THE GAME
The losing of the toss by Blackpool made no difference for there was no wind.
In the first minute Hayward leaped at a high ball, mistimed it, gave Peppitt a clear course to open a raid which ended in George Mountford, the man who scored the goal that dismissed Blackpool from the Cup, shooting a fast rising ball which hit Johnston and cannoned cut into a ruck of men.
NONSTOP RAIDS
One centre after another crossed Blackpool’s goal in the Stoke raids which followed nonstop for the next two minutes, Johnston leaping across the goal to repel another shot before this early full scale offensive terminated at last in Sellars slicing the ball high and wide of a post.
Blackpool’s first raid, opened by a neat pass by Matthews to his half-back, ended - with McIntosh yards offside and was in fact, only a brief interlude in continuous Stoke pressure
George Mountford zig-zagged past three men in another of these continuous and almost furious raids which had nothing end-of-the-season about them, gave his partner a pass which Malkin lest in a scoring position.
But a goal was always coming. It came in the 7th minute. George Mountford made it, glided forward a perfect pass.
PEPPITT SCORES
After it PEPPITT raced, brushed Hayward off balance, mastered the bouncing ball as the half-back fell, scored with a fast low shot past the deserted Farm with the goalkeeper racing out desperately to meet him.
The Stoke forwards might have been playing the Cup-tie all over again, so fast and so intense was their football.
Peppitt pursued another long lobbed pass two minutes after his goal, shot a light bouncing ball as it reared up in front of him, lashed it inches wide of a post.
IN RETREAT
Blackpool were scarcely in the game
Blackpool were scarcely in the game at all, except as a force in retreat and a desperate retreat too.
Sellars was too fast for Mortensen as the Blackpool forward was moving into the first shooting position which had offered itself to the Blackpool front line in the first 15 minutes.
Twice, afterwards, Wilkinson was in action, holding centres flying high across his goal, the second time falling, but still holding the ball as he fell with McIntosh on top of him.
PENALTY GOAL
A corner for Blackpool followed, but in the 20th minute, after this brief frustrated challenge, Stoke went further in front.
This was a debatable sort of goal. There was an interchange of passes between Caton and Peppitt, racing in partnership through a scattering defence. Hayward galloped into the breach, moved to Caton, was, as I saw it, reeling off balance as the inside left crossed a ball which hit his lifted hands.
Without hesitation, and in spite of all Blackpool’s protests, Mr. Gibson gave a penalty which FRANK MOUNTFORD converted with a shot so fast that Farm never seemed to move an inch to it.
BALL BURSTS
Within a minute, with none of his forwards shooting or in position to shoot, Johnston hit wide a ball which hit a spike rail on the terrace barrier and burst.
Afterwards ,Blackpool were not as outplayed as they had been Mortensen shot one bouncing ball wide to which the unprepared Wilkinson seemed to move ominously late, and McIntosh in another raid hit an awkward bouncing ball over the bar.
Yet, in one swift advance, the City’s aggressive forwards nearly made it 3-0 as the first half hour ended, Caton shooting in a ball which Farm beat out brilliantly for Suart, in front of a nearly open goal, to complete the clearance.
10 MEN
Kelly, injured, leaves field
A minute later Kelly went to earth in a collision, was assisted off the field, and, after protracted attention on the line, walked to the dressing-room with an ambulance man’s coat about his shoulders.
Blackpool, left with 10 men, and with Davidson in the half-back line, were still going back almost everywhere without being as completely outplayed as in those opening tempestuous 20 minutes.
Blackpool’s football was not, and never has been, as direct as the City’s, had again too many passes in it. It had little of Stanley Matthews in it either.
CLOSE WATCH
I should not think the outside right had half-a-dozen passes in the first 35 minutes. Not many more had reached any other Blackpool forward with a close watch being posted on Mortensen all the time.
Strangely, Blackpool had more of the game with 10 men than they had ever had with li and, in fact, might have reduced the lead five minutes before halftime, when, after Mortensen had created a perfect position for McIntosh, the centre-forward stabbed his shot slowly at the goalkeeper from the one big scoring chance which Blackpool’s front line had been able to achieve all the half.
McCALL’S GOAL
Still it made no difference. For a minute later the lead was reduced, McCALL taking Mortensen’s pass in a position where everybody expected him to make another pass, 20 yards out.
Instead the little man took a chance and shot a ball whose pace beat Wilkinson, the goalkeeper leaping a fraction of a second too late and falling on his line as the ball appeared to hit the underside of the bar and cannon over the line behind him.
For a couple of minutes the goalkeeper, half stunned by his fall, was under attention, arid for the remaining two minutes of the half his goal was under the pressure of a team playing football which it had never approached at full strength.
That was the remarkable paradox of this half.
Half-time: Stoke City 2, Blackpool 1.
SECOND HALF
A report reached the Press box at half-time that Hugh Kelly had broken his nose.
He insisted, nevertheless, on coming back at outside-left.
In a couple of minutes Blackpool were level. Again it was a penalty, and again it seemed a decision which had no shade of leniency in it.
Three men - the two Stoke fullbacks and Mortensen - leaped at a ball which bounced high. In mid-air, as I saw the incident, the ball hit Watkins hand. That the full-back handled was indisputable.
Whether the offence was intentional was probably open to question But again Mr. Gibson pointed summarily to the “spot” and SHIMWELL scored with a shot which was passing Wilkinson’s right arm as the goalkeeper fell.
FINE PERFORMANCE
This was a remarkable achievement by Blackpool - to be outplayed for over half an hour with 11 men, to reduce the lead with 10, and eventually to equalise with 10 men and a gallant half-back who was wandering about the left wing with a handkerchief pressed to his nose.
And still Blackpool continued to raid on a defence which was rapidly losing its composure under the unexpected pressure and at one time conceded three free-kicks in as many minutes.
Malkin was barely wide after a perfect raid with Peppitt which tore Blackpool’s defence wide open but for the first 10 minutes of the half the game was moving almost continuously on the City’s goal.
McIntosh stormed one oath for himself by sheer pace before crossing a pass which, McCall lost in a packed defence.
A minute later, too, and another raid, which the courageous Kelly opened,
McIntosh taking Mortensen’s headed pass, racing on with it and shooting against Wilkinson’s outstretched leg.
That for a time was the end of Blackpool’s amazing bid in a game which had seemed lost beyond redemption.
THUNDERBOLT SHOTS
Twice in minute Suart and Mortensen were laid low this see-saw game.
Hayward, with a miniature battle still raging almost under Blackpool’s bar, cleared off an empty line, and within another minute Johnston had halted another all-out raid.
Twenty minutes were left and a big chance offered itself to Blackpool in an unexpected breakaway with Stoke’s pressure still at its height.
Then a long lobbed clearance bounced away from Franklin. McIntosh was after it like a hare, reached it inside the centre circle, raced half the field’s length with England’s centre-half at his heels, hooked his shot wide with the goalkeeper almost at his mercy.
CITY LEAD AGAIN
George Mountford finds the net
Two minutes later the City were in front again. There was another massed raid.
In the end, after two centres had been repelled Caton crossed a third and on to it G. MOUNTFORD raced, steadied himself and almost deliberately shot wide of the unsighted Farms right hand.
Blackpool’s grip on the game had almost gone and yet with only 10 minutes left another great chance was lost, Mortensen making position brilliantly for himself, losing the ball once retrieving it again, and cutting inside on to a deserted goalkeeper before shooting fast into Wilkinson’s arms.
Result:
STOKE C. 3 (Peppitt 7, Mountford (F) 20, Mountford (G) 72 mins)
BLACKPOOL 2 (McCall 40, Shimwell 47 mins)
This was a grand show by Blackpool. The match was being lost everywhere to a direct Stoke forward line for half an hour. During those 30 minutes a defeat and a big defeat seemed inevitable.
Then, with only 10 fit men Blackpool made it 2-2, outplayed the City, lost in the end, but if two big chances had been taken near the end might actually have won.
The Blackpool forwards’ football was a revelation in the last hour. All the short passes were discarded and a path to goal stormed.
The half-backs had for once an, indifferent first half hour, but the full-backs stood remarkably firm.
Stanley Matthews was not a lot in the game. The class was there but it revealed itself only in glimpses against fast, almost ferocious tackles.
NEXT WEEK: BURNLEY - AND THEN THE CURTAIN
CURTAIN fall at Blackpool next week.
And for the last match come Burnley for an all-Lancashire game whose chief interest will be in the question: “Can the Blackpool forwards score a goal?”
For no Blackpool forward has yet scored against Burnley since the Turf Moor club’s promotion two years ago. And for that matter no Blackpool team has yet won a point from Burnley.
Twice last season it was 1-0. This season, in a December game, at Turf Moor, it was 2-0. And all these matches ended with the general impression that if there was a gap in the stonewall Burnley line, it had escaped Blackpool’s notice.
Blackpool, who have won only three times in front of their own public since the beginning of the year, should not find Burnley’s defence as impregnable as it appeared to be only a few months ago, for the records reveal that it has lost 30 goals in away games this season.
As there was also only a difference in goal averages between the teams when today’s matches opened, Blackpool might decide to celebrate the season’s end by actually winning another home match.
At least, if they score it will be something.
THE YOUNG MEN OF BLACKPOOL
This has been season of solid progress
By “Spectator”
AS the season approaches its end in Blackpool nearly everybody I meet has this epitaph to pronounce: “It’s not been so good, but it might have been worse"
That apparently tells the whole story in the fewest possible words, and appears to be a model of condensation.
Yet something has happened this season which de serves some fate other than being damned with this sort of faint praise. It is about time that the Blackpool public learned all about it.
These are days, in football and everything else, of star cult worship. People think only of Blackpool as a club which has a team in the First Division, a team that went to Wembley a year ago and has since, in common with a few other teams who have achieved this glory, lost a little of its glamour.
They are aware too, that there is a team in the Central League, and that there are actually three others playing somewhere out in the wilderness of junior football.
Star glitter
BUT all that, I fear, is too often beneath the notice of those folk who are dazzled by the glitter of the stars - or not dazzled and think as a result that the football world has come to an end - and have yet to appreciate the wisdom of the famous Carrol Levis dictum that the unknowns of today are the famous of tomorrow.
Mr. Joe Smith’s youth movement at Blackpool may not yet pay big dividends for a year or two, but at the end of this its third year there are unmistakable signs that it is justifying itself.
I wrote long ago that Blackpool were merely making a virtue of necessity by concentrating on the training of young recruits on a long-term policy instead of entering the transfer market stampede.
Blackpool had not after the war, and still have not, the £ s. d. to compete with the clubs in the millionaire belt.
Into the market
THAT is not to say that Blackpool should never go into the market for the men with the big names.
They may have to go there during the summer to find the forward who is manifestly required to give punch to a line which is still apparently staking everything on one man. Stanley Mortensen, scoring the goals.
An inside forward to blend the line is no less of a priority, either. But in the general sense Blackpool cannot afford this luxurious mode of living and have to specialise instead on producing their own material from the raw product.
It’s being done, too, and a lot of the critics said it couldn’t be done in the present commercialism of a game which began as a sport and has become a big business.
From "A" team
CONSIDER these players, who. in the school which the Blackpool manager founded soon after the war, with Mr. V. F. McKenna as his first assistant, have graduated from the “A” team:
Johnny Crosland, who played a year ago as a full-back at Wembley - a centre-half at fullback - in the first Cuptie in which he had ever played.
Tommy Garrett, who is a fullback of such infinite promise that I would never experiment with him as a centre-forward.
Ewan Fenton, a wing-half who may yet, in my opinion, be converted into the inside forward Blackpool are seeking, but who, in any event, has never seemed this season out of his class in the First Division.
Jack Wright, a full-back who is probably one of the club’s best young prospects.
— And others
THERE are others, too, such as Rex Adams, who may have been given his baptism of fire a little too soon in the First Division, but who may yet make his name there; Albert Hearn, Kenneth Horne and Jack Mudie.
Four of the amateurs, Ernest Rigby, David Frith, Ken Horne and W. J. Slater - the last-named in full training, could walk into any First Division team in the land today - created an all-time record by assisting Lancashire into the northern counties championship, and were in the 2-2 draw against Yorkshire at Sheffield last weekend - the first time four men have ever been chosen from one club by the county selectors.
And, before the war, when the present nursery plan was in its early days, Harry Johnston, Stanley Mortensen, Ronnie Suart, Jim Blair, Jim McIntosh, and half a dozen others who have since won fame, learned the ABC of the game in it.
The talent is there - and some of it must mature.
Title won
THE “A” team, which represents the sort of Upper Sixth in the school, won the championship of the West Lancashire League last Saturday evening at Chorley, where, watched by Headmaster Smith, a big centre- forward from the Nottingham district, Geoffrey Brunt, whose name may yet make news in Blackpool football, scored five goals.
This “A” team have not lost a match since September.
Since the war, in addition to the new championship, they have won the West Lancashire League title and the Richardson Cup in 1946-47, the West Lancashire Cup last year, and today are in this Cup final again.
Fylde Leaguers
AND when the “A” team had the vital championship fixture last weekend and could not field a full team, a few of Danny Blair’s starlets out of the Fylde League who had already played a match in the afternoon went off to Chorley by taxicab and played another.
All this has been happening, and few people have known a lot about it and nearly all of them could scarcely care less. But in my view it is a project which may be the ultimate salvation of Blackpool footbalj and which in retrospect a few years hence may give this season a distinction which otherwise it would never possess.
Yes. it’s only the stars most of the Blackpool public are interested in.
Star appeal?
THAT is why, when I am asked by a correspondent in “The Evening Gazette’’ if the decline in the attendances for Blackpool's Easter games could be attributed to the absence of Stanley Matthews. I have to admit that it was a contributory factor.
Yet it is still my view that, stars or no stars, there are signs that the football public is beginning at last to lose a little of its fanatical prewar attachment to the game.
The presence or the absence of the few big personalities left in the game is reflected in the turnstile figures, but not even the box- office names. I think, will keen football indefinitely on its postwar pedestal of prosperity.
Football is not going bankrupt, but the sun is setting on the golden age.
Jottings from all parts
BY "SPECTATOR" 30 April 1949
YEAR AGO TODAY -
THE Blackpool team were in an hotel on the borders of the Ascot racecourse.
The club's name was on the front page of every newspaper.
A young centre-half was on the eve of the greatest match of his career - as a full-back. Johnny Crosland the name.
There was a centre-forward who was with the team in the hotel but had been told two days earlier that he would not be playing. Jim McIntosh the name.
There was a full-back who had been tested on one of the fairways of the famous Virginia Water golf course a day earlier and had said “I can’t make it.” Ronnie Suart was the name.
Thirty thousand people had left Blackpool the previous night by road and rail.
They were all going to Wembley. Blackpool were in the Cup Final with Manchester United.
Just a year ago - and today on the first anniversary there’s just a League match at Stoke which means nothing to anybody. That’s football all over. No team could live on the heights all the time.
ROLANDO UGOLINI, the goalkeeper who played for Middlesbrough at Blackpool last weekend was born in Italy but has lived nearly all his days in this country, and towards the end of last year, when I met him for the first time, was awaiting his naturalisation papers.
There was a little of the excitability of the Continental, the inclination to play, to the gallery in his football when he went into Middlesbrough’s team early this season.
But life is so real and so earnest in League football these days -and at Middlesbrough it has been nothing else for month that he has cut out all the exhibitionism now and is recognised as the legitimate successor to Dave Cumming, the Scot who played his last game in a Blackpool match at Ayresome Park two years ago.
***
ANOTHER man in a Middlesbrough jersey new to the Blackpool public was Martin Reagan, the young outside-right. He is reputed to be the fastest man in football today - the fastest without the ball - has done his 100 yards in even time so often that it has become a habit. It was the first time he had ever played at Blackpool.
Jim Gordon, the wing-half, has by contrast, been coming to Blackpool for years, played according to my records, for a Newcastle United team in match at Bloomfield-road as Iong ago as 1936
IT was Andy Donaldson’s second visit. The last time was only a month or two ago, when he played for Newcastle United’s second team in a Central League match at a time when Blackpool were interested in him, and when, in fact, he would have come to Blackpool if Blackpool had been prepared to pay the £17,000 which eventually he cost Middlesbrough.
And there was the front-page forward Wilf Mannion, where, according to all pre-match reports, was a fading star. There may be a little of the glitter off but Mannion can still sparkle a bit, can still split a defence with a pass, can still hold a line together and give its football purpose and a design.
If Wilf Mannion’s finished. I know a few forwards who should have had their names in that obituary column years ago!
BLACKPOOL are not the champion “X” team in the First Division.
Fifteen games had been drawn before this afternoon’s match, which was an all-time record for the club, comparing with only 10 all last season and only six in 1946-47, when, in fact, the team was not concerned in a draw until its 13th game at the end of October.
Sunderland had divided the points 16 times before today and Manchester City were level with Blackpool’s total. And in the Second Division there were Chesterfield with 17 and in the Third Division Brighton with a similar number.
Never have so many draws been played as during the present season. The dividends on the coupons prove that.
***
I KNOW that I am leading with my chin, that I shall give offence to all those people who almost foam at the mouth these days whenever a word of praise appears about Stanley Mortensen, the man who was Blackpool’s idol only a year ago.
The fact remains that whether the England inside-right is as good a player as he used to be, he is still the only Blackpool forward who seems to be able to shoot a ball into a net.
The Blackpool front line had the record before this afternoon’s match at Stoke of seven goals in its last nine games. And of those seven goals Stan Mortensen has scored six.
There’s something wrong there, but not with Mr. Mortensen, whose present total of 17 goals for the First Division this season is only four fewer than his League total for all last season.
Where ... oh where . . . are the marksmen of Blackpool?
Footballer and gentleman
IF it is true that manners maketh the man - and the gentleman - George Hardwick remains, as he has always been, one of football's first gentlemen.
His days as England’s captain may ended, but his days as an accomplished full - back are nowhere near their eclipse - not as he played at Blackpool a week ago.
Admittedly, he was facing a young recruit - and if an ex-England captain cannot subdue a forward who has been in first-class football only a month or two, it is time he took off his jersey and never put it on again.
But it was as a man marshalling a defence, as Neil Franklin marshalled Stoke’s in the Cuptie in January, that he chiefly impressed, ordering a man into one position, closing a gap with another man in the next minute, treating a football field as if it were a chess-board.
And it was all done so undemonstratively that few people noticed it. Few noticed, either, that as soon as the final whistle went he walked over to young Rex Adams, the wing-forward he had mastered, and gave him a pat on the back and a shake of the hand.
I ADMIRE Middlesbrough after watching them at Blackpool last weekend.
Whatever their fate, these men from the north-east have refused to go into a panic because relegation is menacing them. Their football at times a week ago was as cultured as Middlesbrough football has always been for generations.
The defence had a few open spaces in it, and the forward line was not the swooping destructive force which only two years ago shattered the Blackpool defence and shot five goals past it in one afternoon.
Gone is a little of the glory, but they still play football. Some teams - no names, no pack drill - forget to, once a Second Division sentence threatens them.
IN TOWN the other day: Dicky Watmough, the little right-wing forward who came to Blackpool from Bradford City between the wars and went to Preston North End with Jim McIntosh in the Frank O’Donnell treble transfer.
He is “little” no longer. There’s a lot of Dicky these days, particularly in the middle regions, such a lot that he asserts that this summer is to be his last cricket season as a captain of one of the best teams in Yorkshire.
He is the manager of a Bradford hotel, as interested in football as ever - “A pity I’ve lost the figure for it!” he laments - and still ranks as one of the best amateur cricketers in a county where cricket is a religion.
THE PLIGHT OF PRESTON
THE first question they ask in Blackpool every week as soon as the half-time scores are signalled is:
“How are North End going on ?”
The conduct of a couple of Preston men in the match at Blackpool two months ago alienated a lot of sympathy in these parts for the Deepdale club in its present crisis.
But nearly everybody, I think, has acquired a sense of proportion about it now, and has forgiven, if not forgotten.
So Blackpool will, I know, be as glad as Preston - or nearly as glad - if North End escape.
But the odds, I think, are still formidable. Two games next week will decide it - and the first is at Wolverhampton on Monday: the second at Liverpool on Saturday.
Neither is an enviable assignment. If North End are still in the First Division next Saturday evening they will deserve to be.
And Blackpool, I repeat, hopes sincerely that they are.
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