2 September 1950 Manchester United 1 Blackpool 0
McIntosh injury — but one goal in it
PACE AND THRILLS
Manchester United 1, Blackpool 0
By “Clifford Greenwood”
WHO SAYS IT ALWAYS RAINS IN MANCHESTER? IT IS A SLANDER.
The sun was shining this afternoon for the Blackpool game at the skeleton ground which Old Trafford became after the German planes had finished with it during the war.
A high wind blew, but it was the sort of summer's day which there has seldom been on the coast this year.
Blackpool played a forward line led by Willie (“Play any-where”) McIntosh, with another little Scot, Jackie Mudie, at inside-right.
United, whose forwards have scored only three goals in the first fortnight of the season, had the strange appearance which any postwar United team must have without Jimmy Delaney on the right wing.
Preferred to him for the second successive match was Tommy Bogan, who played his first game in England in a Preston jersey against Blackpool a couple of years ago.
Right-half was the 21-year-old ex-Marine Commando, Don Gibson.
IN THE OPEN
There were 35,000 people inside the gates half an hour before the kick-off, and no fewer than 33,000 of them were out in the open. Old Trafford has few roofs for the football populace these days.
Teams:
MANCHESTER UNITED. -Allen; Carey, Aston; Gibson, Chilton, Cockburn; Bogan, Downie, Rowley, Pearson, McGlen.
BLACKPOOL. - Farm; Shimwell, Wright; Johnston, Hayward, Kelly; Matthews, Mudie, McIntosh, J. W. Slater, Wardle.
Referee: Mr. G. Black (Kendal).
THE GAME
First half
The attendance was approaching 45,000 - and the sun was still actually shining - when Blackpool, playing in the new white jerseys with tangerine collars and cuffs for the first time this season, lost the toss and played against the wind.
Little Mudie was away in the first minute, taking the ball from Cockburn before steering forward a pass which was too fast for McIntosh.
Except when Johnston made a studied headed clearance when a ball came fast at him little over knee height, the Blackpool defence was under no serious pressure in the opening minutes.
Both Blackpool wing half-backs made fast tackles to halt a couple of United raids yards away from the shooting zone before Mudie took a chance from 20 yards and shot a ball so fast that Reg. Allen lost it and snatched it up as Slater raced in on him.
JOHNSTON’S RAID
Within another minute, Harry Johnston made a forward’s raid on his own, raced 30 yards through an outpaced defence, eluded Chilton and was tumbled to earth by Aston a couple of yards outside the penalty area.
Wardle took the free-kick, putting over a ball which McIntosh headed down close to a post where Allen snatched it up and cleared.
Even against the wind Blackpool made the pace everywhere in the first five minutes.
There was, in fact, no semblance of one of those old-time full-line raids by the United until a sliced clearance by Johnston gave a clear course to McGlen, who crossed a centre which tangled itself up in a mass of men in front of the Blackpool goal
I noticed Wright make a cool clearance after Shimwell had skied the ball into the clouds.
UNITED LEAD
Goal against run of play
Half a minute later, in the seventh minute of the half, I saw Blackpool lose a goal which was entirely against the game’s course.
The wind blew back a ball which Wright had punted up-field. Out on the left wing a raid was built.
Pearson took a pass, reached the line with it. crossed a centre which passed fast across the face of Blackpool’s goal and left BOGAN, standing un marked by the far post, to head it wide of Farm.
It looked so simple. For once Blackpool had left a man unguarded and the price had to he paid.
Twice in the next minute, as if this goal were merely an interlude in Blackpool’s pressure, as, in fact, it was, Allen was twice in action.
After holding a shot which bounced into his arms as McIntosh hooked it at him from an angle, he fielded brilliantly a high centre which two Blackpool forwards were chasing.
PASS AT LAST
It was the 10th minute of the half before I saw Matthews given a pass which he could take away. He took this one away from Aston, after losing it the first time, and in the end won a free- kick against the full-back which led nowhere.
So early in the afternoon, in spite of the fact that Blackpool were still crossing the halfway line about four times to every once by the United, there was a direct action in the Manchester forward line not always clear in the football of the Blackpool forwards.
Yet in the 17th minute Mudie, who was seldom out of the game, gave McIntosh a shooting position, and the centre-forward shot barely wide from it as the offside whistle went on a linesman’s signal.
Blackpool were often advancing afterwards. Wardle once left such a great full-back as Johnny Carey standing before stabbing a centre to a waiting wing halfback who had retreated to fill the gap.
FAMILIAR STORY
Something was always going wrong with Blackpool’s attacks after a position had been built. That, I know, is becoming already this season a comment a little too familiar.
Not that the United forwards were inactive.
Twice Farm was in action, with a swarm of men in red jerseys swooping on him.
The second time, almost direct from a Carey free-kick, the Blackpool goalkeeper made a punched clearance which not only hit the flying ball but also must have hit Rowley, who went down under it for the full count.
A minute earlier Blackpool had missed a reasonable chance of making it 1-1.
The right wing was in this advance, and, almost inevitably, it was Jackie Mudie who completed it, gliding forward a pass which left Slater to shoot wide of a post from a position where he must have scored before today.
AN ESCAPE
Hayward clearance off empty line
That was an escape for the United, but Blackpool had a bigger one three minutes later.
For nearly a couple of minutes a raid had surged within shooting distance of the Manchester goal.
During it Willie McIntosh went to earth under a desperate tackle and remained almost unnoticed as the United’s defence half-hit out one pass after another.
In the end, with the centre-forward still out on the grass, there was a long clearance which Jack Rowley, that ace of opportunists, chased.
Three men were chasing on him as he stabbed a bouncing ball wide of Farm’s right hand. On to the empty line Hayward chased it, reached the ball, half hit it against a post, and watched it cannon out off it. When all this excitement was over, Mr. Black was able to halt the game and to call on to the field the Blackpool trainer, who immediately was being helped to carry off the crippled McIntosh.
FOUR FORWARDS
Even with four forwards Blackpool were not completely outplayed, even if it took a wing half to come near a goal. Johnston, after a free-kick by Matthews, shot a flying ball wide of a post at a pace which would have left even a goalkeeper of Allen’s class standing.
Immediately before this incident, too, Slater sliced a shot wide, and twice afterwards Blackpool forwards were that inch or two off the beam which makes all the difference.
Yes, they were shooting again today, but there was no dynamite in the shots and few of them, to be frank, were anything except speculative.
It was the United who were closer to a goal as, with the wind and against 10 men, they should have been.
Again Farm had to rise high to a flying centre, to punch it away, and to leave Shimwell prostrate on the turf in the chaos which followed.
STILL RAIDING
It could have been and should have been a rearguard action for Blackpool in the closing minutes of the half.
That it was not was a compliment to the team’s courage and to the class of its football in the open.
Blackpool were still raiding and might, in fact, have snatched the elusive goal three minutes before half-time if there had been a man in position to take a centre which Wardle crossed perfectly after outwitting two men, one of them Johnny Carey.
Yet with a minute and a half of the half remaining it was nearly 2-0.
SAVE OF THE HALF
Stanley Pearson took a loose ball and seemed almost to dance round it. swerved a man and shot a thunderbolt rising ball which Farm reached in a leap to his right and punched over the bar for the star clearance of the half.
It gave the United their first corner of the half in which Blackpool, without reaching the level of recent games, had nothing to be ashamed about.
A report from the dressing room indicated that McIntosh was not as seriously hurt as had been feared.
Half-time: Manchester United 1, Blackpool 0.
SECOND HALF
McIntosh came out for the second half, limped out to the left wing, with Mudie in the centre and War die and Slater in the inside-forward positions.
Both goals were hear downfall in the first two minutes of the half. It was the United who nearly surrendered even against a forward division of four men and a cripple before two minutes had gone.
Matthews created the raid with a swerving advance' Which was repelled but had not been cleared before Wardle took shot. This time it was so fast with the wind behind it that Allen had to leap to his left to reach it and to hold it superbly while still in midair.
Another minute, and the United’s right wing swooped into the game before passing inside a ball which Bogan was preparing to walk over the line as a desperate tackle by Wright halted him.
LONG CHASE
Within another minute Blackpool had won their first corner of the match, but it came to nothing.
In fact, it merely prefaced a raid in which Bogan was chased half the length of the field by Wright before putting inside a pass which the alert Farm reached and cleared before Rowley could accept it.
Another minute, and with the game raging at a great pace and the football of a quality seldom approached in the first half, Matthews passed two men and almost strolled to the line before crossing a centre which Slater shot at a full-back standing sentinel in front of his own goalkeeper.
For a time afterwards the authentic Stanley Matthews was on view. The England forward won a couple of corners and from the second flighted over a ball which the crippled McIntosh lashed wide with the one foot on which he could stand.
Against the wind the United forwards could make little progress, and for minutes none at all.
McIntosh, again indifferent to a limp which reduced him to about quarter pace, shot wide, and for a time, in fact, the United were not in the game at all as an attacking force.
DOWNIE AWAY
But Rowley shoots into Farm's arms
Yet 11 minutes after half-time a rebounding ball found Downie in such a position mat he was able to race forward before creating a position for Rowley to shoot low into Farm’s arms.
A minute later, with a United storm building itself up down the entire length of the front line, Bogan forced Farm to field a stabbed bouncing ball near the post.
Afterwards it was indisputably all United, with Blackpool retreating everywhere.
Farm held a ball headed low into his arms by Rowley and inside another minute Bogan had missed a post by less than a yard with all the United’s guns firing at last.
Nor had this raid been repulsed before Bogan was in the game again, this time exchanging positions so fast with Rowley that when the centre-forward crossed a centre the wing forward was in position to take the center and to head it in a flying leap inches outside a post.
FINGERTIPS SAVE
Nor was this the end, either, for with Blackpool still reeling backwards under a succession of hammer blow raids Downie headed far away from Farm a ball which the goalkeeper, impeded by one of his own men, reached with his fingertips and beat out. It was United everywhere for minutes before this dramatic clearance and for minutes afterwards.
Yet when the Blackpool forwards at last escaped a goal was near.
Matthews chased a long, low pass, reached it a split second before Aston, cut inside with it, and shot it at Allen as the goalkeeper dived bravely at his feet.
It put the goalkeeper out of action for nearly a minute, and the comer which he had conceded was followed by two others before this massed Blackpool bid for a point ended with Slater heading the last of the comers wide.
Afterwards Blackpool had to go into retreat again.
Again, too, Farm was brilliant as he dived to his right to a ball shot away from him by Pearson, who stood in amazement. and in the end actually applauded the goalkeeper as the ball flew off his fingertips wide of a post.
During the last two minutes a never-say-die Blackpool were almost exclusively in the United territory, but to the end it was still nearly all bark and little bite.
Result:
MANCHESTER UNITED 1 (Bogan 7)
BLACKPOOL 0.
COMMENTS ON THE GAME
BLACKPOOL played football again, good, ordered football at times, even with only four fit forwards, during the last hour, but still could not score.
The defence made one error, left a forward unmarked, and as a result lost the goal which cost the game. Otherwise there could be no serious complaint of the Blackpool half-back and full-back lines in this match.
It was a long time before the United forward line began to move as United forward lines have been accustomed to move since the war, with the ball passing fast from man to man and every man intent on direct action.
DESPERATE TEST
But when that happened it was a test, at times a desperate test, for the Blackpool defence, and it came out of it qualifying for a few medals.
George Farm had a brilliant game, and the men in front of him were invariably fast into the tackle, with seldom a gap revealing itself in spite of a few too many inconclusive clearances.
It was the forwards again who presented the problem. Making all allowances for the disabling of McIntosh, there was not the fire-power in the line there should and must be.
Positions were constantly created again, and none created so many in the first half-hour as by young Mudie.
There were times, too, in the second half when Matthews was again crossing centres which implored conversion into goals. But there was never a man to complete a raid.
Blackpool’s No. 1 priority remains a forward who can translate good football into goals, the only currency in this game which matters.
AND still the fixtures flood the football calendar. It is still two matches a week for the professional footballer and will be for nearly all of them until the end of the month, writes Clifford Greenwood.
Blackpool have two games next week. Both are at home. Fulham are the visitors on Monday evening (6-15) and Wolverhampton Wanderers come to town on Saturday (3-0).
The London team played a goalless draw at Blackpool last season. A few of the men who take the field in the Craven Cottage club’s white jerseys on Monday will not have been wearing those white jerseys long.
For Fulham went to town on the transfer market in a big way during the summer, spent, according to Press estimates, £40,000 on new material. And good material some of it seems to be, too, even if Bob Brennan, the Irish international from
Birmingham, who cost £20,000, has already been in the wars.
In goal will be the Scottish international goalkeeper from Southampton, Ian Black, and among the halfbacks the wing-half from the Villa, Edmund Lowe, and the other wing-half, Archie Macaulay, of Arsenal fame.
They have scarcely set the Thames on fire yet - this new and expensive brigade - but Fulham offer a bigger challenge this season than ever this London team offered a year ago.
Blackpool, who have yet to win a home game, will not win this one without fighting for it.
And they will not beat the Wolves easily, either - not after last season’s Cupties - even if the Wanderers seem to have shed a little of their glamour this time.
The Wolves have won their last two First Division games at Blackpool.
EXPERIMENTS NOT THE ANSWER
You won’t end the goal famine that way
By Clifford Greenwood
SPORTS - BREVITIES
BY "CLIFFORD GREENWOOD" 2 SEPTEMBER 1950
THREE GENTLEMEN OF FOOTBALL
i HAVE said before that there were not all those many thugs in present-day football that a few of the headline specialists have been protesting so piously of recent times infested the game, writes Clifford Greenwood.
The three full-backs who have met Stanley Matthews in Blackpool’s first four games this season - Charles Withers of the ’Spurs, Frank Lock of Charlton, and Harold Mather of Burnley - have not resorted to the man-or-ball tackle.
They have played the ball every time, and, if they have lost it, and however often they have lost it, they have not embarked on unscrupulous retaliation.
Those are three gentlemen in football And there are so many others. It’s only crime that often makes news in football - and everything else. Virtue is not a marketable commodity.
***
THAT’S a nice new ground that Port Vale have built. But Jim Todd, the Irishman who left Blackpool for Hanley a year or two ago, prefers not to play on it if he is in the second team.
He has asked Manager Gordon Hodgson for a transfer.
This is the wing-half who was signed by Manager Joe Smith on the strength of his game for an RAF squadron team in the town during the war and less than six months later was wearing an Ireland jersey.
And if there is a gamer character in present-day football- tireless, prepared to take all the punishment they can hand out - I’ve not yet met him.
***
IT would appear that Jim McIntosh, the former Blackpool centre-forward, re-signed at the last minute for Everton only to facilitate a transfer from the Goodison Park Club.
At the time of writing his probable destination was Lincoln City. It would complete a remarkable coincidence if the City should sign him, for Jock Dodds another Blackpool leader, left these parts for Everton and from Everton went to Lincoln.
George Eastham, too, took a similar trail except that his Blackpool-Lincoln route was via Swansea.
***
From left to right
EWAN FENTON, Blackpool’s young Scottish reserve, has played only three games since the end of the 1948-49 season as a right - half. And all three nave been in the First Division.
All the others - and he had 39 in the Central League championship team last season- have been at left-half.
When, therefore, he plays such a game as he produced against Charlton in this unfamiliar position a week ago - and if it was not 100 per cent, it was nearer it than could have been reasonably expected - he deserves a pat on the back. Herewith the pat.
***
IT’S a grand record Eric Hayward has achieved in Blackpool cricket during the summer - if it can be called a summer.
Playing on the principle, apparently, that the better the day the better the deed, he has had his biggest successes in Sunday games.
According to that accomplished young master of statistics, Freddy Vickers, the Blackpool CC’s No. 1 scorer, the Blackpool centre-half has played 13 innings on the Sabbath, been not out six times, and has finished with an average of 66.
***
And now he stops 'em
FEW people know - and nearly all of them have forgotten - that the giant goalkeeper of Charlton Athletic who played at Blackpool last weekend was once a forward.
Sam Bartram's early football was nearly always in the forward line, not only when he was a boy with George Farrow, the ex - Blackpool halfback, up in the northeast, but even later in his days.
Then, when he discovered that he could not shoot a ball past a goalkeeper as often as forwards are expected to, he decided to become a goalkeeper himself.
And a mighty fine job he has made of it too.
***
THE DOHERTY PLAN
PETER DOHERTY - Mr. Peter A Doherty nowadays as Doncaster Rovers’ manager - has made a pact with all the junior clubs he approaches for young players.
Disinclined to pay the big fees demanded in these times of inflation, he has promised to pay £20 for every minor club player he signs on a professional contract and an additional £80 if the player is retained for a second season.
He could sign 100 young players in this market for £10,000, and among those 100 it is an odds-on bet that half a dozen at least will make the big League grade. At which price - less than £2,000 each -they would be cheap.
It is obvious that not all Mr. Doherty’s talent is expended on the football field. I may be wrong, but I think the Irishman who made his name in Blackpool is destined to become one of Britain’s famous managers.
Nobody would be more pleased than this writer if it happened.
***
WHEN Charlton Athletic were hovering on the brink of relegation last season, and a few days before zero hour for signing new men, Manager Jimmy Seed said:
“We’re paying no fancy prices. These boys of mine are doing their best. We’ll sink, or swim with them.”
Admirable sentiment. It is a pity that one so seldom hears it in modern football. The Athletic did not sink. They went down twice, but the third time they were descending they rescued themselves. And now, as last weekend’s Blackpool match revealed, these men in whom their manager did not lose faith, are justifying his confidence in them.
Not a great team, perhaps, but a team with a big heart. And that counts for a lot.
***
Leave a Comment