he goes on and on and at times looks about as good as ever. His positional game is a model to all young footballers. He played his first game for his country 12 years ago, but long before 1937 he had made his name with Leeds United.
Many of the wing-forwards he meets these days - Rex Adams was one of them a week ago - were still in Standard One when he was graduating at Elland-road.
“I'm not as fast as I used to be,” he confesses, “but you haven't to run about a lot in this game if you use a bit of intelligence.”
Truer words were never spoken, but how many of the present generation of players take any notice of them? .
Jim, Doug, Frank and Joe
EX-BLACKPOOL men in the news:
Jim Todd, the wing-half who became an - Irish international less than a year after being signed by Manager Joe Smith, leading the Port Vale forwards at Ipswich, tireless as ever but without a goal.
Douglas Blair, brother of Jimmy, scoring one of Cardiff City’s three at Bury.
Manager Frank Hill of Burnley showing slow-motion film shots taken to correct playing errors, during his team’s recent games.
Joe Robinson establishing himself in the Hull City goal.
Saw game, heard National
THERE were two events for the price of one in Blackpool's centre stand this afternoon.
One of the spectators came to the match with a wireless set and the Grand National broadcast was heard from beginning to end with the football match surging backwards and forwards only a few yards away.
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