23 September 1950 Blackpool 1 Aston Villa 1
Nine men and a cripple just fail to hold slender lead
MATTHEWS - STAR
Blackpool 1, Aston Villa 1
By “Clifford Greenwood”
HALF AN HOUR BEFORE THE KICK-OFF IN THE ASTON VILLA MATCH AT BLACKPOOL THIS AFTERNOON SEVERAL OF THE GATES HAD BEEN CLOSED.
Ten minutes later, with thousands of people still milling in the streets outside and traffic reduced to a crawl in a half-mile radius of the ground, it was “Ticket-holders only.”
THE “LIGHTS O’ BLACKPOOL” ARE WORTH A LOT TO BLACKPOOL FOOTBALL.
All morning it had been fine, but shortly before the teams took the field a light rain began to fall.
The Villa, captained by Ivor Powell, who played nearly all his wartime football for Blackpool, announced the fielding of Tommy Thompson, the new forward from Newcastle, and a left wing shuffle which excluded Leslie Smith.
CAPACITY CROWD
Blackpool fielded Eddie Shimwell in the defence again after the ex-Sheffield United back had missed last week’s match at Sunderland.
It was a capacity attendance of 32,000 at zero hour.
Teams:
BLACKPOOL: Farm; Shimwell, Wright; Johnston, Hayward, Kelly; Matthews, Mudie, Mortensen, W. J. Slater, Perry.
ASTON VILLA: Hindle; Parkes, Dorsett; Powell, Martin, Moss; Gibson, Thompson, Ford, Dixon, Goffin.
Referee: Mr. R. A. Mortimer (Huddersfield).
First half
The Villa won the toss and defended a south goal which was immediately within firing range of the Blackpool forwards.
Stanley Matthews, taking a pass in the first 10 seconds, eluded Dorsett, and, impeded by the fullback as he raced inside, stabbed his pass into a pack of men.
The Villa’s answer to that early raid was a comer before the game had been in progress a minute - a comer magnificently fielded by Farm as Colin Gibson crossed a high ball from the flag.
Immediately, in football fast and ordered but not yet dramatic Kelly built one left-wing raid for Blackpool with a peach of a pass to Perry, who in the end lost the ball, with Mortensen waiting for a centre in an open space.
FIRST SHOT
There were several Villa attacks afterwards, in one of which Tommy Thompson had claret and blue jersey.
It missed a post by yards, but his first shot in the famous in the next minute the little man from Newcastle was in the game again in a lone raid which was nearly the indirect cause of a goal.
Mr. Mortimer gave a free-kick against Hayward, apparently for impeding the inside-right in his pursuit of the pass.
The ball was only partly cleared, and in the end sailed out loose.
ESCAPE
Shimwell clears off the line
Trevor Ford in the position of a scrum-half waiting for something to turn up, leaped to the ball and headed it up and over a swarm of men, with George Farm among them.
Shimwell raced back and cleared as the ball was crossing the line near the far post.
In another two minutes the Villa’s goal had an equally dramatic escape.
This time Matthews raced on to a pass on an unguarded wing and crossed a ball. Mortensen leaped to it, heading it down and watching it hit the base of the far post and cannon out, with Jack Hindle half off balance and falling late to it.
GREAT SAVE
In the 13th minute, which was only four minutes after this little episode, the Villa’s goal was as near downfall again.
Again Matthews built a raid and again crossed the sort of centre at which tall forwards can hurl themselves.
W. J. Slater rose high to this one, headed it in so fast that Hindle could reach it only in a cat’s leap, finger-tip it on to the bar, and punch it over for a corner as he fell.
That was such a magnificent save by this young goalkeeper - who played his last game on this ground for Wesham in a Fylde Cup final - that a couple of Blackpool forwards applauded him for it.
The football was good to watch, and, in spite of the rain, was still being played at an unrelenting pace.
THERE AGAIN
Again as Ford took a forward pass, veered away from his centre-half and reached shooting position, Shimwell was there again to plant himself in the line of the shot.
That was two great clearances this tall full-back had made in the game’s first 20 minutes.
Except for the two big escapes, it was a first half-hour with fewer major incidents in it than I have seen during a comparable time in a First Division match this season.
Too many passes were being lost in the open spaces or finding the wrong men.
The Villa were still often in raids, but one after another they came to an inconclusive end after promising a lot out in the open.
BRIGHT SPOT
Class football by Matthews
Stanley Matthews still played class football - what other sort can he ever play? - whenever he was given a pass, outwitted his full-back or his half-back, and sometimes both before crossing a centre.
Otherwise it was earnest and fast but not a lot else with the first 35 minutes gone.
When at last a goalkeeper was called belatedly into action, it was almost an accident.
Mortensen. swerving away from one man, cut inside, and as he fell on the soaking grass, sliced his shot at such an angle that it became a centre which the alert Perry headed low into Hindle’s hands.
THOMPSON COMEDY
Within a minute there was a little comedy for the Kop, Thompson racing on to a bouncing ball, flagrantly beating it away from Farm with a clenched fist, and then, with an open goal in front of him and the referee’s whistle blowing, shooting high, wide and not a bit handsome.
This was not the football I saw Blackpool play at Sunderland a week ago. To be fair, one could not. I suppose, expect it on turf which under the rain was offering only a precarious foothold.
BOUNCE BEAT HIM
Blackpool won a comer with five minutes of the half left after Kelly had taken a free-kick as a free-kick should be taken.
And before the comer was cleared it was only the ball’s bounce which beat Johnston as the wing half ran into one of those positions from which he has been scoring this season.
The packed house was strangely quiet. So, too, was a lot of the football. Yet in the closing minutes of the half both goals were under pressure which nearly made them fall.
With only five minutes to go before half-time Goffin ran on to a square pass and lobbed inside a ball which Farm snatched away from Dixon as the inside-left tobogganed at it.
MATTHEWS SHOOTS
Within a minute the Villa goal had its escape. Matthews built a raid with a perfect pass to Mortensen, who half losing the; ball, retrieved it and hooked it inside where the versatile Matthews, playing as if he were a centre-forward, accepted it, swerved one man, walked past another and shot a ball which Hindle appeared to beat out with both hands by instinct.
Yet the goal was only delayed. It came two minutes afterwards and with only a minute of the half left.
GOAL FOR MORTY
Hook shot after Mudie centre
And at last it was a goal for Stanley Mortensen, his first since the first match of the season.
Jackie Mudie was the man in it this time. The little Scot raced on to a pass, shot a ball which Hindle appeared to punch out again
As-the loose ball swerved to the right Mudie crossed it and left MORTENSEN to hook it far away from the Villa’s goalkeeper.
Half-time: Blackpool 1, Aston Villa 0.
Second half
Jackie Mudie is one forward who will shoot. He shot again in the first minute of the half, and inside the next minute Matthews hit into the side net a ball which was skidding away from him all the time.
This skidding ball accounted, I think, for nearly all the errors which were still everywhere in the game.
It was this which enabled Thompson to take a pass away from two Blackpool men unprepared for the ball’s eccentric behaviour and to shoot against Farm’s knees.
The ball cannoned out, and was scooped up by the goalkeeper from the little inside-right’s boot as the forward chased after it.
CHANCE OF THE MATCH
A minute later, the fifth of the half, the Villa missed the chance of the match.
Ivor Powell made a perfect pass which cut through Blackpool left flank of defence yards out of position, and left Gibson to shoot wide of a post when a pass inside would have given Ford an open goal.
A brilliant patch of football by Perry was near, three minutes later, to increasing Blackpool’s lead, the South African beating that grand full-back Harry Parkes and squaring inside a pass which Mudie - galloping full tilt on to the ball - hooked a foot wide at a pace which would have left Hindle standing.
A SCENE
Villa player lectured after tackle
Afterwards there was one of those scenes which too often have marked matches between these teams on this ground.
Into Mortensen’s path Con Martin, the Irish centre-half, planted himself, and upset the leader with a tackle so merciless that before the free-kick was taken Mr. Mortimer called the Villa player to him and spoke to him.
Both teams went at it afterwards for a minute or two as if the Cup were at stake.
HIT THE POST
In fact, after the Villa had been awarded a disputed corner Blackpool’s lead nearly vanished as Dixon squared a loose ball which from the Press box appeared to hit the outside of the near post before rebounding out.
The Villa were very menacing and aggressive before this corner and after it, and with Slater limping at outside-left for Blackpool, with Perry inside, there were minutes when the game was surging on the Blackpool goal.
There were a couple of Mortensen - Matthews forays to interrupt this one-way traffic, but even when the Villa pressure had ended not one of Blackpool’s four effective forwards could find a path for a time past the tall and commanding Martin.
GREAT LEAP
Hindle reaches centre from Matthews
Yet when Mudie made position perfectly for Matthews it required a great leap by Hindle to reach the wing-forward’s centre as Mortensen hurled himself past the goalkeeper into the back of the net.
And inside another minute it was only a great tackle by Martin which cut out a pass which would have left Mortensen with one of the first clear views of goal he had been offered all the afternoon.
Three minutes later, too, as Blackpool’s pressure continued the centre-forward fell under another tackle which had nothing polite in it.
SHIMWELL SHOOTS
From the free-kick Shimwell nearly put himself among the marksmen, taking Matthews’ short pass from the kick and shooting a ball which Hindle took on his knees and nearly lost as it cannoned off them.
With the game entering its last quarter-hour there was still little in it, even if once Farm had to beat out magnificently a corner crossed by Gibson.
Direct from this clearance Blackpool nearly went further in front.
Again it was Matthews who made the position, but this time it was Perry who darted to the wing forward’s pass and shot a ball which appeared to hit Parkes’ knees before rising high off them and sailing away for another corner, with Hindle merely watching the flying ball.
With ten minutes left, Blackpool were still only in front by a goal and another Villa defeat on this ground was not yet inevitable.
With those ten minutes left, in fact, Jackie Wright fell to earth with no man near him at the time, and after only the briefest examination went off in the trainer’s arms.
That left Blackpool with ten men—one of them a crippled forward - and might immediately have cost a goal if Kelly had not made a brilliant clearance within a few feet off a Blackpool goal line on to which nearly every Blackpool man was retreating as the end approached.
LATE EQUALISER
Back and back Blackpool went. There were breakaways by a skeleton forward line, but a goal was always coming.
It came with less than a minute left. A clearance was delayed out on the left flank of Blackpool’s defence.
Out went a pass to the other flank. Ford, the roaming centre forward, was waiting for it out on the wing, crossed it high.
Half a dozen men hurled themselves at it in a pack and missed it, but almost under the bar BILLY GOFFIN, who had crossed into the centre, headed the first goal ever scored by the Villa at Blackpool In postwar football.
Result:
BLACKPOOL 1 (Mortensen 44)
ASTON VILLA 1 (Goffin 89)
COMMENTS ON THE GAME
AT a time when it seemed that Villa were never fated to score a goal at Blackpool, one was snatched which won a point for the Birmingham team.
It was a thunderclap finish and yet the goal worth a point had been threatening against Blackpool’s nine men and a cripple for 10 minutes before it came.
Blackpool were probably unfortunate in these particular circumstances not to win.
Yet the front line never, even at full strength, played the football which took the points at Sunderland a week ago.
If the game revealed anything it was that Stanley Matthews’ recall by the England selectors was warranted.
MARTIN A BARRIER
He gave class to a forward line in which the inside men labour as they would - and how at times they worked! - were too often racing passes on to the ironclad barrier called Con Martin.
The wing half-backs stormed into the game in the last hour, and all the afternoon Eddie Shimwell was a full-back who had no peer on the field, even on a day when Harry Parkes, a great full-back, was also playing.
The Villa will be glad of this point. Blackpool will take a lot of convincing that at full strength they would have lost it.
Report from the dressing-room was that Jackie Wright had twisted an ankle after leaping up to head a ball and falling awkwardly.
AT the Baseball Ground at Derby, where nothing except football has been played for half a century or longer, Blackpool will be on view next weekend.
All the signs and portents are that Blackpool’s defence will be on overtime, for, with the exception of Arsenal no home front line has been as destructive as the County’s this season, in spite of the absence of such a famous personality as Billy (Where will he go to?) Steel.
Jack Lee, the new centre-forward from Leicester, has soon put himself among the First Division goals, and on home records the County’s attack has actually aggregated 13 in four games, which, without being sensational, is still a gale warning for all defences visiting Derby.
Yet, at a time when the Derby forwards were shooting them in regularly. Blackpool played a goalless draw at the Baseball Ground towards the end of last season, and in the first year after the war won there by a last-minute Jim McIntosh goat
It should, therefore, be no forlorn quest next weekend. For if the County front line has several big guns in it, the defence, no impregnable force, conceded 14 goals in its first eight games and can obviously be taken by storm.
There could be a lot of goals in this game. If there are it will be the first time in postwar football that there have been when Blackpool have played in Derby, for, except when the County won the match 3-1 two seasons ago, it has been a singularly profitless sequence for the forwards.
Now may be the chance for them to exact a little revenge.
GOAL-SCORING NO LONGER A ONE-MAN JOB
And when Morty starts again -
By Clifford Greenwood
Just a difference of £45,000
BY "CLIFFORD GREENWOOD" 23 SEPTEMBER 1950
HERE IS A COMMENT ON FOOTBALL’S CRAZY ECONOMICS
Sunderland at Roker Park a week ago fielded two inside forwards, Ivor Broadis and Len Shackleton, whose cost to the north-eastern club was about £45,000.
Blackpool fielded two inside forwards, W. J. Slater and Jackie Mudie, whose cost was exactly nothing at all.
Yet of the four, and in spite of spurts of brilliance by the famous “Shack,” it was the Blackpool men who Stole the show; from their illustrious counterparts. It was, in fact, Manager»
Joe Smith’s opinion after the match that Bill Slater was the best inside forward on the field, and I admit that I have never seen him last a game as he lasted this one or circulate his passes with such discretion and intelligence.
I hear, by the way that the amateur went back to Leeds for his year’s course in physical training this week. Blackpool still expect to field him fairly regularly.
***
NEVER before have so many local boys promised to make good in Blackpool football. Never have so many local boys been given the chance to make good.
Alec Munro is justifiably proud of the fact that his “B” team in the Lancashire Combination has in it these days so many recruits who have graduated on Fylde football fields.
Selected for the midweek match against Chorley this week were no fewer than six. In the defence were full-backs Tom Lucas and David Frith. The other four were all in the front line: Billy Wright, Len Stephenson, Gordon Bond and Alf Eastwood.
There was a time when Blackpool men in a Blackpool team were scarce.
Those days have gone. The Blackpool nursery, served by such men as Alec Munro, Danny Blair, and V. P. McKenna have ensured that.
***
A CHEER FOR WILLIE
I AM glad to hear that Willie McIntosh left the field at the end of the Central League match last weekend to an ovation from the south stand after a brilliant lone raid which made Blackpool’s second goal for Andy McCall.
They come no gamer than this little Scot from Deepdale. He has not scored as Blackpool expected him to score when he was signed from Preston - and as he himself expected to score, too. And when during the summer he was put on the sliding scale by Blackpool - less when | he plays in theft second team - I he was a long time before he accepted the terms.
But always you can say of Willie McIntosh that whenever he plays he will give all he has to give in a match. And that, when you think of it, is about the highest compliment a professional footballer can be offered.
Some of these little men have such big hearts.
***
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