20 August 1949 Blackpool 4 Huddersfield Town 1

BLACKPOOL HAVE GOT OFF TO GRAND START

Forwards goal-happy in the sun

TOWN OUTCLASSED

Blackpool 4, Huddersfield Town 1

By “Clifford Greenwood”

FOOTBALL had the oldest joke in the game played on it today.

Opening its season before cricket was decently buried, or even pronounced dead, it collided full tilt with one of those hot summer days which cricketers love and which footballers abhor like one the 10 plagues.

Not that it made any difference to the customers. They swarmed in in thousands.

Before 2 o’clock Spion Kop resembled one of those photographs of “The Hill” at Sydney during one of the Tests in Australia, a patchwork of whites, blues, reds and every colour in the kaleidoscope.

Everywhere, too, was scattered the blue and white of Huddersfield. A few hundred of the faithful, who will never disown a team, however often it may court relegation, had come from over the Yorkshire border.

SELL OUT

This morning there were hundreds of tickets left for sale, but before noon they had all gone. And 15 minutes before zero hour the queues were as long as ever.

Blackpool’s new capacity of 31,500 was being approached every minute, and when the teams appeared had almost been reached.

There were, the inevitable casualties of the heat and the ambulance men began to scuttle backwards and forwards on their own free health service, and minute by minute the temperature seemed to be rising until the open field, even sheltered by the stands, must have been an oven.

The Town played their £17,000 centre - forward Ronnie Burke. Otherwise both teams had last season’s men in them.

Teams:

BLACKPOOL: Farm; Shimwell, Suart, Johnston, Hayward, Kelly, Matthews, Mortensen, McIntosh, McCall, Rickett.

HUDDERSFIELD TOWN: Mills: Boot, Stewart, Whittaker, Hepplewhite, Hassall. McKenna, Glazzard, Burke, Nightingale, Metcalfe.

Referee: Mr. C. Fletcher (Northwich).

THE GAME

“We want to hear the Blackpool roar this season,” demanded the loudspeakers as the teams appeared. The Blackpool public immediately obliged.

And they were still at it after Johnston had won the toss for Blackpool, decided to attack the south goal, and instead found his men desperately defending the one at the north end in the first couple of minutes.

FARM IN ACTION

In this goal Farm was soon in action, fielding a falling speculative centre from the right which the fair-haired Burke was chasing, but the ball was so high that his pursuit must have been a lot less in faith than hope.

OVER THE BAR

Mortensen jumps up to high centre

In the next minute Suart was twice a shade indecisive under pressure slicing one clearance, hesitating with another, and, in the end, releasing the Town forwards in a full scale raid which a defence in a state a little disordered repulsed.

CHANCE MISSED

Yet, with only three minutes gone, Blackpool might have been in front. Out rolled a loose ball, cannoned off a Town half-back.

Into the gaping space left open McIntosh raced, took the bouncing ball to the goalkeeper as this deserted player advanced on him, stabbed at it and lost it with Spion Kop preparing to shout “Goal” almost as soon as the game had opened.

Unceremonious tackles, which is to put it politely, by Hepplewhite and Boot conceded a couple of free kicks and from the second a goal was near again, Mortensen leaping at a high ball, crossed precisely and unexcitably by his partner, and catapulting it over the bar in a flying leap.

STILL HAMMERING

Three minutes later, with Blackpool still hammering at a defence which was soon beginning to wilt, a goal was even nearer. A great goal this would have been, too, if it had come off.

Johnston prefaced the episode with one of his famous long distance throws. The ball rolled out of the packed goal area.

On to it, unexpectedly in the right-half position, Kelly darted, shot, as it reached him, a ball which Mills, with an amazing sideways leap, punched out while still in mid-air.

I do not expect to see a finer shot or a greater save this season. This all happened within five minutes of the season’s first game, and with the Town still retreating, their forwards seldom over the halfway line.

KELLY SHINES

Three times the game’s finest half-back in the opening quarter hour, Hugh Kelly, halted breakaways by the Huddersfield front line, once adroitly dispossessing Burke as the Town’s new centre- forward moved to one of the few passes' he had been given.

The Town, in fact, were never within shooting distance of Farm until Shimwell half-hit a clearance to the waiting Metcalfe, whose centre the non-stop Burke headed in to the Blackpool goalkeeper’s waiting hand3.

Blackpool’s football had possessed a remarkable pace and revealed an inclination all the time to employ the direct pass.

It was still outplaying the Town with nearly 20 minutes gone, even if repeatedly the high pass was giving McIntosh little chance against the towering height of George Hepplewhite.

CHEERED TOO SOON

Crowd thought ball was in the net

Yet, once, Blackpool’s lightweight centre-forward outpaced two men and eluded another with a perfect swerve before shooting from a narrow angle a ball which came to rest behind the net, but which half the west stand appeared- to think was inside it, cheering again a little prematurely.

Within a minute Mills fielded under the bar a centre which Matthews crossed past him, and inside another Boot gave a corner without any apology as Rickett went haring after one of the few passes which had been served down his wing

The Town won a corner, or to be exact Burke, who was earning all his money today, won it for them, but it led nowhere.

IN THE AIR

Twenty-five minutes had gone without a goal, and in the minutes which followed prospects of a goal receded with the ball constantly beating the men on the bounce. This ball, too, was too often in the air.

Blackpool’s left wing was revealing no particular plan and there was not, in fact, a lot in the game which, with the first half hour ending, was for a time almost in the Town’s possession.

One comer was lost unnecessarily as Suart took away a ball from his own goalkeeper as Farm called for it excitedly, but palpably inaudibly, in the tumult.

JOHNSTON TRIES

In the end it was left to another Blackpool half-back to show forwards how to shoot at goals.

This time it was Johnston who weaved a pass past one man, found the defence in front of him retreating and disinclined to tackle and, in the end, was allowed to reach shooting range before hitting a ball so fast and low that Mills had to fall full length and beat it out as it was passing him inches inside the post.

It was a comer when it might have been, and threatened to be, a goal. And yet indirectly the corner produced a goal.

McINTOSH SCORES

For it had not been cleared before Johnston took possession of a loose ball again and cut it inside.

There, in a position where forwards seldom shoot these days - a position 25 yards out - McINTOSH was waiting, pivoted on one foot and hit with his other a ball which rose and soared yards out of the leaping Mills’ reach to a cheer which had incredulity no less than exaltation in it.

Blackpool’s defence tangled itself in a few knots again when the Town’s forwards hurled themselves on it in a counter offensive.

But it was a Mortensen one-man raid down the centre in the old manner which next excited the 30,000 - a raid which ended in three men closing desperately on the lonely raider as Mills came swooping out of to snatch the ball out of the scrum.

There were one or two passages at this time, as there had been a few earlier, in which either the heat or the pace, or probably both, frayed tempers a little.

Mr. Fletcher, who appeared disinclined to brook any sort of Sin, delivered a couple of reproving lectures to McIntosh when the centre-forward, I think, was as much sinned against as sinning, but the rebukes at least served one purpose - they calmed down the game a little.

In one of the first designed moves, in fact, which were evolved afterwards, little McCall was near to a goal shooting from a narrow angle when again nobody expected a shot, and missing the far post by inches only with Mills falling late to the skidding ball, and McIntosh beaten by inches only, too, by its pace as the goal gaped in front of him.

Blackpool were entitled to the half-time lead played football which deserved it, and had commanded sufficient of the half to have been two or three goals in front.

Half - time: Blackpool 1, Huddersfield Town 0.

SECOND HALF

There was a first minute sensation in the second half.

One Huddersfield attack was repulsed. A desultory sort of raid by Blackpool followed.

After a loose bouncing ball the fast and tireless McIntosh went racing. The tall Hepplewhite shadowed him, and harried him.

When the centre-forward last went to earth Mr. Fletcher halted the game summarily, walked to the penalty spot and pointed to it.

There was not a protest from the Town who, a second later, were losing 2-0 as SHIMWELL was called up from the fullback line and converted with a fast rising shot which passed Mills’ right hand as the goalkeeper fell vainly towards it.

The Town’s game was in rags and tatters for a time afterwards.

The entire defence stood on an appeal waiting for a free kick against McCall as the inside-left, taking Johnston’s pass, appeared to hit the ball down with his elbow before hooking it over the bar.

SECOND PENALTY?

A minute later, there should, I think, have been a second penalty as this little inside-left showed what a great footballer he can be. This time he refused to give a pass with all his partners calling for one, corkscrewed and zigzagged his way through a mass defence before falling under a backward tackle, which deserved the punishment it escaped.

TO A STANDSTILL

For a time afterwards the Town were tiling hammered nearly to a standstill.

McCall was in the game again and again, nearly among the goals with a shot through a pack of men which passed the goalkeeper and was cleared off the line by the vigilant Hepplewhite.

And before this purple passage ended, the Town’s goalkeeper was beaten again by a half shot —half centre by Matthews, which seemed to crawl out of his grip as he fell forward to it, grazed the post behind him, fell back into his arms as he was still sprawling.

FARM CONFIDENT

Clears twice from McKenna

Farm made a couple of supremely confident clearances at the feet of McKenna before the Town’s goal had yet another escape, in the 15th minute of the half, as McIntosh’s pace enabled him to outpace both the Huddersfield full-backs as they were closing on him.

He swerved out of the path of the goalkeeper, and with the goal wide open in front of him, hit the bar as he fell.

It made no difference. A minute later one of those passes which are bread and jam to Matthews gave him a clear pass at last.

After this perfect pass - a pass which Shimwell made - the outside-right raced, reached it on the line and crossed it fast inside, where McCALL, coming up at a full gallop, lashed it inches inside the near post before Mills could move to it.

Blackpool’s football at this time had nearly- everything in it against a team which gave signs of falling to bits.

DEFENCE SCATTERED

Matthews went nearly from the half-way line to the goal-line before centring a ball which Mortensen headed inches over the bar with the Huddersfield defence scattered to the four winds.

Boot shot a free kick over the bar as you would expect a forward who has become a fullback to shoot it.

Otherwise the Town during the first 20 minutes of this half had been scarcely in this game at all, and would have lost a fourth goal if Mills had not made a full' length dive to beat out Mortensen’s low scoring shot.

Blackpool began to take off the pressure afterwards, probably thinking that it was a little hot anyway and that there was another match on Monday.

That this one was won was indisputable. The Town’s forwards had plenty of the game, but except for Ronnie Burke not one of them seemed to know what to do about it when the line reached shooting distance.

Vic Metcalfe was dapper and elusive, but seldom too elusive for Shimwell.

With a quarter of an hour left Blackpool were almost palpably playing out time and the Town were racing themselves to a standstill for no particular purpose whatever.

LEISURELY

Then, what often happens in these circumstances, happened today. The Blackpool defence went all leisurely for a fatal few seconds.

A ball which should twice have been cleared was not cleared at all and ultimately, almost in slow motion, BURKE pounced on it and shot so fast that although Farm reached the ball as he dived to his right, he could not hold it.

That reduced Blackpool’s lead with 14 minutes of the game left, but with 13 still to play Blackpool were nearly three goals in front again.

Again, for the second time in the match, McCall must have decided that all the fates were against him, for his shot through a pack of men skidded outside Mills’ reach, hit the falling Hepplewhite as he lost balance alone on the line, and off him cannoned out.

Blackpool went all out in the succeeding minutes to redeem the error which had cost a goal, revealing in the process the gulf  - the big gulf - which still separated these two teams when both were intent on their business.

PICTURE GOAL

Three minutes from time came a picture book goal to cross the t’s and dot the i’ of Blackpool’s supremacy.

Again it was Matthews who made it in his old manner, luring half Huddersfield’s defence out of position, eluding two men and, in the end, with an almost casual deliberation, crossing a high centre which, out on the exposed left wing, RICKETT headed into the far wall of the net.

Result:

BLACKPOOL 4 (McIntosh 33, Shimwell 46, McCall 61, Rickett 87 mins)

HUDDERSFIELD TOWN 1 (Burke 76 mins)

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COMMENTS ON THE GAME

BLACKPOOL won the first day of the season's stakes by a distance.

There were three goals in it in the end, but there might have been half a dozen.

Huddersfield had all those elementary virtues of courage, speed, resolution which Huddersfield teams invariably possess, but they had little else.

It took the Blackpool forwards half an hour to score a goal. That is about the only criticism one could make of the line in spite of the fact that it had manifestly greater craft on the right.

The major revelation, however, was the amazing speed of McIntosh, the Blackpool centre-forward, who against a taller and heavier centre-half, and in spite of the ball being a lot in the air, was a constant menace to a defence which ultimately crumpled.

The decline, I suppose, was inevitable once Matthews began to be served with the sort of passes which even he requires before he can practise his particular form of black magic.

Again, as I have been reporting ever since the war, the halfbacks had little wrong with them and a whole lot right, with the wing men Kelly and Johnston playing to the text book all the time.

There was a certain, and at times, almost ominous absence of composure on the left flank of defence, but against such a forward line as the Town fielded today - a line which not even the aggressive Burke could make into a scoring-force - it was of no particular significance.

This was the sort of opening which manager Joe Smith was praying for. The match was won by a team that went into it and remained in it by direct “no-frills” football.

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NEXT WEEK: Blackpool’s two big tests

HERE they come - thick and fast the early-in-the-season, matches.

Middlesbrough, who escaped relegation on the season’s last day in May, visit Blackpool on Monday evening.

Five days later Blackpool play at Fratton Park, the ground of Portsmouth, who won last season’s First Division championship by five points, never lost a home match while the title was being won and, in fact, played only three draws at Fratton all the season.

It was almost inevitable, I suppose, that one of those three draws should have been conceded to Blackpool, who are still Portsmouth’s Bogey team with a capital “R”

For, since the war, no Blackpool team has ever lost to a Portsmouth team, and even in Portsmouth’s championship year last season took three of the four points at stake in the matches between the clubs.

That sequence had to end some time. Down in the deep South they think it will end next week.

Middlesbrough have been up-down-up in postwar games at Blackpool, have won by such a nearly incredible score as 5-0 in 1946, lost 0-1 a year later, and last season won in a 1-I draw a point which a fortnight later reprieved the Ayresome Park club from relegation to the Second Division.

Andy Donaldson, the centre-forward from Newcastle, on whom Blackpool once had designs, broke an ankle bone in the public practices and will not be leading the Middlesbrough attack on Saturday.

But as his two deputies, Harold Dobbie and Alec McCrae, each scored a hat- trick in last week’s final trial game, there should still be in this front line the goals which Wilf Mannion can make for men who can shoot them.

Middlesbrough with all their talent should not be among the also-rans again this time.

These two matches are both big tests for Blackpool.

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THOSE BLACKPOOL DISMAL JIMMIES

They're moaning already

By Clifford Greenwood

TO HEAR SOME PEOPLE TALK, WE’RE IN THE SECOND DIVISION ALREADY.”

Who said that? Mr. Joe Smith, the Blackpool manager, at the club’s annual meeting last week. Yes, that is what they are saying, so many people - too many people.

Why are they saying it?

They are saying it because the club have refused to go into the transfer market.

Or, to be exact, for it has not been the idle summer behind the scenes which a few of the critics seem to think it has, a tentative excursion or two has been made into the market without a transfer being negotiated.

The reason

WHY the stalemate?

Chiefly, from all I am told, because the prices demanded have been prohibitive - as the other clubs unashamedly intended them to be, for no club in the present famine in star players wants to lose one of the few stars it may possess - or because Blackpool came to the conclusion that the man under review promised to solve none of the team problems which admittedly face Blackpool on the eve of the new season.

Yet there have been moves which necessarily have been conducted in secrecy and which cannot even now be disclosed.

It will be news to most people in these parts to know that Blackpool have been outside this sceptred isle in the search for new players.

One, an inside-forward, who is reputed to be the Wilf Mannion or the Peter Doherty of his own land, is en route to England' at the present time, intending, when his ship berths, to take the first train to Blackpool and in a new country to seek fame and whatever fortune there may be in football at Bloomfield-road.

More coming

A COMPATRIOT is intending to follow him. Neither man may yet be first-class according to English standards, but both might soon be trained and coached to it.

And, far away in Australia, there are another two men who are waiting only for Blackpool to invite them to cross the world to wear a tangerine jersey.

Nobody is pretending that these signings, if they are negotiated, will put Blackpool immediately in possession of players who will gate-crash inside a month into the First Division.

I report these overseas overtures merely to indicate that the club have not been sitting back all the summer content in the old philosophy that “It’ll be all right on the night.”

Test for amateurs

EVER since last season ended.

too, the club’s scouts all over the land have been seeking and sending to headquarters for test the young unknown amateurs who may yet be Blackpool’s salvation.

A few made the grade last season. One or two, introduced almost prematurely into the first team during one or other of the casualty epidemics which beset Blackpool during 1948-49, revealed infinite promise which may soon be maturing.

Between 50 and 60, a record number even for a club which once had Major Frank Buckley acquiring the younger generation en-bloc, nave signed for the club during the summer.

Many have been called, and few inevitably will be chosen for extended trials. But this is policy preferable, I think, to the open cheque-book squandermania which passes for team-building in the games millionaire belt.

Critical months

BUT, admittedly, Blackpool’s fortunes during the first few critical months of the new season will have to be entrusted to the men who as a team went into a pronounced decline during the second half of last season.

The record book reveals that this team won only four League games from January 1 to the season’s end and one only - and this against the First Division champions. Portsmouth - in the last eight games it played. In the end it finished only five points in front of the two relegated clubs.

A certain depression has been the inevitable aftermath to such a fade-out as that.

Yet these men could re-establish themselves again in the public’s confidence and justify the long-term policy to which Blackpool as a club are committed.

No need to panic

THE defence was scarcely invulnerable last season, but there is no cause to panic about it, and it has such competent reserves in the full-back and halfback divisions that one expects no major crisis to present itself in this department.

It is the forward line - and this applies to half the other clubs in the country - that may present the big problem.

It was seldom scoring sufficient goals last season. And today its left wing must remain a little suspect

But if Stanley Matthews is as fit again as he asserts he is, and as, according to all reports, he has appeared to be in the public practices, and if Stanley Mortensen is destined, as he thinks he is, to explode soon into his 1947-48 football, this line could and probably will redeem itself.

For Willie McIntosh, too, small as he may be in days when every centre-half seems to be modelled on Goliath and with the ball flying through the air at about the height of the Empire State Building, is convinced that after a close-season operation, he can repeat his early exploits at Preston.

We’ll see

WE'LL wait and see how it all works out.

But the present depression, before ever a match has been played, seems a little premature. After all, there’ll be eight months to be depressed in - if there’s any reason to be.

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Jottings from all parts 

BY "SPECTATOR" 20 August 1949

PROMOTION of Fulham and West Bromwich Albion and the relegation of Preston North End and Sheffield United has put a few hundred miles on Blackpool’s 1949 50 pilgrims' progress in the First Division.

One of the longest laps in the long, long trail will be the first. The team go down to Portsmouth on Friday for the match, on the champions’ ground at Fratton Park on Saturday, remaining at Southsea until the following Monday, with a day on the Isle of Wight on Sunday to make a little holiday of it, take train for the north-east coast, remain there on Tuesday and Wednesday before the return evening match at Middlesbrough on Wednesday evening, and come back to Blackpool on Thursday.

The rest of the week is definitely the players’ own - until they meet the Wolves at Blackpool two days later. And two days after that there is a home fixture with Newcastle United.

Blackpool will actually have played nine games before the end of September, nearly a quarter of a First Division programme.

***

THOSE close-season stories  about Blackpool marking bids for Tom Finney and Bobby Langton, Preston’s England forwards, were not all moonshine.

No bid was made for Finney chiefly, I suppose, because it was realised that Preston would have said “No” to the highest offer.

But Blackpool definitely have been interested in Langton, who am told, has no particular inclination to play in the Second Division.

It was for that reason, among others, that he left Blackburn and went to Deepdale. Aware of that an approach was made to Preston. No specific offer was made, but Blackpool, I learn, told Preston that they were prepared to pay a fee and transfer a couple of players with it.

But Preston have not yet been responsive, and it’s improbable that they will be. But Bobby Langton may have something to say about it.

***

NEW full-back in the Chester defence today: Eric Sibley. Few people know it, but after Grimsby Town had granted nis application for a transfer and negotiations had been completed with Chester, the Town ex- pressed a reluctance to part with him.

Eric wanted to go, not because he was discontented at Blundell Park, for I have never yet met a player who has been, but because he wanted to be nearer his home in Blackpool.

In the end it was all sorted out. Now this tall stylist among fullbacks will not only be with a club closer to his home, but will be able to accept an appointment, which has been offered him, as coach at one of the youth clubs in the town.

And Chester, incidentally, will have the service of a full-back who in my opinion has still a few good years left in the game.

***

FLEETWOOD, I think, have made a good bargain in signing Clitheroe's inside forward. Tom Saunders. I saw him playing at the end of last season at Lytham in one of those Lancashire Combination Cup-ties in which gallant little Lytham stormed to glory.

And on an evening when the Clitheroe front-line was seldom in the match, with its defence stampeded, this inside man had class all over every move he made. I knew nothing of his background, but I said at the time that there was not a constructive forward on the field within a mile of him.

He should do Fleetwood a lot of good.

 ***

WHEN will these mid-August burlesques called football practice matches be abolished?

It cannot be too soon for this writer. They serve one good purpose only. Out of the receipts grants are made to charities.

For the rest they are an unwarrantable intrusion into a cricket calendar which has been left with too little of the year to itself. In them Central League geese too often resemble First Division swans, and every conceivable sort of false impression is created.

And always there Is the chance of a serious casualty. Stanley Mortensen might have been put out of action for weeks in the first practice at Blackpool.

Andy Donaldson, the Middlesbrough centre-forward, will not play for months after breaking an ankle bone in the trial at Ayresome Park.

What good are they - these matches which teach no lessons which are worth learning?

 ***

SO big Bob Johnson, tallest centre-half ever to play for Blackpool between the wars, has left Burnley and become Nelson's manager.

He is not the first centre-half from Blackpool to transfer his allegiance to a club which within comparative recent times once rose to Second Division eminence.

George Wilson, who left Blackpool for Sheffield Wednesday in the early 20’s and became England’s captain, took the Nelson trail, too, and was, in fact, with this little club in its greatest days.

If Bob Johnson has a comparable success there - and I hope he has - he will not regret leaving big-time football.

Nor will Nelson regret persuading him to leave it.

 ***

SO Verdi Godwin, the centre-forward from Blackpool, has been among the close-season transfers again.

Two years ago he was at Blackburn. In the 1948 summer he went to Manchester City. Now: he has gone into the Potteries, has been signed by Manager Bob McGrory - a manager who makes few mistakes - for Stoke City, where they think that he may be the successor to Freddie Steele, whose days in big football are ended at last.

I. know that the City, at least;, have signed a man who will be running as last in the 90th minute as in the first of every match, a forward who never gives up.

Such men are often worth all the stars who think that it is almost indecent to excite themselves on a football field, who were born with silver spoons in their mouths and expect to b$ spoon-fed to the end of time.

 ***

Short of £ s.d. in those days

THE name of “Ramsden” among the Blackpool FC directors again will recall to the older generation days in Blackpool football when the board had to count the pennies - and when sometimes they had no pennies to count.

One of the club's pioneers, serving it for 27 years, was the father of Mr. Joe Ramsden, one of the new directors.

Few people know all that the late Mr. J. Ramsden gave to the club - all that a few other of the pioneers gave, too - in those lean years when Blackpool were one of football's unfashionables. barely on the bread line

There were times when the directors had to make a collection among themselves to pay the wages or to buy the railway tickets for the away matches, times when the club was halfway into queer-street.

Those men should not be forgotten. It is fitting that the son of one of them should now be serving the club his father served in those times.

 ***

Star in the making

ONE report from the two public practices at Blackpool which I am prepared to accept is that Jack Wright is a good full-back.

But, of course, I was aware of that a long time ago. I may be wrong, but I think that this player may have a distinguished future in the game. I suppose he was born to achieve distinction at sport.

His father, Dick Wright, was one of the finest water polo and Rugby players Tyldesley ever produced - and Tyldesley have produced a few.

He even married into another famous sportsman's family. His wife is the daughter of Peter Cowper, who was in professional football for 20 years and played for Southampton and West Ham.