THE GAME
Reports reached the Press box that the gates had been locked.
Eric Hayward, the understudy captain, lost the toss. The United had the aid of a freshening wind, but it was the Newcastle goal that was first menaced, Suart and Kelly building an advance which ended prematurely in a packed defence.
Afterwards, in the opening minutes, the Newcastle right wing was raiding constantly, Suart ending one of these attacks, and Hayward crossing to this flank th halt another, before Milburn went racing after Taylor’s forward pass from a position which appeared a couple of yards offside.
FARM COMES OUT
A goal was near when that happened as early as the second minute and would have come if Farm, with his defence waiting for a whistle which never went, had not advanced from his deserted position to win a race for the ball with England’s centre-forward, and to clear it anywhere with 60,000 people thundering in tempestuous excitement
Constantly afterwards, with the Newcastle front line playing the long pass perfectly, centres were being crossed from this Newcastle right wing. Farm holding two under the bar in rapid succession.
There were infrequent inconclusive breakaways by Blackpool, but exactly six minutes passed before Stanley Matthews was given a pass and then, strictly, he was not given one, but went wandering inside in search of the ball for himself before crossing a centre which a massed Newcastle defence repelled.
CROSSES ANOTHER
Another minute and he was in the game again, juggling impudently with the ball with two men refusing to go into the tackle against him and, in the end, eluding them both raking the United’s goal with a centre which Fairbrother held in mid-air as it was curling out of his reach.
TWO ESCAPES
Then Blackpool goal falls at last
It was still, however, nearly all the United.
The lead, which had been threatening almost every minute from the first, came in the 14th under a pressure which had become in one massed raid almost interminable.
There were a couple of escapes before the ball reached the net.
Farm tore out from his line to make a goalkeeper’s clearance with Milburn darting after a long pass into an open space. Back the ball came. Garrett half-hit it away in a valiant hooked clearance.
Back it came again. One man in a scattered defence appeared to miskick, sliced the ball to his right.
MILBURN SCORES
On to it Mitchell pounced, squared it inside, left JACK MILBURN to shoot from 10 yards out a ball so fast and low that the falling Farm could never have seen it. It was a goal which was deserved.
There was no plan in Blackpool’s forward line which continued to make breakaways on both wings, but seldom reached shooting distance.
All the time Mortensen was chasing passes which were bouncing in front of him and always away from him yards too fast.
It was speed, decision and the long passing game which were outpacing and often scattering Blackpool with 20 minutes gone.
HALF-BACKS WIN
For minutes it was nearly one-way traffic on the Blackpool goal with the Newcastle wing halfbacks constantly winning possession of the ball from Blackpool’s inside forwards and releasing one forward pass after another to a direct aggressive front line.
Twenty five minutes had gone before Fairbrother had to repel an actual shot. Then, McCall, darting to a loose ball, shot so fast and so unexpectedly that Newcastle’s giant goalkeeper had to beat it out with one hand as he lurched sideways at it.
GOAL No. 2
Robledo sidesteps Farm to score it
Four minutes later it was 2-0. This was another goal which seemed for minutes always to have been coming; yet, when it came, it was, I think, a little debatable.
Mitchell took a long pass from his wing half-back-one of the passes which had constantly been nutting Newcastle’s attack into the game-crossed it from the line.
NO WHISTLE-
In to meet it raced GEORGE ROBLEDO, the forward who played against Blackpool in the Barnsley Cuptie, hesitated as if he expected the offside whistle - and I think about 50,000 of the 60,000 people expected it - ran on when it was not blown, sidestepped Farm as the goalkeeper came out in desperation at him and almost walked the ball over the empty line.
Only after glancing towards the line where no flag was waving would Mr. Clarke award a goal.
Within a minute, after the sort of raid which is his speciality even on days when his team are outplayed, Mortensen cut inside, beat two men by his speed, shot into the side net.
Yet, afterwards, Newcastle's pressure was as fast and as furious as ever.
Blackpool’s defence, hammered remorselessly at times, conceded its first corner in the 32nd minute, its second in the 33rd as Farm punched over the bar a ball which was falling in behind him, and its third in the 34th as Hayward hit a clearance anywhere to hold these nonstop Newcastle forwards at bay.
LEAD REDUCED
Yet two minutes later Blackpool reduced the lead and reduced it with one of the most brilliant shots I have seen for a long time.
Young Ewan FENTON, who had been making a habit of scoring half-back’s goals in the second team, scored this one, taking a loose ball 30 yards out and within half a dozen yards of the right touchline, and shooting it at such a pace that the unprepared Fairbrother dived at it, reached it with both fists, but could only punch it into the far wall of the net.
LINE WAKES UP
That awakened Blackpool’s front line at last.
Another goal might have come within a couple of minutes, Davidson ending a fast raid with his partner with a perfect centre which Mortensen missed in a great leap by inches only in the jaws of an open Newcastle goal.
Blackpool’s football for the remainder of the half was a revelation after the inconclusive game which had prefaced it.
Matthews opened one raid with a punted forward pass which put the left wing all on its own before Adams crossed a ball which skidded out by the far post with no man in position to meet it and the-Newcastle defence not half as united as its name, or as earlier it had been.
Half-time: Newcastle United 2, Blackpool 1.
SECOND HALF
Garrett had to concede a corner in the first 10 seconds of half.
Fenton and Davidson cleared it, but it merely prefaced another, one which Blackpool disputed excitably as Kelly shepherded the ball while Farm collected it, and Mr. Clarke decided that while all this was going on the ball had been over the line.
Still, it made no difference, for this corner was also repelled, and afterwards the Blackpool forwards were often in a game which had gone perceptibly slower without ever testing Fairbrother or even reaching shooting range of him.
A lot of aggression had gone out of Newcastle’s football which was still open and direct where Blackpool’s was a little complex, but not as submissive as it had been.
GOAL DISALLOWED
In the fifth minute of the half. In fact, Blackpool had the ball in the net for a goal which was disallowed, McCall taking a pass from Mortensen which bounced up, hit his hand and fell at his feet before he shot it so fast that it struck Fair brother’s knees and off them cannoned over the line.
There was no dispute about the referee’s refusal to grant a goal which, in any case, nearly came, a minute later as Mortensen shot a free-kick from 30 yards which required a big sideways leap by Fairbrother to reach and parry as the ball was rising away from him near the far post.
UNITED OUTPLAYED
For the first time during the afternoon Newcastle were going back everywhere, with half an hour left, outplayed at times, and at times, too. actually outpaced.
Constantly Fairbrother was in action, once holding a free kick by Kelly at knee height as Mortensen challenged him.
Yet in a Newcastle raid the United nearly went further in front and would have made it 3-1 if Farm had not produced a clearance and a half, reaching Walker’s high curling centre and holding it brilliantly with two forwards on top of him.
GRIM GAME
Afterwards, for a long time there was not a lot in it with the football grim and earnest but little else with the forwards’ passes going wrong everywhere.
Newcastle had lost a lot of their pace and nearly all their punch. All the football which amounted to anything was being played in this half by Blackpool, whose forwards won another free kick which Mortensen this time shot wide of a post with Fairbrother unsighted and, I think, beaten by the ball’s pace Another minute and Blackpool were nearly on terms again as Adams, racing in from an open position created for him by Kelly and Davidson, shot a ball which hit Fairbrother’s chest, bounced out off it and was retrieved by the goalkeeper as he fell forward desperately at the forward’s feet.
Except when Hayward conceded a free kick perilously close to the penalty area, the Newcastle front line which had monopolised the first half by sheer pace and fury, was scarcely in the game at all.
Fairbrother was still clearing centres from both wings repeatedly.
And yet in another Newcastle breakaway 15 minutes from time Farm made the greatest save of the match, beating out in a flying leap a shot by Milburn after Garrett had lost a bouncing ball and Mitchell had given the England centre-forward the sort of shooting position from which England’s centre-forwards should score.
UNFORTUNATE
Ten minutes were left and Blackpool were unfortunate in a referee’s decision which may, in fact, have lost the team a point, Mr. Clarke giving a free-kick 30 yards out and halting the game with McCall and Mortensen both in front of the deserted Fairbrother and with the Newcastle goal at-their mercy.
The United by this time were obviously content to be playing out time, and yet in another breakaway Farm made a stupendous save as Mitchell closed in on him from an open position and shot a ball which the goalkeeper reached and deflected with his finger-tips over the bar to a thunderous cheer.
Five minutes from time a bouncing ball eluded Hayward and MILBURN brushing past him shot a great goal into the roof of the net to settle it.
Result:
NEWCASTLE UNITED 3 (Milburn 14, 85, Robledo 29 mins)
BLACKPOOL 1 (Fenton 36 mins)
Blackpool in the second half nearly won a point in a game which had seemed irretrievably lost in the first half hour. Match was open until Newcastle’s third and late goal. Blackpool defence was often scattered and outpaced under Newcastle's first half pressure.
All the time the full-backs left Newcastle’s wing forwards with too many open spaces. The half-backs were nearly as good as ever with Fenton warranting his inclusion.
Forwards were good line in midfield after half-time but there was no great punch at close quarters.
The line's game was nearly always too close. Yet lit the end Blackpool made a match of it out of what had threatened to be a massacre.
NEXT WEEK: Portsmouth, here next week, have not beaten Blackpool since the war
SO Portsmouth will not come to Blackpool next weekend as Cup finalists. But the Fratton Park men will come as First Division leaders.
That, at least, should lift the match above the end-of-the-season ruck, writes “Spectator.”
Remarkable that this present No. 1 team in the Division will enter this game still seeking a postwar victory against Blackpool, who won 1-0 last season - the goal was Harry Johnston's first and only goal in the Division since the war - and 4-3 in 1946-47, a match in which Willie Buchan scored three times.
At Fratton Park, too, Portsmouth have never been able to defeat Blackpool, and it is a fact that it is as long ago as August 31, 1938, that a Portsmouth team last took a couple of points from Blackpool in a League match.
That is one of those sequences which cannot go on for ever. Not even a triumphant Portsmouth coming into Blackpool with the Cup a week after the sensational defeat of the Wolves in the 1939 Final could end it.
Whether Portsmouth with the New Look can do it - the Portsmouth who have led the League nearly all the season and won 15 points out of a possible 30 away from home- is a question which will be answered next Saturday.
The odds will obviously be on the leaders against a Blackpool under strength. But there will not, I think, be a lot in it, whatever happens.
IT WAS A LAST-MINUTE DECISION
The simple facts of the Matthews case
By “Spectator”
YOU would think, hearing some people talk this week, that the Blackpool FC directors were operating a bucket shop instead of a football club.
I am told in a dozen letters that these, directors were guilty of sharp practice because when the Blackpool team took the field against Charlton Athletic, Stanley Matthews was not in it.
But who said he would be in it?
All week, in one statement after another, the club announced that he might not be in it and, as late as the eve of the match, nominated six forwards and reported that unless the England forward passed a final test on the morning of the match he would definitely be out of it.
Hundreds of people, so I am told, went to the match under the impression that the England wing forward would be playing. All my correspondents assert, if not directly at least by implication, that the club deliberately cheated this impression in advance for the benefit of the box office.
In justice
NOW I am not briefing myself as counsel for the defence of the Blackpool Football Club Ltd., but this is not correct. It is time that in justice to the club the full facts of the case were published.
It was in the Preston match, as long ago as February 26, that Matthews was put out of action with a twisted ankle, which, when I saw him a couple of days later, was still inflamed and torn where studs had scraped it.
Every day afterwards, even during the weeks when he had his music hall engagements at Preston and Oldham, he was under treatment.
Four days before the Charlton match he was out on the track and said “I think I should be fit for the weekend,” but the exercise had so affected the ankle that a day later when I was at the ground he was on the table again, the ankle still padded.
Goal-scorer
WHEN a few days later he was fielded in the second team and has ever since remained in it, he was, therefore, merely fulfilling the modest destiny designed for him by the club.
But in recent times he has been scoring goals - seven in his last six games - until today he is the Central League team’s leading marksman, and as a result public demand alone has given him the position in the First Division on which Blackpool have been and still are, I am told, prepared to spend a lot of money.
"Duggie” Davidson may be the man for the position. He has the height which so many of the other men in the line have been denied by nature - and the few extra pounds, too.
And, according to his record, he can shoot, which so many Blackpool forwards this season have seemed either unable or disinclined to do.
His verdict
HE had a test on Friday before noon, and at the end of it was asked for his own verdict.
Stanley Matthews has always been a player who has never consented to appear in a match unless he was convinced that he was 100 per cent., not merely, I am convinced, for his own selfish sake, but for the sake of the people who go to watch him and expect something a bit out of the common from him every time he puts on his boots.
He was not convinced after this test that his ankle would last out a game. So he said so, which was honest of him. and Manager Joe Smith immediately informed the newspapers that a final selection would have to be made from six forwards.
Another test followed on the morning of the match with similar result. Again Matthews would not commit himself unreservedly to the opinion that he was fit as he always prefers to be.
The statement
WHEN the Blackpool manager and the chairman (Mr. Harry Evans) left him at 11 a.m. to go to a Lancashire ground to watch a player - a player, by the way, who was not so good as they had been told he was and for whom no offer will now be made - they told Matthews “It’s up to you to decide - you know whether you can make it or not.”
And half an hour before the kick-off, when such importance was attached to the case that the club took the unprecedented course of issuing an official statement on the subject, above the signature of the hon. secretary, Mr. Richard Seed, Matthews, still wanting to play but fearing the consequences if he took the field, was told “In the circumstances well leave you out.”
It would be idle to pretend that the imminence of the England-Scotland match had no influence on this ultimate and yet pardonably belated decision
A gamble
I TALKED to Matthews before the match and frankly he admitted “Naturally I want to play for England, although there’s probably now less than a 50-50 chance that I shall be asked to go to Wembley.
And, obviously, it would be a bit of a gamble to put the ankle to the test of a League match so soon after being out of the game for a month.”
That, too, I think, was reasonable, for Matthews - unfortunately for the game he has adorned for 15 or 16 years - is not as young as he used to be, and. as Peter Doherty and others of his generation have learned, even minor injuries take a long time to heal once you’re in the thirties.
So, in order that the player’s chances of being chosen for England should not be prejudiced, he was left out of the team.
And that is all there was in it.
All this talk about the club leading the public up the garden path is wrong.
Remote prospect
PROSPECTS, however, that such a player will be signed before next week’s transfer ban begins to operate are remote.
Blackpool’s position in the First Division today, while not exactly exalted, is still not insecure enough to warrant the club entering into one of those stampedes into the market which the affluent can afford.
Yet, whether an inside forward of class is signed or not, a goalkeeper will have to be. That, as I see it, in spite of the famine in goals among the forwards because of the absence of one man who could weld the line into a cohesive force, remains Priority No. 1.
No differences
AND wrong, too, is the inevitable sequel to the statement which was issued before the Charlton match-the reports that there wore differences of opinion between the player and the club.
There are not - and there never have been - in spite of all those papers who were on the lines for hours last Sunday scenting a sensation which existed only in their own fertile imaginations.
I knew a mountain would be made out of this molehill, but it is not such a big mountain, and today it is slowly subsiding to the level of the plain.
Blackpool’s only concern, I should think, is the accusation that there was a conspiracy a week ago to persuade people to pay to watch Stanley Matthews when it was known behind the scenes that he would not be playing.
Nobody knew that until half an hour before the kick-off - not even Stanley Matthews,
Jottings from all parts
BY "SPECTATOR" 2 April 1949
DICK WITHINGTON, the former Blackpool forward, has had his first game for Chesterfield’s Second Division team, was in the front line that won at Blackburn last weekend.
Strange that a wing raider who never missed a game with Rochdale in the Third Division last season should have had to wait until the end of March for his first selection by his new club.
But football for this man from South Shields has never been the golden glory everybody said it would be for him when, after being signed as a schoolboy by Blackpool shortly before the end, they said his name should have been “Dick Whittington.”
He was Stanley Mortensen’s partner in the boys’ team that played on an Easter tour at Blackpool signed the wing and at the time it was said that they signed it chiefly to acquire Withington and not Mortensen.
That’s one of those old wives’ tales, but the general opinion at the time was that one was as good as the other.
Yet one soared to fame and the other makes news now when he has a Second Division game. Which is football all over.
***
WHEN I was up in Consett, the little steel and coal town a dozen miles from Newcastle, two or three years ago, I was told about a forward who was playing for the town’s team in the North-Eastern League.
One day, I was told, he would be a First Division forward. I had heard the story so many limes about so many unknowns that I forgot this one, and, in fact, had seldom since seen the player’s name.
It was in the Blackpool programme last weekend: Tom Lumley.
He’s 23 now, and Manager Jimmy Seed went all the way back to his native north-east to sign him. At Blackpool he scored the goal that won the game. It was his first goal in the First Division.
IT’S been told before, but it’s worth telling again how a young man presented himself to Manager Joe Smith one day when the ex-Bolton Wanderer was at Reading and asked for a trial.
"Where do you play?” asked Mr. Smith.
"I’m a centre-forward,” said the recruit.
Having seen him in action in a trial game, Mr. Smith was unable to agree with this opinion, and politely but firmly said so. Whereupon the young man went away disconsolate and decided that if he could not score goals - and he seemed singularly unable to - he would learn how to stop other forwards scoring them.
And in the fulness of time a goalkeeper he became - and such goalkeeper that today he is among the first half-dozen in England.
His name is Sam Bartram, and there were times last weekend when he defied the Blackpool attack on his own.
What's gone wrong with Blackpool in home games? Sine the beginning of December, nearly four months ago, three games only have been won at Bloomfield-road.
Sheffield United and Charlton have won in the League and Stoke City in the Cup - and Huddersfield Town, Sunderland and Preston North End have played draws.
Ten home points have been lost in the last 10 home games.
What would have happened if Blackpool had won those points instead of conceding them? Blackpool would have gone to St James’s Park today as third team in the table with only a point fewer than Newcastle United.
It’s only a small word, “if,” but there’s such a lot in it.
***
ATTENDANCES are falling at football.
I wrote last week on this page that there were signs that the postwar boom was ending. There are still reports before every Cup- tie of all-night queues for tickets and black marketeers reaping their ungodly harvest before every big match.
Yet a comparison of the figures for this year’s Cup semi-finals and the one Blackpool and the ’Spurs played at Villa Park a year ago is significant.
The receipts a week ago were £15,000 at Highbury, £15,236 at Hillsborough.
At Villa Park, where the ground record is only 3,000 above the Highbury figure and 4,000 beyond the Hillsborough record, the ticket sale totalled £18,817 a year ago.
It’s only a straw in the wind, but it shows which way the wind is blowing with less money in circulation.
I EXPECT that Jimmy Stewart the ex-Blackpool trainer, will be in town again when Portsmouth, the League leaders, come to Blackpool next weekend He never misses the chance of a visit to Blackpool.
Every year since he left he has had a few weeks on holiday here in the summer months.
These days Jimmy is more or less a free agent, is OC of the training staff at Fratton Park.
There is no comparable post in first-class football today, and that Mr, Stewart should have been appointed to it is a recognition o£ his qualities as a trainer and at indication of the progressive policy which has put Portsmouth on the football map.
There would be considerable depression at Fratton Park after last weekend’s Cup semi-final defeat, but there would be one man who will take it like philosopher. That man is Jimmy Stewart.
THEY say there is no played who can take a penalty a Blackpool. But what about Sunderland?
Of the last 25 penalties awarded to the Roker Park team eight only have been converted which works out at about an average of one in every three.
Latest to miss is Tom Wright the Scot whose football against Preston North End at Deepdale a fortnight ago impressed all those Blackpool people who saw it.
Blackpool have converted four and missed three penalties this season. Nothing all that distinguished about that record, buff it positively glitters by comparison with Sunderland’s failures.
MILES - BUT NO SMILES
PRESENT indications are that a few hundred miles will be put on Blackpool’s travelling next season in the First Division.
Except for a miracle Southampton will rise from the Second Division this time and give Blackpool a 630 miles there-and-back trek instead of - as is unfortunately possible, even probable - less than an hour’s journey to Deepdale.
And if they have not to go to London for a match either at Tottenham or Fulham it will be a Birmingham fixture with West Bromwich Albion, or it might even yet be a match with Cardiff in South Wales.
Prewar travelling distances before the war for Blackpool were 4,904 miles in the First Division and 6,103 in the Second. Next season’s in the First Division can scarcely be less than 4,500.
CLIMBING THE LADDER
It's a slow process, a long term policy, signing young unknowns and training them year by year for football’s top class.
Most clubs these days prefer to go out with a cheque book and sign the complete article. It's expensive, but it shows immediate results - sometimes.
Blackpool are specialising, and have been since the war, in building their own teams from scratch. The entire defence in last week’s Central League team at Maine-road - goalkeeper, full-backs and half-backs - with the exception of Johnny Crosland, the captain and centre-half - were products of the “A” team, and so was the centre-forward.
As many as nine “A” team have played in a match for Blackpool Reserve this season, and, in emergency, two, Jack Wright and Ewan Fenton, have been drafted direct from the West Lancashire League to the First Division.
And Rex Adams, who is playing at outside-left for the first team these days, has had more games in the “A” team than for the first reserves since he signed for Blackpool last summer.
On short time
A MAN with a wrist watch four minutes fast provided spectators at Bloomfield-road, Blackpool, this afternoon, with a first-class laugh.
He was Mr. J. II. Taylor, of Southport, referee in the Blackpool Reserve game.
Unaware that his watch was wrong, Mr. Taylor blew for half-time, and, with the players, dashed towards the dressing room.
The little company disappeared from the field ignoring good - humoured shouts of “Get a new watch” and “What about the time?” until the linesman, realising what was wrong, dashed across to Mr. Taylor, told him what had happened, and brought everybody back for a few minutes’ more football.
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