1 October 1949 Blackpool 0 Fulham 0
Too much passing, too little punch
LATE EFFORT, BUT-
Blackpool 0, Fulham 0
By “Clifford Greenwood”
THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE WERE LOCKED OUT OF THE BLACKPOOL GROUND AT THE FULHAM MATCH THIS AFTERNOON.
Every ticket for the stands was sold in midweek. The last of the paddock tickets went before noon today. The rest of the football population, reinforced by tens of thousands of Illuminations visitors, had to queue at the gates.
Never have I seen queues at Blackpool, few minutes as gates closed, or rumours rippled backwards and forwards that they had been closed, there was a stampede from one turnstile to another, until in the end the ground on its south and eastern sides was in a state of siege
Ambulance squads were called every minute to the congested south-east corner, where casualties came down thick and fast over the heads of the packed people.
There is a lot of £ s. d. in these.
Illuminations for Blackpool football as there is for all the town’s other institutions.
IRISH RECRUIT
Fulham, for the first time since winning promotion, shuffled a forward line led by Arthur Rowley, brother of the Manchester United leader, introducing Johnny Campbell, a recruit from Belfast Celtic, the Irish club, which during the summer supplied Craven Cottage with the goalkeeper, Hugh Kelly.
This goalkeeper, by the way, was the only man in the Fulham defence who did not play against Blackpool in the Cup quarter final last year.
Tom Garrett had his second game of the season as deputy to the luckless Bill Lewis in a Blackpool defence which, when this game opened, had not surrendered a goal in six hours’ football.
THE GAME
Harry Johnston lost the toss, and Blackpool defended the north goal.
It was, however, the other goal which was first menaced, Taylor, a tall centre-half who played a great game against Blackpool in the Cuptie in London, neatly intercepting a headed pass from Mortensen to McIntosh. after the inside-right had been put in possession by Its half-back.
A raid on the Blackpool left wing followed, and it was still in Progress when an alert referee gave a free-kick inches outside the penalty area to produce a chance of sorts which McCall lost.
Except when Arthur Rowley, a heavyweight centre-forward on the Jock Dodds’ model, ran offside the Fulham forwards were never in the game during the first five minutes, which seemed to be spent chiefly by the Fulham full-backs taking the line of least resistance every time a Blackpool forward approached them.
FULHAM PRESS
Mortensen headed a high random centre on to the roof of the net before the Fulham front line belatedly entered the game.
Then in rapid succession the Blackpool defence had to make clearances at close quarters. Garrett intercepted a pass which would have left Stevens in a scoring position if the full-back had not hooked it away from him for the first corner of the match.
Within another couple of minutes Campbell stabbed a shot into the waiting arms of Farm when he might have made a name for himself by scoring a goal in his first 10 minutes of first-class football in this country.
This pressure by the awakened Fulham forward line continued Hayward and Johnston cleared with a complete composure while it was raging, and for a time the game was moving on the Blackpool goal without ever seriously imperilling it.
IN THE AREA
Referee’s whistle stops a duel
When at last - and it was as late as the 10th minute - Matthews was given a pass he built a raid which ended in Fulham’s Kelly and Mortensen waging a little duel which zigzagged up and down the penalty area until eventually the referee’s whistle came to the goalkeeper’s aid.
Blackpool in the first 15 minutes had been only a shadow of the team I watched at Manchester a week ago.
The defence was tolerably compact, but with McIntosh continually mishitting his passes or losing possession under the pressure of Fulham’s defence the forward line had little cohesion in it
Wardle once created position for himself brilliantly before crossing a centre which Kelly in the Fulham goal as brilliantly fielded under the bar, but one still waited for those smooth flowing advances which gave Blackpool’s front line such class at Maine-road a week ago.
YARDS WIDE
Positions were not being created but were merely being snatched at by chance. In one of them Mortensen raced, appeared to beat down the ball with one hand, but went on, the infringement unnoticed, before lashing an awkward bouncing ball yards wide.
If it had been a goal there would probably have been a riot in the Fulham defence.
Johnston was magnificent in a team which still seemed unable to find or work to plan. All the time the bounce of the ball from the baked turf was beating the men.
Fulham were still a shade more direct, but that was about all, even if once Thomas had a chance and squandered it by shooting low at the crouching Farm.
Constantly, too, the referee’s whistle was breaking whatever little continuity there was in the football - and there was not a lot.
Out of all the hit-or-miss stuff came a superb little bit of craftsmanship by McIntosh, who beat two men before punting forward a pass which would have given Mortensen a shooting chance if Taylor had not thrust one of his long legs between the inside right and the pass.
Twice Rowley shot so far wide that an ambulance man near a corner flag retrieved the ball.
LIGHT BALL
And few passes for Matthews
With half an hour gone, it had been the Newcastle match all over again, and probably for a similar reason - because few of the men could master a ball bouncing everywhere but where they expected it and because in Blackpool’s case few passes and for long periods no passes at all were going to Matthews.
Thomas won a little Powder- hall all on his own against Matthews, but it was a waste of energy, for when the fast little inside-left had passed his man he could only shoot nearer a corner flag than the goal.
Farm had to hold a shot by Campbell - if it could be called a shot - which came out of the clouds into his arms, but otherwise the Blackpool goalkeeper’s only task for minutes was the collecting of back passes by his fullbacks and centre-half.
One of those full-backs, Garrett, dispossessed Stevens magnificently in one Fulham foray, but when a Blackpool wing at last raided ss a wing there was the inevitable one pass too many and the position was lost
JOHNSTON SHOOTS
There was hardly one ordered movement in the match.
Johnston, one of the few men who seemed to have the ball under some sort of discipline, won a cheer for himself by taking this ball off one Fulham man, eluding another, and shooting wide.
That was almost an event in itself on this afternoon of earnest but patchwork football.
There was a cheer when a pass at last reached Matthews, but even the maestro lost the ball to an immediate tackle by Joe Bacuzzi, who today was having an unexpected holiday.
Afterwards until the interval there were still too many passes, all of them too short, in Blackpool’s. gamp, even if once McCall released a pass which bounced away from Mortensen as the inside-right went in vain pursuit of it.
A minute later, too, Matthews, given a chance, revealed the strategist he can be, lobbing forward a pass which Mortensen chased again and in the end veering out to his right, lost as a pack of men descended on him.
The raid created a corner, and the corner nearly had a sensational sequel for in a passage of arms between McIntosh and Kelly the Fulham goalkeeper appeared to forget that he was on a football field and to think instead that he was in a ring.
A lecture to both men calmed the suddenly-frayed tempers, and the half-time whistle half a minute later cooled them completely.
Half - time: Blackpool 0, Fulham 0.
SECOND HALF
It was the mixture as before in the early minutes of the second half.
Blackpool’s football was still too close, but it won a corner in the second minute, and the corner nearly produced a goal as Freeman, standing on the goal line, sliced a clearance on to Matthews’ back and left McCall to hit the rebounding ball into a packed defence.
Another minute, and Fulham were as near a goal Beasley took a free kick a long way out.
Shimwell leaped at the ball, which glanced off the back of his head and shot away from Farm, who had to leap high af it and punch it over the bar for the most desperate clearance he had been compelled to make all afternoon.
That was at least two corners in a minute, and a minute afterwards a Matthews - Mortensen advance -created position for McCall to shoot wide
WARDLE’S CORNER
At least there was a semblance of purpose in the football now - a purpose which revealed itself in Wardle winning a comer after he had positioned himself intelligently for Matthews’ free-kick Neither line of forwards could shoot today. Thomas hooked the ball yards wide from a position where any forward should have scored, unaware, as everyone else seemed to be that the referee’s whistle had gone for an infringement about which nobody except the referee seemed to know anything.
It was becoming now a little too furious - one or two men were going for the man and forgetting all about the ball - but the football was still of no particular class at all.
Another couple of corners one to each team, the first won by Jezzard for Fulham and the second by Mortensen after he had gone fast after a long lobbed forward pass into a gaping centre.
Kelly in the Fulham goal made a great clearance when the second flag kick was crossed, and a minute later, with Blackpool storming at last into an all-out pressure, scooped up a low shot by McIntosh.
The Kop was cheering them on now.
OFF THE LINE
Quested clears at cost of corner
The tall, fair-haired Quested hooked off the line a ball which had passed his goalkeeper at the cost of a corner which was followed by another as Johnston shot a ball which the Irishman in Fulham’s goal punched over the bar as it was dipping under it.
This aggressive, direct football by Blackpool at last.
It continued with the excitement rising. Another corner came, and yet another, with Fulham’s defence retreating at sixes and sevens.
These Blackpool forwards were making a match of it, however belatedly, with 20 minutes of the half gone.
There was an occasional breakaway by Fulham, but it had not a vestige of punch in it. Almost continuously the game was surging on Fulham’s goal.
In all the excitement Kelly took a goal kick, stabbed the earth, took a divot instead, crippled himself, and forfeited a corner.
Afterwards the pressure lifted a little and there was the threat of another stalemate with passes roaming all over the field.
In one affray on the edge of the penalty area Mr. Rand appeared to enter a name or a couple of names in his book after a clash between Mortensen and Beasley.
CURLED OUT
The free-kick was given to Blackpool, and in the raid which it created and which continued for half a minute McIntosh fell on his knees to head a ball which curled out by the far post as Kelly fell late to it.
A minute later Jezzard shot wide from a position where many a forward has scored many a goal, and before play could begin again Kelly, far away in the Fulham goal, was seen on his knee signalling for the trainer.
There was a couple of minutes’ interval while he was being attended.
Ten minutes were left, and there was still not a goal in it.
It was still, too, in spite of Blackpool’s pressure, either team’s game, and it could have been Fulham’s if Campbell had been faster to a forward pass which in the end he stabbed slowly at Farm with two Blackpool men closing in on him.
Another minute, too, and Johnston made a great flying clearance with a centre raking his goal perilously.
The closing minutes were as purposeless as nearly all the rest had been.
Result:
BLACKPOOL 0,
FULHAM 0.
COMMENTS ON THE GAME
A LOT of the gilt came off the Maine - road gingerbread today.
After the worst first half I have seen this season, when about everything that could go wrong went wrong, Blackpool stormed into a lot of pressure after the interval.
But gone, nearly everywhere this afternoon was the football which Blackpool have been playing in recent weeks.
The defence was equal to all the demands made upon it - demands which were, admittedly, not excessive against a Fulham forward line weak in front of goal - but nowhere else except at light half was there anything except a lot of earnest, and at times aggressive football.
In defence and attack Johnston was indisputably Blackpool’s No. 1 today.
The forward line was moving almost all the afternoon only in Jerks and spurts.
Matthews, now and again released a pass which put a man in an open position, but. for the rest, the line seemed always to be running the ball on a stonewall defence and often inviting its own discomforture by its obsession with the short pass.
Hayward was strong and defiant as he always is, and long before the end Shimwell had put the brake on Fulham’s left wing.
But it was an anti-climax after all that has been happening during the last month.
The defensive record - five games now without losing a goal - is still intact. But that is about all that was on an afternoon when the ball seemed always to be master of the man instead of the man being master of the ball.
STRANGE how seldom Blackpool teams have come back from the northeast since the war with anything except a few regrets. Points have been as scarce as strawberries at Christmas.
One point from three games at Sunderland - two from four at Middlesbrough - none from one match at Newcastle - a total of three points out of a possible 16 is Blackpool’s postwar record in that little corner of England where football is less a game than a religious cult.
It is back to Sunderland next weekend - Roker Park where Blackpool were winning 2-1 until a few minutes from time in last season’s match and then had the game snatched from them - and, in fact, nearly lost it - when Len Shackleton raced half the length of the field to score a brilliant equalising goal in a 2-2 draw.
In theory Sunderland should be one of the teams of the year with a forward line which has in it also Ivor Broadis and “Tiny” Reynolds,
who wears the smallest boots and has one of the deadliest shots in present-day football It should be - but it has not been yet.
It could be a classic, this game next week. There is the cast there for it.
STRONGER DEFENCE PUTS BLACKPOOL IN FIRST SIX
Now, if only the forwards can keep on scoring - !
By Clifford Greenwood
SPORT - Brevities
BY "CLIFFORD GREENWOOD" 1 October 1949
A master of defence
IF ever there was a player in First Division football who week after week gives 100 per cent, for all a match’s 90 minutes it is Eric Hayward, the Blackpool centre-half, writes Clifford Greenwood.
Not for him the headlines as often as there ought to be. Nor is he ever seeking them, or even interested in them.
In game after game he stands resolute in the field’s centre, crosses out to. a flank when it is exposed, and, I efficiently and with nothing! demonstrative about it, closes the path to goal for centre-forwards.
Hayward’s match at Maine- road a week ago could have been framed as a masterpiece of defensive centre-half strategy.
Ronnie Turnbull, Manchester City’s centre-forward, could make nothing of him whatever.
It will be Eric Hayward’s 180th First Division match for Blackpool next weekend at Sunderland. If it is not a goad one it will be surprising.
This praise will probably embarrass one of the most modest men ever to wear a tangerine jersey. But it has not been given before its time.
***
STANLEY MORTENSEN, the England and Blackpool forward, is taking his new’ career in business with all the seriousness he has always applied to his football and to everything else from sitting on sports brains’ trusts to giving public lectures.
He was allowed to report early for training during the pre - season week in order that he could spend an hour or two before midday in his shop in Lytham-road.
Already he has converted part of it - it is a stationery and book shop - into a sports store. One has the impression now that he is settled in Blackpool for the rest of his football days.
Not that this is at all uncommon. Once in this town professional footballers - and nearly everybody else - seem singularly reluctant to leave it. And who’s blaming them?
***
RUMOUR - the jade who lies in every walk of every walk but is a positive Ananias in football - is busy with the name of Willie Buchan, the former Blackpool forward, who has not had a game with Hull City’s first team this season.
It is said that he will soon be leaving the Yorkshire coast town and seeking elsewhere the fame which too soon he has lost.
I am assured, however, that there is no truth in it, that there are no immediate prospects of the Scot, who cost Blackpool a £10,000 fee in 1938, being transferred by Manager Raich Carter.
Meanwhile, Buchan is playing, whenever he has a game, in Hull’s Midland League team which has Joe Robinson, Blackpool’s Cup Final goalkeeper, in its defence, and Paddy Sowden, the ex-Blackpool forward, who went to Hull via Bacup Borough, in its attack.
***
GOAL MAKES NEWS
JUST as when a dog bites a man it is not news, but when a man bites a dog it is, so is a goal by a Blackpool half-back a subject for a headline.
Harry Johnston’s goal at Maine-road last weekend was the Blackpool captain’s first since he shot the goal which beat Portsmouth at Bloomfield- road on October 18, 1947, and
the first scored by a Blackpool half-back since Ewan Fenton hit one from 35 yards at Newcastle on April 2.
It is a fact that in postwar First Division football six goals only have been scored by Blackpool half-backs, and it is no less a fact that Eric Hayward, the centre-half, has never scored one at all.
Not that this is a criticism. The reverse would apply.
The famous Scottish manager who once said “Show me a scoring half-back, and I’ll show you a bad ’un,” knew what he was talking about.
That happens to be Manager Joe Smith’s opinion, too.
***
THEY DRAW THE CROWDS
FIFTY - SEVEN thousand at Manchester to watch Blackpool last weekend . . sixty-five thousand at Villa Park a fortnight earlier . . . Probably another 45,000 or 50,000 at Sunderland next weekend.
Blackpool are good for the box- office these days and have been ever since the war.
On no fewer than five grounds last season this Blackpool team established the season’s attendance record - and, strangely, one of the records was not the 77,696 people who watched the Chelsea match at Stamford Bridge - that figure was later passed when the Arsenal went to “The Bridge."
Yet that 77,696 still ranks as the second highest attendance at a Football League match since the war and is the biggest in front of which a Blackpool team has ever played outside the Cup- ties.
***
IT WAS warned repeatedly that if I came back in the Blackpool team’s coach from Manchester last Saturday I should not be home until morning—Sunday morning.
But, good as were their intentions, all these experts were wrong.
On the way to Manchester there was a constant procession of coaches on the road to Blackpool. During one brief census I counted a coach every five seconds for five minutes.
But on the way back the roads were almost empty. All the traffic by that time had entered Blackpool, and it was too early in the evening for the exodus out of the town to have begun.
The team were back before 8 o'clock - and they had dinner in Manchester before they left.
***
NEWS of two men with Lancashire Combination who make news in Blackpool.
Bob Finan, who had decided to leave the game but was lured back into it bv Bob Pryde, the former Blackburn centre-half whom Ronnie Suart has succeeded at Ewood Park, is scoring again - this time for Wigan Athletic, won the team’s first cuptie a week or two ago.
Kevin Doherty, brother of Peter, has been made captain of Lancaster City, and as a wing- half is, I am told, playing impressive football.
***
SAW a name the other day I had not seen in print for a long time.
The name was Bert Baverstock, the full-back who in the autumn of his days came to captain a Blackpool team and by his example reprieved it from relegation. That was way back in the early ’20’s.
Always I shall remember the day when Bert scored a goal in a vital Second Division game, shot it from his own side of the halfway line past the Coventry City goalkeeper.
Nowadays Baverstock manages a Bolton hotel, is as devoted to the Wanderers as ever he was, but confesses that he has not seen them play a match for 17 years.
He reads about them in the newspapers instead, has never been inside Burnden Park since on the day when his career ended at last the Bolton directorate refused to issue a complimentary ticket to him.
“As long as I live in Bolton I shall never attend a game,” he says.
***
"All the best Ron!"
NICE little gesture by the Blackpool management and players before the Manchester City game a week ago, writes Clifford Greenwood.
As soon as the team reached Manchester a telegram of good wishes was sent to Chesterfield addressed to Ronnie Suart. It reached him a few minutes before he took to the field for his first game with Blackburn Rovers. He would, I know, appreciate it.
He said when I met him shortly before the transfer was completed, “Both clubs have been so considerate.”
Suart is being allowed to remain in his Blackpool home, will go each day to Blackburn for training.
If the Rovers are not soon convinced. that he is one of their best investments for years I shall be surprised.
His transfer has separated the “Two Inseparables” in Blackpool football - the tall full-back and the little outside-forward, Walter Rickett.
It is a coincidence, by the way, that a week or two before the Rovers entered the field for Suart they were asking a few questions about Rickett.
***
City view
COMMENT I heard outside Maine-road after the Blackpool game:
If this man Matthews is done, I've been dead for 10 years - and nobody's told me!
***
Array of talent
CONGRATULATIONS to the two senior teams who had such convincing wins on Saturday.
We must also remember the achievements of the junior teams who are helping to keep Blackpool football in the publics eye, writes “Supporter.”
Nothing but praise is heard far the teams fielded from Bloomfield-road, and with such an array of talent, Blackpool should be well represented for some years to come.
Military whist
TICKETS are now available from the committee members and the supporters’ huts on the football ground for the military whist drive at the Albert Hall on Wednesday afternoon, October 19.
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