27 August 1949 Portsmouth 2 Blackpool 3

GREAT GOALS IN BLACKPOOL’S FINE WIN

“Morty” hits winner in 86th minute

TWICE BEHIND

Portsmouth 2, Blackpool 3

By “Clifford Greenwood”

THEY will play football in August.

Today, on the South Coast, after the sun had scattered the moaning mist, it was as hot as ever, which was probably seven or eight degrees hotter than up in the North-West, and utterly airless, an afternoon for a deckchair in the garden, but little else.

Yet as early as eight o'clock this morning the queues were standing outside Fratton Park.

By early afternoon they were talking about a record attendance to watch a Blackpool team which had not lost a Portsmouth match since 1938, meeting on their own ground 11 men who last lost a League game at Fratton Park two years ago and in fact, during last season’s championship conquest, forfeited only three home points, one of them to Blackpool in a 1-1 draw.

Young Garrett, all of whose games in the First Division during the last six months have been as a centre-forward, under- studied for Shimwell at right-back.

Otherwise Blackpool played the men who took three points from their first two games.

Portsmouth, who nearly surrendered their proud home record to Manchester City on Wednesday evening were at full strength.

CHOKED TERRACES

Fifteen minutes before kick-off time the gangways were choking up on the terraces, clearing again as the loudspeakers asked the people to open them, and within a few minutes were closing again.

Several of the gates had at that time been closed and the attendance approached 50,000.

The Fleet was in strength in this particular port. Everywhere the white caps of the Navy were scattered on a background of coloured summer dresses and the inevitable newspaper helmets.

In 20 years I have never recalled a day when football threatened to be such an endurance “duel in the sun.”

Teams:  BLACKPOOL: Farm: Garrett. Suart, Johnston, Hayward. Kelly, Matthews, Mortensen, McIntosh. McCall. Rickett.

PORTSMOUTH: Butler; Yeuell, Ferrier, Scoular. Flewin, Dickinson, Harris, Reid. Clarke. Phillips.

Froggatt.

Referee; Mr. L. D. Thompson (Worksop).

THE GAME

Blackpool were given a magnificent reception by a public which prides itself - and justifiably - on being the most impartial in football. I have heard the team greeted less fervently on their own ground.

Harry Johnston won the toss.

The sun slanted across the Portsmouth defence.

CHANCE MISSED

It was a strangely studied opening by both teams. It was so studied that in less than a minute the - Portsmouth right-back,

Yeuell, passed back in such slow motion to his goalkeeper that, as Butler stood watching and waiting, Rickett raced on to the ball, reached it and shot past the near post.

It could have been a goal for Blackpool in 45 seconds. I think it should have been.

The Portsmouth front line made one or two advances afterwards, a couple of them halted by clearances by the imperturbable Garrett, who never seems unsettled by his infrequent appearances in big games.

PERFECT PASS

Then made-to-measure centre

It was the Blackpool attack which created the next position of promise.

Out to the right wing McIntosh swerved, served Matthews with a perfect pass. Over soared the ball from England’s wing forward - a made-to-measure centre - which, in the jaws of goal, the tall Flewin cleared with his head as Mortensen hurled himself at the flying ball.

GRAND CLEARANCE

Hayward made a grand clearance as Clarke moved in fast to a loose bouncing ball in a position where, if he had reached it, he must have shot past Farm.

But it was the Blackpool right flank which was moving with a smooth fluency.

Johnston set them in motion again with a. grand pass, and ended the move himself by lashing the ball high and wide as Matthews crossed it.

It was the familiar direct for goal Portsmouth of last season.

The airs and graces were in Blackpool’s game, and good football it was to watch.

AN APOLOGY

Mortensen, on one lone foray, went hurtling over Scoular’s back as if the two men were playing leapfrog. The Scottish right-half offered his hand in apology immediately, but still had to stand while the referee lectured him.

There was nearly a duplicate of the episode a couple of minutes later. This time Flewin was penalised for obstruction.

Mortensen took the free kick himself and shot a ball which, as Butler fell to it, eluded the goalkeeper’s grip, spun out of his arms on to the line, rolled against the near post, crawled on the line, and eventually was hooked away by the goalkeeper.

Two minutes after this major escape, Portsmouth went in front.

It was a goal which came after the Blackpool defence, for the first time in the afternoon, had left the big gap in the centre.

CLARKE SCORES

Into the space Froggatt crossed a loose random ball. After it the alert CLARKE raced on his own and shot low.

Farm beat out the ball and was still sprawling as the centre-forward darted to the rebound and hooked it fast and low off his right hand into the far wall of the net to a cheer which they probably heard on the ships in the harbour.

LIKE A GALE

Portsmouth press on

Blackpool’s defence

Afterwards, for five fast and furious minutes, the Portsmouth attack beat on Blackpool’s defence like a gale from the sea.

If Suart had not summarily upset the heavyweight Reid as the inside-right was chasing another forward pass there would probably have been a second goal.

INDIGNANT PROTESTS

A minute later, too, as the Blackpool full-back again took the line of least resistance, it might have been 2-0 in any case, for a couple of seconds after the whistle had gone for a free kick a couple of yards outside the area - a whistle inaudible in the tumult raging everywhere as this onslaught continued -Harris took a pass and shot past Farm for a goal which was immediately and correctly disallowed with about 60,000 people expressing indignant protests at the decision.

The storm subsided eventually and Blackpool were again often in the game.

Yet Blackpool’s raids, whilst Mortensen was off the field for a couple of minutes, were resolved into little except one - man assaults by McIntosh on a Portsmouth defence which was never too convincing, with the goalkeeper three times in succession being dispossessed by his own excitable full-backs.

FIRST HALF HOUR

The story of the first half hour, which ended in each team winning a profitless corner, was that Blackpool had missed one glorious chance, been unfortunate with the free-kick which hit the post, and had surrendered one goal under the sort of pressure1 under which not a fcw defences have crumpled on this ground in the south.

GREAT PACE

Farm made brilliant save

Portsmouth’s pace on the wings was tempestuous. Garrett stood firm against it still, and went to earth under one flying tackle by Froggatt, but was soon in the battle again, which at times it was rapidly becoming.

The speed of the game was nearly incredible in the heat. Nor was it being reduced as half-time approached. There was nearly a goal cheer whenever Ferrier halted Matthews. But that was not so often.

The outside-right was elusive and fast, too, but there were fewer raids than there had been by Blackpool,

Farm brilliantly fielded a long falling centre from Portsmouth's left wing.

When at last Blackpool evolved a movement with a clear-cut plan in it, the offside whistle put the brake on the aggressive, tireless McIntosh.

Yet Blackpool were raiding repeatedly with 10 minutes of the half left, and building three out of every four of those raids on the right wing.

Repeatedly, the ball was crossing from this quarter but nothing in particular seemed to happen when it got in front of a Portsmouth goal which was closer packed at this time than it had been.

REBUKED

McIntosh, a pigmy among the Portsmouth giants, would not be suppressed and was, in the end, rebuked by the referee for tumbling one of the giants in a somersault over the touchline.

Johnston was confidently serving the forwards with passes which Matthews can take at full gallop, and opened another raid which ended in Kelly thundering the right winger’s centre high and wide.

OUTPLAYED

For 10 minutes in this half immediately before and after the goal Blackpool had been utterly outplayed. Otherwise there has not been a lot in it.

GRAND HEADER

McIntosh races in to get equaliser

Yet three minutes before the interval Blackpool made it 1-1 and deserved it.

A minute earlier Butler had fallen full length to reach and beat out a ball headed wide of him by McCall, who had hurled himself at McIntosh’s centre.

The raid continued and veered cut to the left where Rickett crossed a high centre.

In to meet it McINTOSH raced and headed it almost out of the goalkeeper’s hands into the net as Butler leaped out vainly at it.

In the last minute of the half Portsmouth nearly snatched the lead again.

RELIEVED BY WHISTLE

There was a raid on the right, and, as the ball flew across^ Farm came out to it, beat it down, lost it under a pack of men, clutched at it as it was crossing the line, and as the referee ordered a free-kick for offside.

In the last half minute of the half Johnston was hurt and assisted off the field.

Half-time : Portsmouth 1, Blackpool 1.

SECOND HALF 

Presumably Johnston was not seriously hurt, for the captain came out at the head of his team after the interval.

The opening of the half was delayed as dozens of little boys, hunting autographs, were chased off the field.

Kelly repulsed Portsmouth’s first raid, and, not content with repulsing i t, created a perfect position for Rickett in front of him, so that the little wing forward won a corner before the half was a minute old.

It led nowhere, which Blackpool corners invariably seem to do

Portsmouth were nearer a goal in the half’s second minute as Phillips raced into one of the few open spaces the Blackpool defence had left, and from his unmarked position shot a ball which Farm held as he fell on one knee, repeating the clearance in Portsmouth’s next raid, and making it all look so simple.

THIRD GOAL

Portsmouth again go in front

Yet in the fifth minute of the half Portsmouth were in front again. This time a corner produced the goal.

As I saw it Farm was impeded by one of his own men, possibly by two. was almost motionless on his line, vainly clutching at empty air as PHILLIPS leaped at a ball crossed by Froggatt from the flag and headed away from him.

There was a split second when nobody seemed to realise that a goal had been scored. Then bedlam broke loose again as the Blackpool defence sorted itself out

STORMING ATTACKS

There broke loose, too, another storm of Portsmouth attacks, and one raid by Blackpool which was abruptly terminated as McIntosh shot high over the bar from speculative range.

LEVEL AGAIN 

Six minutes after Portsmouth’s second goal Blackpool made it 2-2. This was a goal with class all over it.

Inevitably, or almost inevitably, the right wing made it and scored it.

Johnston opened the move with another of those passes which wing forwards expect but so seldom are given.

Matthews went after it, reached it. almost casually surveyed the position, and crossed inside the pass for which his partner was waiting.

On to it MORTENSEN raced, took the pass in his stride, ran on half a dozen yards and shot a brilliant goal - his first of the season.

Except when Reid headed over the bar when a forward of his height should have scored, Portsmouth were outplayed for several minutes afterwards, and surrendered a couple of corners to a Blackpool attack which, for a time, outpaced its defence and repeatedly outwitted it on the right wing.

MATTHEWS

Tries to force his

way through

Matthews for a time was as brilliant as only this artist can be, and once nearly forced a way through himself and was halted only by the last man left after he had passed two others.

With 20 minutes of the half left, Blackpool were still level and still often threatening to win.

One had the impression that the team from the North were lasting the pace and that it was telling on Portsmouth, whose attacks, in spurts but only in spurts, had plenty of the old fire but in front of goal were fading out ominously.

GREATEST SAVE

Yet Garrett had to go all out to halt Froggatt and in the process gave a corner.

This corner nearly gave Portsmouth the lead, for after Froggatt’s flag kick had been spliced out into the middle, Mortensen lashed at it, missed it completely, and gave position for Scoular, who fired in the greatest shot of the match, which was beaten out by Farm in mid-air in the greatest save of the afternoon.

As the end approached Portsmouth put on the pressure relentlessly.

Kelly stabbed the ball wide eight minutes from time as Mortensen cut a perfect pass back to him, and with another two minutes gone in a dramatic finish Portsmouth had the ball over the line for the third time in the match after - and seconds after - the whistle had gone for offside.

AMAZING FINISH

Then came the amazing finish. Four minutes left. A long cross field pass by Johnston. McCall was on it.

MORTENSEN called for the pass inside, darted to it, cut in, and shot passed the falling Butler.

Afterwards Blackpool ran riot. Butler made two amazing clearances. Portsmouth were in utter retreat, their proud home record gone up in smoke in a fighting Blackpool rally which silenced the crowd.

Result:

PORTSMOUTH 2 (Clarke 11, Phillips 50 mins)

BLACKPOOL 2 (McIntosh 42, Mortensen 56, 86 mins)

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COMMENTS ON THE GAME

Blackpool were a fighting team at Portsmouth this afternoon, were twice in arrears and twice equalised against the League champions and in the end won.

That was an achievement by every standard. And if the forward line had not been so often limited to one flank - the right - and a go-after-anything centre-forward, this game would have been won earlier.

One recruit Tom Garrett will be proud of this game. His clearances were always long and definite.

In the tackle he won possession four times out of six against a wing forward who is one of the game’s most aggressive raiders.

The entire defence in fact stood up to pressure as I have not seen it stand for a long time.

Position was often lost, but it was retrieved, often by the resolute Hayward. The half-backs were a compact line again with Johnston’s motive power behind nearly all the Mortensen - Matthews raids which in the second half had England class in them.

Attendance 47,260; receipts £3,392.

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NEXT WEEK: Return game with Middlesbrough:

Then the Wolves

BLACKPOOL have two 1948 defeats to avenge in their next two games - if they can.

At Middlesbrough, on Wednesday evening, after travelling up from Southsea on Monday and resting at Saltburn for a couple of days, the men in tangerine will be playing on a ground where they lost by a debatable and early goal last season.

Jim Gordon, the long-serving half-back from Newcastle scored it, and scored it from a position a yard or two, as I saw it, offside.

But the referee allowed it, and that goal won the game As a year earlier Blackpool had crashed 4-0 on the banks of the Tees it would seem that Ayresome Park is scarcely one of the team’s favourite resorts.

Three days later, after coming back from the northeast on Thursday, there will be another match in this early-season nonstop succession of games.

This time the Wolves come to Blackpool, where against a team with a couple of reserves in it they won last season - won 3-1, in spite of such a nearly incredible occurrence as a Stanley Matthews goal giving nearly all the headlines to the team that lost.

Blackpool make a habit of beating Cup holders at Blackpool. It would not be before time, either, if these Wanderers lost in these parts, where, in fact, they have finished a match without a point only once since the war.

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FIELDING 66 PLAYERS EVERY WEEK

Fylde lads get a chance

By Clifford Greenwood

THE time is approaching, once the new midweek league opens operations, when Blackpool will be fielding 66 players every week.

Few other clubs in the country are committed to such a formidable assignment.

Yet Blackpool will be able to do it - and will still have a few young recruits left over watching on the sidelines.

Only now is the full scale of Blackpool’s biggest experiment in history revealing itself.

It has made few headlines. Outside the town not many people know anything about it Yet it is probably the biggest crusade against the inflated transfer fee this commercialised sport called professional football has ever known.

A revelation

I HAVE been talking about it this week to Blackpool’s chairman, Mr. Harry Evans, whose re-election to the board, by the way, is a recognition of long and devoted service to the club, and to the man who has been chiefly entrusted with the implementing of the board’s teambuilding policy since the war, Manager Joe Smith.

All 1 learned was a revelation. 

From this weekend five teams are being fielded every Saturday afternoon. In addition to the first and second teams in the First Division and the Central League, there is the all-conquering “A” team - or almost all-conquering since the war - in the West Lancashire League, the new “B” team in the Lancashire Combination’s second division, the C” team in the Fylde League.

And soon there will be a team playing in the reconstituted Mid-week League for northern clubs.

Where are they all coming from - the players to man these teams?

They are coming from all quarters of the compass. One, as announced last week, is on board ship now from South Africa. Two of his compatriots are soon to follow him. Another two are prepared to come from Australia.

A rich mine

AND at last the Fylde area, which is a rich mine for too long quarried by other clubs, is being prospected. Sixteen-year-old Eddie Metcalf, who made name for himself in his home town of Lytham last season, is one of the first to sign amateur forms.

It is a policy - this unpublicised youth movement - which has paid big dividends in the past. Five of the team that played against Huddersfield Town and Middlesbrough graduated from it.

Seven of the Central League team at Everton last weekend served their apprenticeship in it.

And now, as if not content with introducing a belated bit of sense into the' game, as distinct from the nonsense of the profligate’s progress called the transfer market, Blackpool are actually permitting a little sentiment to come into it, too.

For men who have served the club efficiently and with an abiding loyalty on the field are being summoned into service as the backroom boys of the movement.

There is Sam Jones the Irish international, who played his first game for Blackpool as long

ago as October 21, 1933, serving at the club’s assistant manager.

With “B” team

A LEC MUNRO, who came from the Hearts on March 6, 1937. a Scot who had also played for his country, is the new OC of the “B” team.

And Danny Blair, the ex-Villa full-back, who was in the 1936-37 promotion team, manages the colts in the “C” team.

With Mr. V. F. McKenna, Blackpool schoolmaster, who has been one of Blackpool’s Great Unpaid since the war, directing the destinies of the “A” XI, with Mr. Fred Greenwood, who for 25 years has been giving voluntary service to the club as the team’s trainer, the picture is complete.

It is an unfamiliar picture in these days. If football had a Royal Academy it would deserve to be on the line.

At last a club has realised that it is preferable, however long it may take, to train your own players than to buy at extortionate prices somebody else’s.

It is so simple, so obvious. Yet for years football has had blinkers on and never, apparently, seen it.

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Jottings from all parts 

BY "SPECTATOR" 27 August 1949

BLACKPOOL have on their behind-the-scenes staff such not-so-old but still faithful servants as Sam Jones, Danny Blair, Alec Munro. There is another who would, I think, have been offered a similar post if circumstances had permitted.

Instead, Bob Finan left Blackpool before his playing days were over, has spent the last two seasons at Crewe.

Now, when he had decided that he would call it a day and took a position outside the game during the summer, he has been lured back into it, has accepted an offer by Bob Pryde, the former Blackburn Rovers to play for Wigan Athletic this season.

He will have his first game for his new club early next month, and in the meantime is training at Blackpool every afternoon He was among those present watching the Huddersfield Town game and as pleased about his old club’s success as if he had still been in the team.

One of the best is Bob Finan - on and off the field.

***

NOBODY could say that Eddie Boot is not a versatile footballer.

He played at Blackpool for Blackburn Rovers as an inside forward, where he made his name, two years ago. He came to town last Christmas with Huddersfield as a wing-half.

And he was in the Town team at Blackpool last weekend as a full back. He’ll be in goal next year at this rate.

Or he may not be present at all, for that so often is the fate in football of the willing horse prepared to play anywhere. In the end he plays nowhere. Although I hope that doesn’t happen in this case.

***

A FORWARD who played in the 1948 Cup Final scored his first Third division goal last weekend.

George Dick’s goal for a Carlisle United team which also included Tom Buchan, transferred by Blackpool during the summer, won the game against Accrington Stanley a minute before half-time.

The big Scot, who has been at West Ham since he left Blackpool a year ago - and nearly went to Spain before he went to London - had merely to shoot into the net a ball which rebounded to him off the bar, but he created I am told, a good impression. As did the other man from Blackpool.

***

WHERE are they now - a few of the men who were on Blackpool’s staff three years ago. When full-time peacetime football was resumed?

Willie Buchan: Hull City. 

Joe Robinson: Hull City. 

Jock Wal lace: Leith Athletic.

Eric Sibley: Chester.

Tom Buchan: Carlisle United.

George Dick: Carlisle United.

Jim Blair: Bournemouth. 

George Eastham: Lincoln City.

Sam Nelson: Luton Town. 

Dick Burke: Gateshead. 

Jim Todd: Port Vale.

Alec Smith: Bradford.

R. Withington: Chesterfield.

Yet it is surprising how many of the men who were on the 1946-47 pay-roll at Blackpool are still on it.

***

W. (“BILL”) SLATER prefers to play cricket as long as cricket lasts, which, after all. is not so very long.

Not that I am disposed to blame him. But they still think at Black pool that his future in sport ought to be in football.

Manager Joe Smith makes no secret of his opinion that this Leeds University graduate could be one of the game’s great inside forwards if he could be persuaded to adopt it as his profession.

The Lancashire - and even the England - amateur selectors think so, too. In full-time training Bill would probably soon be in the first- class game.

But present indications are that he prefers a career outside sport. And for that I am not disposed to blame him, either.

***

TIME marches on. According to the record books it was 18 years ago last weekend that Blackpool signed Jim McClelland, the tall inside-forward from Preston. He has since had a son playing for Blackburn Rovers.

“Big Jim” made his name at Bolton, played his first game for Blackpool against the Wanderers and scored, too, in a 3-3 draw, celebrating the goal, I bet, with the little double- shuffle step- dance which was his own eccentricity whenever he shot a ball into the net.

He is nearly forgotten in these parts today. Yet Jim McClelland gave great service to a losing Blackpool team in the First Division, and he could, at least, do something which so many contemporary stars seem unable to do - he could convert penalties.

His total of penalty goals at Blackpool is still a club record.

***

REMARKABLE how Blackpool half-back lines go on . . . and on . . . and on . . . like the celebrated brook in the poem.

There was the Farrow-Hayward-Johnston partnership which from 1937, through the war years when circumstances permitted, and back again in peacetime football became a Blackpool Institution.

Now it’s the old firm of Johnston-Hayward-Kelly. Since Hugh Kelly - and no player in the First Division has made a greater advance in a shorter time - was introduced during the 1947 Christmas into the First Division team as a left-half, with his captain Harry Johnston unselfishly crossing to the other wing to admit him, the three of them have remained intact as a line, played in all the Cup-ties up to Wembley in 1947-48 and were separated last season only when one or other of them was hurt. 

And that was not often.

***

WHEN the Blackpool players went on a little pre-season excursion and had a golf match the other day, Eric Hayward, revealing his versatility after his exploits on the cricket field during the summer, won the first prize, with Sam Jones - Mr. Sam Jones these days now that he is on the managerial staff - the second.

They have some good golfers on this present Blackpool staff, half-a-dozen of them with single figure handicaps and another half-a-dozen convinced that they are so good that they ought to be.

That of course, is not peculiar to these particular golfers.

***

BAD luck on Harry Kinsell, the full-back from West Bromwich, to be hurt in his first match for Bolton Wanderers.

A wartime guest at Blackpool, where he played such stylish football that West Bromwich Albion, who had always fielded him in the reserve team, decided that they had been in possession of a greater player than they suspected, Harry twice played for England in 1946.

He wanted to come to Blackpool when he had asked the Albion for a transfer, and Blackpool would have signed him during the summer, in spite of the big fee demanded, if the club had not possessed almost an embarrassment of riches in the fullback division.

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