6 January 1951 Charlton Athletic 2 Blackpool 2
Four minutes to go - and Mortensen forces Wednesday
FIGHTING FINISH
Charlton Athletic 2, Blackpool 2
By “Clifford Greenwood”
THE VALLEY WAS NO MUD FLAT, AFTER ALL, FOR THE CUP-TIE THIS AFTERNOON. TONS OF SNOW ON THE PITCH IN MIDWEEK HAD THAWED COMPLETELY, AND THE SURFACE APPEARED TO BE NEARLY EVERYTHING A FOOTBALL FIELD COULD REASONABLY BE EXPECTED TO BE IN MIDWINTER.
There was scarcely a bare patch on it, and the grass was thicker everywhere than I had been told to expect. I may be wrong, but I think if Blackpool had been able to ask for a pitch for this match, they would have put an order in for such a one as this.
The sun was shining at 2-0 o’clock, and the Valley’s soaring embankments, half an hour before the kick-off, had as many thousands standing on them as were massed there when the teams went into action in the Cup-tie rehearsal a fortnight ago.
So early the League match attendance of 30,000 had been reached and even passed, and outside in the streets there were swarms filing down all the narrow streets to the turnstiles.
Yes it was a Cup-tie. That had not to be printed in the programme to be established.
Everywhere there were the mascots - the two squads from Blackpool with the Atomic Boys parading in the new products of their amazing wardrobe, the “Ten Old Faithfuls” at their customary station, pressed against one of the paddock walls opposite the centre line, and the famous duck taking its bow half an hour before the kick-off in the centre circle.
CUP-TIE CHORUS
All the time, too, the bugles brayed and the rattles and bells made a mad discordant chorus.
Blackpool were able to field the team selected two days ago, with a forward line playing again on the ground where it scored three times 14 days ago.
Frank Lock, the Charlton full-back, who twice this season has been on the unenviable “Operation Matthews,” was still ill in bed with influenza, and the Charlton full-back line, as a consequence, had Peter Croker on the right flank and Charlie Revell, the former centre-forward, facing England’s wing forward on the other flank.
Teams:
CHARLTON: Bartram, Croker, Revell; Fenton, Phipps, Forbes; Hurst, Lumley, Vaughan, Evans, Kiernan.
BLACKPOOL: Farm; Shimwell, Garrett; Johnston, Crosland, Kelly; Matthews, Mudie, Mortensen, Brown, Perry.
Referee: Mr. B. J. Flanagan (Sheffield).
First half
Rain clouds were blowing up and a wind beginning to rise as the teams appeared to a fine old hullabaloo, with the Athletic’s boy mascot for some reason running out with Blackpool.
Charlton, in unfamiliar blue jerseys, lost the toss. They were off - as they always go off in Cup-ties - fast as greyhounds from the trap.
Blackpool attacked the goal the forwards attacked in the first half of the League match.
The Athletic’s right wing ran into an offside trap in the first half-minute, and was ensnared again before 60 seconds had gone.
MUDIE’S PASS
Another half-minute, and Jackie Mudie, steering out one of his precision passes - and how he specialises in them these days - gave Matthews position to cross a ball which Mortensen headed high into the arms of Bartram as the whistle, for a third time in 90 seconds, went for offside.
The Blackpool right wing of defence tangled itself a little in the Athletic’s next raid, but Blackpool retaliated immediately.
Stanley Matthews, given an unexpected lot of living space, took a ball far out by himself before crossing a high centre which Phipps, in a flying dive, headed away from Mortensen for the game’s first corner.
Twice afterwards in football of whirlwind pace and intensity - but football of a good order - the Charlton right wing menaced the Blackpool goal.
CHARLTON RAIDS
Claim for penalty is turned down
The first time, Hurst went away after a long forward pass, leaped over Garrett’s sliding tackle, fell over the full-back’s jerked-out leg and released a big demand for a penalty which Mr. Flanagan ignored.
Within a minute, Hurst was in the game again, lobbed a bouncing ball over his full-back’s head, raced on to the line, and steered across a centre, fast and low, which Farm punched away in a nose dive from Charlie Vaughan as the leader raced in to meet it.
Except when Perry, wandering into the inside-right position, appeared to be a shade late to a shooting chance, and when a second corner was won, this time on the right wing, Blackpool were outplayed as I never saw them outplayed a fortnight ago.
FAST CENTRES
Constantly the Charlton wing forwards were escaping the guard on them and crossing fast centres, with George Farm impeded by his own defence as he went out to it.
Evans raced on to the ball, swerved away from an open goal, appeared to have rejected the chance, and, as he cut inside again, fell under a tackle by Shimwell which disabled him.
Mr. Flanagan, immediately and without anything except a token protest by Blackpool, awarded a penalty.
NEARLY MISSED
The versatile CHARLIE REVELL came up from full-back to take it, and was fortunate not to miss it, for his shot, rising fast, was straight at Farm, hit the goalkeeper’s clenched fists as he lifted them above his head, and bounced slowly off them and over the line.
Whereupon, Blackpool’s front line awakened - and not before time either - raided constantly for the next five minutes.
Bartram in rapid succession made clearances from full-back Garrett and from the shooting wing-forward Perry. And in the 19th and 21st minutes, while this pressure continued, the Charlton goal nearly fell.
All the time, with Evans still under treatment, the Athletic were in retreat.
NEARLY A GOAL
Perry unprepared for Johnston pass
Came the 19th minute and a fast down-the-centre raid, with Mortensen pursuing a forward pass and falling under a desperate tackle a yard outside the area.
It was Stan Mortensen who took the free-kick and shot from it a ball which Bartram reached in a sideways dive and punched away at the foot of a post.
There the ball ran loose, astutely back-heeled by Johnston to Perry, who, unprepared for the pass, appeared to miss the ball, with the goal wide open in front of him.
Two minutes passed and Blackpool still raided, won one corner and another, and before the second was cleared were near the lead again as the Charlton defence tangled itself.
In the end, a Blackpool forward - I think it was Mortensen - stabbed a loose bouncing ball which Revell cleared off the line close to the post and with his goalkeeper prancing excitedly near the other.
MAKING THE PACE
Even with Charlton back at full strength again it remained for a time a carbon copy of the First Division game a fortnight ago, with Blackpool, after that incredibly indifferent opening, making the pace everywhere and playing the football, but making few shooting positions.
With exactly half an hour gone it had been about 15 minutes - the first 15 - for the Athletic and 15 for Blackpool.
Sam Bartram was often in the game, fielded a ball headed at him by Allan Brown and a long punted clearance by one of his own full-backs before the aggressive Bill Perry won Blackpool’s sixth corner in the 34th minute.
This corner produced its major sensation, too. The first centre from the flag was repelled back to the man who had taken it. Back Perry lofted it again. On to it a pack of men hurled themselves.
Back the ball came.
On to it darted Johnston, shot it into the net, had the goal disallowed - and properly disallowed, too.
I was almost certain that I’d heard the blast of the whistle for a case of bumping and boring in the goalmouth a split second before the ball hit the back of the net.
Yet still Blackpool raided on and on. The Charlton forward line, which had almost dictated the first quarter-hour, was almost non-existent, seldom even over the half-way line.
Mortensen shot a great thunderbolt of a ball which Bartram held like Keith Miller in the Australian slips.
Brown outwitted two men and a third before making position for Matthews to cross a centre which had not been cleared before Kelly had shot fast against a full-back a ball which had “goal” written all over it.
It was one-way traffic, and to repel it the Athletic were employing both inside forwards in defence and leaving their few raids to be built by a centre-forward and his two wing men.
KELLY CLEARS
And with the limping Evans one of those wing men not a lot was seen of this Charlton attack, which, however, won its first corner - which a fine headed clearance by Kelly repelled - three minutes before half-time.
The half ended with Blackpool still seeking the elusive goal, but seldom, to be frank, threatening to score it.
Sam Bartram was still on overtime, punching out a headed ball by Brown after Mortensen’s perfect pass to Matthews had allowed the wing forward to cross another of those centres which so often were being lost in the massed Charlton defence.
Half-time: Charlton 1, Blackpool 0.
Second half
First cheer of the second half was for Stanley Matthews as he signed the Charlton mascot’s autograph book while the teams waited for the referee.
The next big cheer could have been for a Blackpool goal and would have been with less than 30 seconds of the half gone if Harold Phipps had not cleared anywhere, with the ball running loose in front of an open goal from Matthews’ free-kick.
It made no difference. The inevitable happened before two minutes had gone.
A Charlton defence, reeling backwards, conceded another corner to halt the elusive, zigzagging Matthews.
Over came the centre. Up to it blindly leaped Mortensen, headed it sideways to Johnston, who chased it back into the pack.
I saw the ball skid away in the sand, skid away to BILL PERRY who shot it fast and low over the line with Bartram spreadeagled near one post and his defence scattered everywhere in front of him.
The Athletic immediately produced as many raids in three minutes as the line had produced in the last 15 minutes of the first half, and yet, with only five minutes of the half gone, Blackpool should have gone in front.
Swift interpassing split the Charlton defence. On to the last pass Allan Brown darted, found himself alone in front of Bartram, ran on alone half a dozen yards, half slipped in the mud, and stabbed his shot wide of the far post.
That was a big escape for Charlton, who immediately conceded Blackpool’s eighth corner of the afternoon and still retreated everywhere, except for an infrequent breakaway.
BROWN’S PASS
Brown nearly tore open the Charlton half-back and full-back lines with another of those long forward passes which are one of the chief weapons in his armoury before Blackpool’s ninth corner came, surrendered by a defence which was rapidly losing whatever little composure it had ever possessed.
Except when he fielded a free-kick which shot awkwardly to him out of the mud in front of his goal, George Farm was chiefly engaged in watching his forwards attack, and attack almost nonstop they continued to do.
Not that the Athletic were as utterly outplayed as they had been.
Tom Lumley shot one ball which nearly came down, as they say, with snow on it, so high did it fly.
And there were other raids before and after this one, but not many, not half as many as Blackpool were still building.
AHEAD AGAIN
Charlton score a freak goal
Yet in the 14th minute of the half the Athletic, against the game’s course, went in front again. It was almost a freak goal as I saw it.
Tom Garrett gave away a corner without knowing anything about it, was laid out as the ball hit him and cannoned off him over the line.
Up for the corner went the tall PETER CROKER as it was crossed from the right.
What happened after seemed to be all in slow motion as the ball shot down off the full-back’s head, skidded away from three watching Blackpool men, and, I suspect, hit one of them before skidding away for the last time from Farm, too.
That ball crawled over the line, but it was still a goal, and it put an outplayed team in front for the second time in the afternoon.
A RECORD?
It also gave a team’s first two goals to full-backs, which must be almost a record.
It was all Charlton, or nearly all Charlton, after this unexpected gift from the gods - for a gift I shall always think it was - and in one of the raids which followed Farm was laid out after a collision with the fast, alert Vaughan, and required the trainer’s attention before he could enter the game again.
The Athletic’s right wing was as aggressive as it had never been since early in the day.
All order for a time had forsaken the Blackpool front line. It was Charlton all the time, a sort of rough and ready battling Charlton, but still a team moving almost constantly on the Blackpool goal.
CHARLTON PRESS
A corner was won - the Athletic’s fourth of the match - in the course of this pressure, a pressure which until the second goal the London team had never seemed capable of creating.
And backwards, as the precious minutes ticked away, Blackpool retreated, with Ben Fenton wisely urging his men to continue on the attack, not to fall back on to defence.
A good captain is this Charlton man, who once put his precept into practice by releasing a grand forward pass which only a smash-and-grab tackle by Shimwell took away from Vaughan, with the centre chasing it into a shooting space.
OVER THE BAR
Vaughan had chance to settle it
Blackpool were definitely losing this match with only 18 minutes left. The shadow of a Cup dismissal was over the team.
Fifteen minutes and Vaughan shot over the bar a ball which, if it had been a couple of inches lower, might have made it 3-1 and settled the match.
Fourteen minutes to go and for the first time for nearly 10 minutes the Blackpool front line raided and Perry shot from 20 yards a fast low ball which Bartram beat down and cleared with complete confidence.
Another minute and after Crosland had half-hit out a clearance, the crippled Evans out on the Athletic’s left wing shot a rising ball which Farm reached in a great sideways leap and cleared.
JOHNSTON’S DASH
Back surged Blackpool. Harry Johnston took a chance for himself with an urgency almost desperate, raced 30 yards unchallenged, shot a ball which Bartram punched out for Blackpool’s 10th corner as the ball was curling away from him inside the far post.
The corner had not been cleared before another was surrendered, and when this corner was cleared, with eight of Blackpool’s men packed in the goalmouth, Bartram made a cat’s leap to punch out a ball flying away from him, out of the swarm milling on top of him.
Another minute and the Athletic won a free-kick. Fenton took it, shot a ball so fast that as Farm crouched to meet it the ball hit his chest, bounced away from him, and was scooped up off the line by him.
Four minutes left. The Blackpool forwards won their 12th corner. Stanley Matthews crosses it.
MORTY AGAIN
Goal when all seemed lost
There is chaos in front of the Charlton goal. The ball passes backwards and forwards in a mass of men, backwards and forwards almost interminably.
I see Bartram punch it out as he leaps to his left, punch it out again as he leaps to his right.
Then the net bulges, and in the next split second STANLEY MORTENSEN, who has done it again in a Cup-tie, is engulfed in a swarm of Blackpool men.
Apparently he has shot the loose ball up into the roof of the net from almost under the bar. Even George Farm leaves his goal, races over the halfway line to shake the centre-forward’s hand.
A minute left, and Mortensen, all on fire, stampedes a pass through the Charlton defence, loses the ball as Bartram falls at his feet, darts to it again, and back-heels it to Matthews, who stabs it wide of a post with his left foot.
What a finish!
Result:
CHARLTON 2 (Revell 13, Croker 59)
BLACKPOOL 2 (Perry 47, Mortensen 86)
COMMENTS ON THE GAME
It was a photo finish at Charlton. I will confess that I had nearly written Blackpool out of the Cup when the prince of opportunists, Stanley Mortensen, shot the goal which made a replay for next week.
Blackpool should have won this game, not merely drawn it, and never should have had to play until the fading minutes before bringing Charlton up to the north-west coast on Wednesday.
The Athletic played half the game with an inside-left crippled, one arm limp at his side, and in the last 15 minutes had another forward hobbling on the other wing.
Make no mistake about it, Charlton gave Blackpool a match which Blackpool never expected.
The Blackpool defence under pressure was not as firm as I have seen it. Tom Garrett had a great afternoon, class written all over him, except during those minutes early and late in the afternoon when his wing forward ran away from him.
The wing half-backs, too, were always in the game and always accomplished while in it. But there was not the resolution in this defence as a covering force which it customarily possesses.
Too many tackles were late or delayed, too many clearances indecisive.
The inside forwards, too, were not the direct aggressive raiders a Cup-tie demands and, in fact, Blackpool’s chief strength in attack was again on the wings.
Matthews, with fewer passes than he has been given recently, still seemed to spread alarm and despondency in the Charlton defence whenever he had the ball, and South African Perry was always enterprising and fast to the ball.
This was not one of Blackpool’s great matches, but the football they played holds promise that they will settle the issue next Wednesday.
Class will tell, I think.
SO it’s back to the League - and back to Wolverhampton, where Blackpool teams so seldom win - next week.
It is a fact that the Wolves have never lost a Blackpool match at Molineux since the war, and, to be frank, have seldom been in any particular peril of losing one.
The Cup-tie was drawn there last year - and drawn deservedly by the visitors - but the only other occasion when a Blackpool team has left this Midlands town in possession of anything material was in 1948. And then a Wanderers’ half-back had to put the ball through his own goal to make a 1-1 draw of it.
It was 3-1 for the Wanderers in the first postwar season, 2-1 in 1949, and 3-0 last year - and a 3-0 defeat for Blackpool in early 1950 was almost a sensation.
Now, with the Wolves baring their fangs again and playing football which few other teams in the country can equal for its pace and decision, Blackpool, obviously, will not start as favourites next weekend.
As I see it, writes Clifford Greenwood, it threatens to be one of the biggest tests of the season for a Blackpool defence facing a forward line which has Johnny Hancocks as only one of five men with goals in them.
That is the punch which the Wanderers pack - a forward line with fire-power down all its length. The defence is not, I think, so impressive. The Blackpool forwards could shake it and could scatter it, playing as I have seen these forwards often play this defence.
But if Blackpool are to end the Molineux hoodoo it is the Blackpool defence which primarily will have to do it.
Blackpool football in strong position
By Clifford Greenwood
BLACKBURN OLYMPIC were the first team from the North to win the FA Cup. That is in all the textbooks and common knowledge.
What is not common knowledge is that living in Blackpool is a man who played in the last match the famous Olympic ever had on their fixture list.
The man is Ted Nuttall, of Willowbank Avenue, Blackpool, and the match was at Heywood against Heywood Central in 1888-89.
Ted Nuttall, who will soon be celebrating his 82nd birthday, lived and played in an epoch in football’s history which is still by nearly all his generation called the Golden Age. Yet his interest in the contemporary game is as earnest and intelligent as ever it was in the football of the long-distant past.
He is not of those who seem to think football began to go into a decline as soon as Steve Bloomer hung up his boots.
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And white again it was today
SO Blackpool had to play in white again at the Valley this afternoon, writes Clifford Greenwood. Blackpool will soon be forgetting when last they played in anything else in away matches.
When the tangerine jerseys were ordered in the long ago, and tangerine became the club’s colour, there was a general impression that it was a colour so distinctive that it would clash with no other in the League.
It is still distinctive, but the majority of referees think it clashes with red, and, as a result, a Blackpool first team have not played in tangerine outside Blackpool now since the match at Newcastle on October 28.
The white jerseys have been required in successive games at Stoke, Middlesbrough, Highbury, Charlton and Anfield.
And now it’s had to be white again today - and may be white again at Wolverhampton, where the Wanderers play in old gold next weekend.
What’s to be done about it? Nothing, I should think. Definitely tangerine must not be discarded.
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WHEN SNOW WRECKED A CUP-TIE
THE Blackpool football blackout a week ago has recalled to Mr. William Nelson, one of the old brigade, another day long ago when a Blackpool match was wrecked by the snow.
It was a Cup-tie, too, and ultimately it became a marathon comparable with the famous Middlesbrough - Blackpool serial in 1946.
The first match at Crewe was drawn 1-1. Blackpool were leading the Alexandra 2-0 in the replay when a blizzard swept the ground and caused an abandonment. The match was replayed - but not at Blackpool, at Everton - and there was a 2-2 draw. Blackpool won the third replay 2-1 at Preston - and after all that lost to Bolton Wanderers 0-1 at Burnden Park in the next round.
All this William Nelson remembers. He has had a hairdressing business in Pleasant Street for over half a century and has had a season ticket for the Winter Gardens for 51 successive years. What he also obviously possesses is a good memory.
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