27 January 1951 Blackpool 2 Stockport County 1
Blackpool survive amazing Stockport assault
LUCKY TO BE IN ROUND FIVE
Blackpool 2, Stockport County 1
By “Clifford Greenwood”
A CUPTIE ADVERTISED ITSELF. YOU NEEDED NO TELLING THAT THERE WAS ONE ON AT BLACKPOOL THIS AFTERNOON.
Bells, rattles and bugles could be heard in a madcap chorus nearly half a mile away from Bloomfield-road and an hour before the kick-off in the game with Stockport County.
There were the ticket touts outside the gates, too - business not at all brisk for them - and, inside, mascots parading and the famous duck on public view at an uncommonly early hour in the afternoon.
Half an hour before the teams appeared to the inevitably turbulent reception all the queues had gone, with only casual customers drifting in and the Kop almost packed and the east side terraces massed to the concrete boundary walls.
I was told that gates were being closed with 15 minutes still to go.
The frost had its steel fingers on the turf again, and not even the sun - which had apparently been subjected to a power cut, so cold it still was - could lift them out.
Hundredweights of sand had been scattered from goal to goal and the only grass visible was in the four corners.
Manager Andrew Beattie threw no pre-match bombshell with his selection of the County forward line. He decided in the end not to play Alec Herd, the 39-year-old Scot, who it was rumoured, might have been recalled, - but retained George Dick, the ex-Blackpool man from the Guards, and Andy Black, who made his name in England with Manchester City.
AT FULL STRENGTH
Blackpool were at full strength the forwards led by Stanley Mortensen, who has probably the best Cup record of any forward in the four countries with 19 goals in 17 postwar Cupties.
Teams:
BLACKPOOL: Farm; Shimwell, Garrett; Johnston, Crosland, Kelly; Matthews, Mudie, Mortensen, Brown, Perry.
STOCKPORT COUNTY: Ward; Staniforth, Monks; Emptage, Glover, McCullough; Dixon, Black, Cocker, Dick, Oliver.
Referee: Mr. J. S. Pickles (Bradford).
First half
If it was a capacity attendance when Harry Johnston won the toss for Blackpool - and it seemed to be - there were 32,000 inside the gates, which was a record for a Saturday Cuptie in the town.
The Blackpool defence was in the north goal and immediately in action.
In the first 10 seconds the County made a raid and at once the treachery in the pitch was exposed, for during this one attack the three men who moved to the ball each skated to earth before they could reach it.
That was the first half minute. The next 20 seconds contained amazing drama, culminating in the the fastest goal a Blackpool team has ever scored in a Cuptie.
ONE UP!
Matthews makes a first-minute goal
Almost inevitably, I suppose, it was created on the right wing. Matthews raced after his first pass of the match, reached the ball before the full-back, cut away with it.
That ball bounced awkwardly. Even Matthews could not discipline it, almost lost it on the line, retrieved it, and put a short pass backwards - the old familiar manoeuvre.
But this time there was a man in position for the pass. The man was STANLEY MORTENSEN who, as the ball was crossing him, hooked it fast into the far wall of the net before Denis Ward in the County's goal could move a muscle.
That was sufficiently remarkable. Yet it was not the end of this cyclonic first act.
The County made another raid, this time with George Dick at inside right.
It made no difference. The raid was repelled. Again, with four minutes gone, Blackpool raided on the right. Probably Glover, the County's centre-half, heard the metallic tattoo of Stanley Matthews' boots on the turf at his heels.
AND ANOTHER
Whatever the reason, he booted the ball high over the line for a corner - and the corner cost the County a second goal. For as the ball came across from the flag chaos in the County's defence came, too.
In the end, with the ball bouncing loose almost under the bar, little JACKY MUDIE raced to it, and hit it fast into the roof of the net, with the Kop behind the goal almost blazing with the tangerine ribbons and the clattering rattles.
Strangely, after two body blows calculated to put any team out of any match, the County were not outplayed.
Cocker went fast after one of the forward passes, which Dick was punting to the van of his attack, and Crosland had to race across fast to halt the Stockport leader a couple of yards inside the penalty area.
DIRECT PLAY
There was a lot to admire in the County's direct no-nonsense-about-it football. There was a lot to admire too in the courage of this Third Division team after losing those two early goals.
Men were often moving so fast that they lost the ball or even ran over it and past it but Stockport's football had not the crisp precision of Blackpool's game, which, in fact, might have had a third goal with only 10 minutes gone.
Then Matthews, on one of his wandering beats, took a loose ball, steered it down the left wing. After it went Perry as a linesman's flag was lifted on a debatable offside decision.
DISALLOWED GOAL
Whether Mr. Pickles saw the flag or not I cannot say, but he allowed the South African to race on alone, lure the deserted Ward from his goal, and shoot a low ball past him.
Then, with the Kop celebrating again but a little prematurely this time. Mr. Pickles, without a protest from Blackpool, disallowed a goal.
The County continued often to advance, but it was significant that, with the first quarter-hour gone, there had not been one serious test for Farm, awkwardly as the ball often bounced to his full-backs, fast as terriers as the County's forwards continued to be.
BLACK WIDE
The only material consequence of all this pressure was a corner in the 16th minute, from which Black headed yards wide.
Two goals in four minutes had not been sufficient to subdue the County, but there was still little in the Third Division team's football to promise a reduction of the lead.
It was obvious why Bill McCulloch had been drafted to left half. By special decree he had become Stanley Matthews' shadow. Wherever the wing forward went there, too, went the County's captain, even on to the left wing.
Twice the two men had duels out there. The second time the wing half was left trailing, and this time a third goal should have come.
For away, swerving from his man, went the wing forward, crossed from the left wing a centre as precise as those he crosses from the right.
PENALTY MISS
Again the County's defence was split wide open. Again there was confusion as the ball ran loose Shimwell, racing far downfield, crossed the ball again. Up leaped a man in a tangerine jersey - I think it was Brown - and headed a ball which would have given him his first goal in England.
The ball was rising away out of Ward's reach inches under the bar. Up to it leaped right back Staniforth, took the line of least resistance, and punched it over as if he were a goalkeeper.
The inevitable decision was a penalty which, unexpectedly, Tom Garrett was called out of the full back line to take. He shot fast and straight at the crouching Ward, who punched the ball away with both fists clenched.
If it was drama you were after, Bloomfield-road was the place for it this afternoon.
STOCKPORT RAIDS
And still the County raided a lot, and yet only once, against a defence covering itself perfectly this afternoon, was a goal near.
Then Albert Emptage made himself a wing forward, raced down the right flank of the County's front line, and crossed from near the flag a perfect centre.
Half a dozen men rose to the flying ball. George Farm, flagrantly impeded, lost it. Over this mass of men it sailed to Oliver who, cutting in from the other wing, lashed it excitedly over the bar.
That could have been a goal for the County, and a goal which would not have been undeserved as the game had gone in its first half-hour.
PASSES ASTRAY
Blackpool seemed content with lead
The Blackpool passing was beginning to stray. One had the impression that the First Division team were being content to ride on a 2-0 lead.
It was a hazardous policy against a team as intent as these men from Edgeley Park, even though they had little front-of-goal punch.
Incidents were few. The ball was bouncing or skidding away from the man continuously.
Except when Shimwell decided to become a forward and hit a full-blooded shot far away from a post there was little to write about.
And except to report that continually the County's attacks - and there were still plenty of them - were being created by the passes and the intelligent football of George Dick, who was constantly there to find the loose ball and for a time was the game's best inside forward.
WASTED FREE-KICK
From one of his crossfield passes Crosland appeared to beat down the ball with his fist for a free-kick which, however, in common with all the County's raids, led nowhere.
I saw Allan Brown miss one chance, or, to be exact, miss a pass by Mudie which was bouncing away at an unexpected angle as he moved to it.
Otherwise - as so often happens in Cupties - the Third Division team's forwards were still hammering away at a First Division defence which, except for momentary confusions, seldom forfeited a shooting position.
TEST FOR FARM
And when it forfeited one there was never a Stockport forward who could or would shoot.
It required a full-back, Ronnie Staniforth. to give George Farm a test.
And when the test came it was less by design than accident, the full-back lashing anywhere a ball which in the end hit the turf wide of the near post, spun up high towards it, and was snatched out from under the bar by the goalkeeper.
The County were still pressing in the closing minutes of the half, but no raid was leading anywhere.
Half-time: Blackpool 2, Stockport 0.
Second half
The Blackpool defence was still retreating in the opening minutes of the half.
It required a great, if desperate clearance by Crosland to repel the County's first raid, and it was a time, in fact, before Blackpool could build a raid at all.
Then when at last Matthews, still relentlessly shadowed by McCulloch, escaped this vigilant half-back and the full-back, too, and crossed a centre, Kelly mishit the pass when it reached him.
Not that the left half was the only Blackpool man, putting a pass wrong. There was strain everywhere, with the front line completely unable to design against fast tackling the sort of raid which early in the afternoon had split the County's defence wide apart.
With five minutes of the half gone, the County's pressure was intense, almost ferocious, with Blackpool's defence going back everywhere, being reinforced by four of the forwards.
COCKER FLOORED
The tearaway Cocker came to earth once under a tackle by Crosland near the penalty area line which Mr. Pickles punished with a free-kick.
It was that free-kick which released the barrage which followed.
Before it had been cleared George Dick raced on to a loose ball and shot it back at such a pace that Farm had to fall full length to beat it out close to the near post for a corner.
ANOTHER CORNER
Big test for Blackpool defence
That corner was followed by another, and by a third, with the Third Division team after the ball and racing away from their men like a pack of greyhounds.
Still another corner came - the County's ninth of the afternoon - with the Blackpool forward line reduced to Mortensen waiting for something to turn up and Matthews wandering about from one wing to another seeking to ensure that it should.
This was a bigger test than Charlton ever gave Blackpool in the replay.
A tenth corner was conceded with the pressure still raging and from this corner the elusive goal which the County unquestionably deserved should have come. It was half repelled.
The ball was punted back to a packed goalmouth, bounced high, fell at the feet of Cocker, who hooked it high over the bar from a position almost under it.
This was incredible or, I suppose, would have been in anything except a Cuptie.
Mortensen and Mudie made one lone raid which was repulsed, and once, penned in a corner, Matthews discovered himself with the flag at his back and three men dancing in front of him.
Even he could not escape that mantrap. Then, too, Perry took Mortensen's pass and did what a Stockport forward seemed unable to do - hit the ball as it crossed him and missed the bar only by inches with a shot.
Within a minute, Crosland, with Cocker chasing him, hooked the ball high over his own bar for the County's 11th corner.
COUNTY SCORE
Black goal after battle in goalmouth
So, too, it went on until in the 25th minute of the half the County's 12th corner came, and this corner produced at last the goal for which all the other corners had been won in vain.
What exactly happened in the swarm of men surging in the goalmouth after the corner had been taken by the short pass to the inside man and the centre which followed it could not be detected from the Press Box.
All I saw was a swarm of men battling in front of Farm and the ball at last rising away and over the goalkeeper as he appeared to be falling backwards vainly clawing at it.
They gave the goal to ANDY BLACK, and nobody could dispute that whoever scored it it had been deserved.
NEARLY ANOTHER
Within two minutes, too, it was nearly followed by a second as a long clearance punted down the centre bounced high in front of Farm and was punched over the bar for the 13th corner as Cocker went tearing after it There were glimpses at last of the football that Blackpool can play afterwards.
There was one raid on the early-in-the-afternoon model which gave at last a pass to Matthews which he could take away.
This one he took away, reached the line with it, and crossed a falling centre which Mortensen headed into Ward's hands from a position a half yard offside.
Another minute, and with exactly a quarter of an hour to go it was nearly 2-2. Away after a forward pass went little Les Cocker, a centre-forward obviously prepared to chase anything.
OVER THE BAR
Cocker misses great chance
He chased this pass, brushed past Crosland, and, all out on his own, shot over the bar with only Farm in front of him.
That should have been a goal. After it the County continued to raid, to raid furiously, almost feverishly, with the Blackpool men being summarily dispossessed almost everywhere.
With 10 minutes to go, Blackpool were unashamedly playing out time, clearing now and again anywhere, almost in desperation.
After one grand raid by the County, with the ball moving precisely from man to man, Garrett had to tear fast across to halt Dixon as the inside forward raced into a scoring position after the last pass.
It was traffic all one way - traffic exceeding all the speed limits as the end approached.
Blackpool escaped once and, as often happens when a team is being outplayed, nearly settled the match.
MISSED BY INCHES
Then at last one of Brown's passes which had the old precision in it, found Matthews on the right wing. The wing forward took it as it was crossing the line, glided it past McCulloch, went fast after it, crossed it low, missed the far post by inches and misled, too, a couple of Blackpool forwards in position for it.
The County lost a corner afterwards, which was an event in itself, and with five minutes left, in fact, the long storm of the County's amazing assault showed signs of spending itself.
Yet what a match these Third Division men had given a First Division team - a match which again nearly ended in a draw and would have done if three minutes from time Oliver had not stabbed wide of a post a shot which he should have stabbed inside it.
Two minutes to go. Another County raid. The ball is shot by a County man, hits a Blackpool man. There is an immediate excitable demand for a penalty.
Mr. Pickles brushes the County's swarm away from him, walks in silence - an almost unendurable silence - to a linesman, consults him and walks away again, refusing the penalty.
That was the last purple patch in a match packed with them.
Result:
BLACKPOOL 2 (Mortensen 1, Mudie 4)
STOCKPORT COUNTY 1 (Black 70)
COMMENTS ON THE GAME
AFTER losing two goals in the first four minutes Stockport County gave at Blackpool in this match the bravest show I have seen a team give all season.
And you can count in all the Divisions.
During the first half one was merely left admiring the County's courage in a battle against odds which bordered on the impossible.
After the interval this Third Division team's football had a pace and a punch in it and a quality, too, which outplayed Blackpool, reduced the lead, and could I think, have forced a replay without outraging justice.
Blackpool may have been unsettled by the sheer pace and ferocity of the County's game, but that can always happen in Cup-ties, and Blackpool, frankly, were at times perilously near to losing this one.
STOCKPORT STARS
George Dick had a game which revealed how his football has matured since his Blackpool days.
Wing-half Bill McCullough marked Matthews as he has seldom been marked, and on the other flank of the County's halfback line Emptage had a game of comparable accomplishment.
In the end, Blackpool's two inside forwards were almost played out of the match.
And, as a direct consequence, the front line, which opened as if it were intent on sweeping the Third Division men almost out of view was reduced to a centre-forward and two wing forwards waiting for passes which never came to them.
CONTACT LOST
All contact between the forwards and half-backs was lost under Stockport's hammering second-half assault.
It was then that the decision of the two full-backs Garrett and Shimwell and the undisturbed competence of Farm ensured that the early winning lead should not be lost.
This was an escape for Blackpool. A match which threatened to be a Stockport massacre became a Blackpool retreat.
One can pay no higher compliment to the Third Division team than that.
LAST WEEK it was Sunderland, the team that Blackpool cannot beat, at Bloomfield-road, writes Clifford Greenwood.
Next week, in the Midlands, it will be the Villa - the Villa who seem unable to beat Blackpool anywhere.
Nine times the clubs have met since the war, and the Villa have not won yet, had not, in fact, scored a goal at Blackpool in five successive postwar matches until Trevor Ford made one in the last minute last September and a 1-1 draw was forced.
Until then it had been 1-0 in an almost monotonous succession for Blackpool in every match since the war ended
The results at Villa Park confirm, too, that if the famous claret-and-blue brigade have a bogey team it is Blackpool. It was 1-1 in 1946-47, 1-0 for Blackpool in 1947-48, 5-2 in 1948-49, and a goalless draw last season, making visits for Blackpool to this particular ground so profitable that six out of eight points have been won from them.
There are signs, now that Mr. George Martin has transferred from Newcastle to Villa Park, that a few of the glories of other days may be restored to the Villa. But, obviously, in view of this sequence, Blackpool will go away next weekend to the Midlands with a lot of people selecting them for an "X" or even a "2" on the coupons.
Not that it will be a walkover or anything approaching one. The Villa have yet to win away from home this season, but at Villa Park have already slain a few of the mighty.
Dave Walsh, the centre-forward who left the Albion for the neighbouring Villa a few weeks ago, is leading the forwards at the Park these days, and still in there, as cunning as ever in the making and sometimes the scoring of goals is the little inside forward, Tommy Thompson from Newcastle, who played his first game for the Villa at Blackpool last September.
Blackpool have won only one away game in the last nine. It's about time they won another, and if one can be won it should, on the old horses-for-courses theory, be this one.
Today the stakes were high
By Clifford Greenwood
WHICH was Blackpool's record victory in the Cup? It was the 5-0 defeat of Colchester United three years ago.
Until the beginning of a season which ended with a Blackpool team for the first time at Wembley Blackpool had never won a Cuptie by as many as four goals.
Then in successive rounds Leeds United and Chester were each beaten 4-0, which were records, and then came Colchester, and a new record was created.
What of Blackpool's luck in the Cup draw? People talk as if Blackpool seldom played a Cuptie away from home. That, probably, is because of the three successive home ties the club had in 1947-48.
Actually, as the records reveal, Blackpool have been in the draw 13 times since the war, and six times have come out first for a home game and seven times second for an away tie.
Not such a lot of luck about that.
***
HE'S DONE IT BEFORE
IT made news . when Peter Doherty chose himself as Doncaster Rovers' centre-forward last weekend. But the general assumption that he had never before played in the position is (as they say) entirely without foundation.
He often played as a front line leader during his early days at Blackpool, shortly after he had crossed to England, his name unknown, his fame still to be won.
One match in which he was fielded in the position was the famous Cuptie at Cheltenham in 1934, the only Blackpool game I have ever reported on a Rugby Union ground on a kitchen table which served as a Press box.
The Town ground was too small for the match, which was transferred to the Cheltenham RU headquarters. Peter scored one of the three second-half goals which converted a sensational 1-0 deficit at half-time into a full-time 3-1 passport into the next round.
***
"KEEP CALM", SAID TWO-GAME MAN
LAST time I saw Willie Watson before the Sunderland match at Blackpool last weekend was when he was walking disconsolately back to the pavilion at Old Trafford during the sensational first half-hour of the last Yorkshire-
Lancashire match, one of the four Yorkshiremen out for 13 runs during an annihilating opening by young Brian Statham.
Is this man who is a class county batsman in the summer and a wing-half of sufficient accomplishment to have played for England in the winter - a wing forward?
I think the answer is "No."
And I do not think he will consent indefinitely to play there for Sunderland, either, for if ever there was a case of squandering of talent it is in the fielding of such a half-back in such a position.
Willie Watson is the man with the temperament for the big match.
That was revealed several times last weekend, when, with a few too many of the Sunderland men a little too excitable and hot-tempered, he never lost his composure, and once, in fact, was heard from the Press box to be telling one of his team to calm down a little.
Leave a Comment