4 November 1950 Blackpool 4 Everton 0
Everton defence shattered in strong finish
RIGHT WING STARS
Blackpool 4, Everton 0
By “Clifford Greenwood”
JIM McINTOSH, the forward who missed the 1948 Cup Final, came back today, as leader of the Everton front line, to the ground where he made his name.
On his left was Harry Potts, the forward for whose signature Blackpool were prepared to pay £20,000, three weeks ago.
Blackpool had in the field the men who lost at Newcastle a week ago.
It was the first all-Lancashire match played in the town on a Saturday afternoon this season, and in spite of the fact that the Illuminations are over there were nearly 25,000 people inside the gates on a grey, windless afternoon 15 minutes before the kick-off.
No fewer than eight internationals were in the cast, and another notable personality on view was Referee A. E. Ellis, of Halifax.
A highlight of the game was the 100th successive appearance of George Farm, the Blackpool goalkeeper, who was greeted by the band playing a Scottish air Teams:
BLACKPOOL: Farm; Shimwell, Garrett; Johnston, Hayward, Kelly Matthews, Mudie, Mortensen, W. J. Slater, Perry.
EVERTON: Burnett; Clinton. Moore; Grant, Jones (T. E.). Farrell; Buckle, Fielding, McIntosh, Potts, Eglington.
Referee: Mr. A E. Ellis (Halifax).
THE GAME
First half
Within exactly 35 seconds of Harry Johnston winning the toss for Blackpool and deciding that his forwards should attack the north goal, the goal had fallen and Blackpool were in front with one of the fastest goals ever scored on the ground.
The Blackpool right wing escaped direct from the kick-off It was repelled once, and advanced again as Matthews darted to a loose ball and put it past the full-back for his partner to take away.
A couple of seconds afterwards the Kop was in a tumult.
JACKIE MUDIE accepted the pass, almost reached the line with it, and hit fast and low a ball to which Burnett, probably unprepared for the shot, fell so late that it was a yard over the line as he reached it with fists and punched it out.
Without hesitation and without a protest by Everton Mr. Ellis gave a goal.
EVERTON OUTPLAYED
During the next five minutes it was one-way traffic on an Everton goal which nearly fell again as Mudie shot. wide of a post a ball to which Burnett again appeared to move a fraction too late.
Yet when Everton advanced, three corners in less than a minute were conceded on the left flank of Blackpool’s defence, and while those raids were being built the Everton front line had every appearance of a brisk, alert force, fast and direct on to the goal.
A clearance and a free-kick by Shimwell twice put the Blackpool forwards into action, but except for a breakaway by Perry, in which the young South African found the ball bouncing too fast away from him, there were no major incidents in front of the Everton goal.
DEFENCE GAPS
Everton goal not too well protected
It was still, however, only indifferently protected.
Low passes, chiefly to Mortensen, were invariably intercepted, but it was a defence that had gaps in it and was too inclined to settle on a ball before clearing it.
W. J. Slater and Johnston halted Potts the first time the ex-Burnley forward had a pass to chase, but it was the Everton goal which was still in the greater peril and might, in fact, have fallen again in the 15th minute.
Then Mudie took a pass swerved away from his half-back, and with a perfect pass left Mortensen in an open position to shoot a ball which hit Burnett, cannoned out of his reach, and was retrieved as the goalkeeper fell forward on to it,
A couple of minutes later Garrett raced fast across to an exposed wing to prevent Potts from taking away a pass crossed high out to him from the other wing by McIntosh.
SHIMWELL’S PACE
Again a minute later Eddie Shimwell repulsed all on his own a raid on the Everton left wing, not only by outpacing Buckle but by dispossessing the wing forward after reaching close quarters.
Yet it was still the Everton defence which, seemed vulnerable to shock raids or to any other sort of raid, with two and often three men playing close on Matthews, refusing to tackle him, but, admittedly, often cutting off his final pass.
Harry Potts was again in the game with 20 minutes gone and might have been in the score sheet, too, if Johnston had not hurled himself at his feet, trapped the ball between his two boots, and left George Farm to race out and calmly lift it out of them before clearing it.
EVERTON NEAR
George Farm holds a Buckle shot
In the next Everton raid a goal again was not far away, Buckle showing his heels to Hayward in pursuit of a long lobbed pass and shooting a ball which Farm held superbly under the bar.
There was not a lot in it with the end of the first half-hour approaching.
There might, I think, have been another goal if Mr. Ellis had not halted play for a free-kick against Slater after the amateur had escaped his man, swerved another, and reached shooting position as the whistle went.
It was illustrative of the desperation which now and again seemed to visit the Everton defence under pressure when Clinton hooked over his own bar a bouncing ball, with no forward all that near him.
The Everton forwards, in the game a lot, were twice allowed to enter it on each wing, with a linesman apparently reluctant to lift his flag for an offside offence which in each case seemed clear.
The second time Potts, clear away, was halted only by the massed tackle of Johnston and Shimwell.
Some of the shooting was high, wide, but not a bit handsome.
Mortensen went comparatively close after Kelly had given him a made - to - measure pass, but McIntosh missed by yards in front of the Blackpool goal a minute later, and within another minute hooked away a bouncing ball on to which Eglington was racing fast into a scoring position.
The Blackpool forwards were a little inclined to embroider a move, to make one pass too many.
LUCKY ESCAPE
Ball begged to be shot over Everton line
Otherwise there still seemed no authentic reason why the Everton defence should not have been often stampeded, in spite of the fact that T. E. Jones was almost always beating Mortensen to the ball in the air.
With five minutes of the half left, the Everton goal was fortunate to escape as Slater eluded his full-back, sidestepped Burnett and crossed in front of an open goal a ball which simply sat up and begged to be shot over the line - if only there had been a forward to shoot it.
That prefaced a sudden three- minute Everton storm. In it the Goodison Park men were twice near a goal and once unlucky not to score one.
HIT A POST
It was in the first of these massed raids that Blackpool were fortunate to escape.
Eglington took a pass out on the wing, and, when everybody expected a centre, shot so fast that the ball escaped Farm and appeared from the Press box to hit the inside of a post before cannoning out.
Within a minute, whirlwind, desperate pressure had won two corners.
From the second Fielding almost flew through the air to a ball which came off his head like a bullet, hit a massed defence, bounced out, and left Farrell to shoot it back so fast and low that Farm had to make a flying dive to reach it.
Everton finished the half not looking at all like a beaten team.
Half-time: Blackpool 1, Everton 0.
Second half
Peter Farrell, one of the game’s stars, made a great clearance to repel Blackpool s first raid of the half.
It was nearly all Blackpool afterwards, but there was nothing crisp or decisive in the football nothing at all until Mortensen took Mudie’s return pass in one of his old-time spurts and shot a ball which cannoned back off a man in its path.
Everton’s plan still seemed to be to refuse to tackle Matthews, to wait instead until he made the delayed pass, and five times out of six they intercepted it.
This Blackpool right wing was still, however, the best on the field.
SCATTERED DEFENCE
When Matthews took one pass away and left his full-back and three other men trailing after him the Everton defence was scattered all over the field when he made an unexpected back pass out to an open space where Mudie was standing unmarked.
Back fast across a gaping goal the inside forward crossed the ball - too fast for Mortensen. who, racing in on to the far post, could only slice his shot into the side net.
The pressure continued. In it twice Mortensen was nearly as fast as in his old days on to forward passes. In the 10th minute he had the goal which had been eluding him all the afternoon. A good opportunist goal it was, too.
LEAD INCREASED
Mortensen dive brings a goal
This time Everton paid the price of leaving Matthews to cut in without a tackle. Into the penalty are and across into shooting distance the wing forward was allowed to zig-zag before squaring a pass to his partner.
Mudie shot as the pass reached him, shot, I think, a ball which would have passed outside the far post if MORTENSEN had not dived at it and almost at knee height headed it the other way past Burnett’s left hand.
Everton were still not content to admit defeat, raided bravely afterwards. and in one raid nearly had a goal, Potts darting to a forward pass and as three men challenged him, shooting it far away and wide of the far post.
POTTS SHOOTS
A goal to reduce the lead was near again when Buckle escaped Garrett, put inside a pass which Potts shot so fast that it appeared to hit Farm as he fell to and cannon out for a corner Which was followed by another as this raiding Everton attacked and attacked in vain.
When the pressure was lifted a superb move by Slater enabled Matthews to win a corner which was worth only what all the other corners in this game had been worth - precisely nothing.
Stanley Matthews seemed to be able to do whatever he wanted with his full-back, but nothing materialised as centre after centre from this quarter raked the Everton goal until from a corner Perry headed low into Burnett’s arms.
STILL FIGHTING
Everton attack often aggressive
Everton were still not outplayed, were still, in fact, often on the aggressive, but with 20 minutes left it still seemed to be all over bar the shouting - and for a time there was not a lot to shout about.
Fourteen minutes were left, and the match was settled
Johnston ambled up to take a throw-in. The Everton defence must have known that a long one was coming but never positioned itself for it.
Over sailed the ball, bounced out twice until it at last ran loose to MUDIE, who lofted it back high into the roof of the net.
It was merely to dot the “i’s" and cross the “t’s” when BILL PERRY scored his first First Division goal at Blackpool with a grand low shot five minutes from time, with the Everton defence riddled on its left flank and all at sea everywhere else again.
Result:
BLACKPOOL 4 (Mudie 1, 76 Mortensen 55, Perry 85)
EVERTON 0
COMMENTS ON THE GAME
A GOAL in the first half-minute decided this match. Everton were never completely outplayed afterwards, but the longer the game lasted the greater was Blackpool’s command of it.
Ultimately a Blackpool forward line which took a long time to realise the chance which offered itself shattered an Everton defence which was never anything except commonplace and would not even have been commonplace if the great hearted Farrell had not played such a fine game.
T. E. Jones was almost as resolute in the centre, but there were too many gaps everywhere else.
Stanley Matthews offered a problem which this defence never solved and seemed curiously reluctant even to try to solve.
With greater punch in the centre, even if Mortensen revealed glimpses of the old opportunist in the second half, and is still clearly out of luck, it would have been almost a complete rout.
MUDIE STARS
Still, as a line, it won in the end by a distance, with Mudie the best inside forward on the field and the left wing definitely entering the game as a raiding force in the second half.
The Blackpool defence was not impassable, but it always sufficed to halt an Everton forward line which, except for a few minutes before half-time, was all bark and no bite.
The half-back line was again the Blackpool team’s strongest division, even if Garrett had another great match.
This was Blackpool’s biggest victory of the season, and the last half-hour never threatened to be anything else.
THE ghost of Neil Franklin will be walking at the Victoria ground next weekend when Blackpool play at Stoke, writes Clifford Greenwood,
It will be strange for a Blackpool team to play on this ground without the former England centre half standing in the path of the forwards and defying them, often alone, like a sort of latter-day Horatius on the famous bridge.
A classic was the game the Bogota emigrant played against Blackpool on this Potteries ground in the 1949 Cuptie and played at Blackpool, too, in the replay.
He was there again, almost impassable, only a week before he left for South America in one of last season’s closing games, a match in which Blackpool made a draw at 1-1, but which, without PC Franklin on the premises, putting one or two forwards under close arrest, they might have won.
There will be no Franklin next week, and it is conceivable that in the circumstances, on a ground where no Blackpool team have won since the war, Blackpool, who have not won a point on tour since mid- September, may come home showing a profit.
Two visiting teams have drawn and two others have won at Stoke this season, but as the City have conceded only seven home goals this season, it is obvious that even without Franklin the Stoke defence presents a considerable barrier, and in the front line, too. there is always sharpshooter Frank Bowyer to snap up the chances.
This is one of those forwards whom Blackpool have long wanted to sign. Playing against them, he may be a menace next week. Yet Blackpool, I think, should not lose next weekend.
It’s a nice selection, in fact, for the treble chance.
NO, YOU CANNOT BLAME BLACKPOOL DEFENCE
For much too long—an unequal battle
By Clifford Greenwood
BY "CLIFFORD GREENWOOD" 4 NOVEMBER 1950
IF EVER there is a part of the world where a player likes to rise up and shine it is the part where he lived in his youth, writes Clifford Greenwood.
Tom Garrett achieved this ambition by playing a classic game at Newcastle last weekend.
Yet year after year Stan Mortensen somehow never hits the headlines - and seldom the net - in matches in his native north-east.
In the 10 games he has played in the region where he made his name as a boy he has scored only three goals. One was at Middlesbrough in 1947, the other at Sunderland last year, and the third at Newcastle a week ago.
Even when he was scoring nearly every week he was often out of the list in a north-eastern game. Just one of those things,
I suppose.
***
Exile talked cricket
THE little band of pilgrims who go nearly everywhere with Blackpool were at St. James’s Park last weekend. Among the 55,000, too, were dozens of Blackpool exiles, drafted from the north-west coast to Newcastle in the Ministry of National Insurance.
The only one I met was Arnold Johnson, the St. Annes and Blackpool cricketer. Inevitably, we talked, not football, but cricket. Arnold played last summer in the Northumberland League, and, after an indifferent few weeks while he acclimatised himself to the new environment, had as good a summer as the rain would permit.
He is planning to bring his new team to Blackpool for a match against his old club next year.
***
AMONG the men in the football news last weekend were: Joe Robinson. Blackpool’s Cup Final goalkeeper, who played a brilliant game against the Manchester City forwards at Maine-road and finished the match as the first goalkeeper this season not to lose a goal to the City front line.
Jimmy Blair, who, among the goals again, scored the one which won Leyton Orient’s match against Aldershot Jim Mein tosh, who scored Everton’s goal against Manchester United and was described as the best forward of a line which included Harry Potts.
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