24 February 1951 Blackpool 1 Fulham 0
Hard battle - but the Wembley spirit
LITTLE IN IT AS FULHAM GO OUT
Blackpool 1, Fulham 0
By “Clifford Greenwood”
AN HOUR BEFORE THE KICK-OFF ALL THE GATES ADMITTING TO THE TERRACES AND THE EMBANKMENT WERE CLOSED THIS AFTERNOON FOR THE FULHAM CUP-TIE AT BLACKPOOL.
First Cup quarter-final ever played on the North-West coast, it converted Bloomfield-road into a madcap bedlam. The Kop was massed to the top tier before two o’clock. The east side terraces were packed even into the corners.
Splashed everywhere were the tangerine and white and the black and white of the rival teams. There were even black and white banners and flags for Fulham, which every few minutes, lifting above the packed paddocks, fluttered to the brazen chorus of rattles.
The newsreel camera crews were stationed on a high scaffolding on the south paddock.
Everywhere on the cinder track the mascots paraded in all sorts of high jinks, the Atomic boys for this match introducing a character as tall as a lighthouse.
Yes, it was a Cup tie - only a Cuptie could have had a football enclosure in such a tumult.
The day was almost mild after hours of rain which last night soaked a pitch which has been soaked and soaked again during recent weeks until this afternoon it was as soft as a suet dumpling down the centre, patches of grass visible with a tolerably firm surface only in the corners.
GREAT DAY
It was the great day - the day which all young footballers dream about - for 21-year-old Blackpool wing half Ewan Fenton, called from his camp at Catterick to play in his first FA Cup-tie.
Except for his presence as stand-in for Hugh Kelly both sides were at full strength.
Teams:
BLACKPOOL: Farm; Shimwell, Garrett; Johnston, Hayward, Fenton; Matthews. Mudie. Mortensen, Brown, Perry.
FULHAM: Black; Bacuzzi, Lowe (R.); Quested, Taylor, Lowe (E.); Stevens, Bowie, Brennan, Jezzard, Campbell.
Referee: Mr. A. E. Ellis (Halifax).
The teams made their appearance to a thunderous reception.
The two captains and referee Ellis were almost invisible behind a battery of cameramen as the coin was spun.
First half
They cheered as if Harry Johnston had already won the match when Fulham lost the toss and defended the north goal.
Not that there was anything to cheer about, for there was little wind. Not that this goal required defending, either, in the first couple of minutes, for all the time the Fulham front line was moving on it.
Johnston made one great sliding clearance at the feet of his man, and young Fenton almost studiously cleared the ball into a “No man’s land” between Blackpool’s half-backs and forwards, before another minute had gone.
HURRICANE PACE
Yet before these early raids had been repelled Stevens had crossed from Fulham’s right wing a flying ball which Jezzard headed in towards the crouching Farm and which Hayward headed away before it could reach his goalkeeper.
It was a hurricane pace everywhere. Not that they forgot to play football. There were flashes of that, too. Then came the third minute.
Then, for the first time, a pass skidded out of the slime on to the rectangle of grass where Stanley Matthews was patiently waiting.
Four men - a full-back, two half-backs and a forward - went for that ball to close the path for the wing forward.
What happened in this swarm nobody could detect from the Press box, but, whatever it was, Mr. Ellis gave a free-kick for it.
The free-kick was crossed. Ian Black went out to meet it, impeded by one of his full-backs, and could only half-punch it out.
BACUZZI SAVES
It ran loose, skidded across the field to Johnston, who, with the goalkeeper still nearer the penalty area edge than his own goal, punted a ball at random high towards the bar.
Under the bar Joe Bacuzzi leaped at the flying ball as it was sailing at him, and
punched it out with one fist as if he were wearing a goalkeeper’s jersey.
Mr. Ellis gave a penalty without a shade of hesitation.
Who was to take it? Not Tom Garrett this time. Instead it was solemnly placed for ALLAN BROWN, who, as if he were taking penalties in Cupties every day of his life, strolled up to the standing ball and shot it away from Black’s left hand to release a tumult on the Kop.
Again Blackpool had taken that early lead - the lead beyond price - in a Cuptie.
FULHAM ATTACK
Afterwards the game continued as it had been going before this major sensation.
Fulham advanced almost continuously on both flanks. There were assaults - only brief and at the best sporadic - on the Fulham goal.
Otherwise the traffic, breaking all speed limits for a built-up area, was on the Blackpool goal, in front of which Hayward twice in rapid succession made grand headed clearances, with Fulham’s inside forward pack racing in on him.
Twice, too, Blackpool’s left flank of defence conceded corners, and twice from them a Fulham forward, in a leap at the flying ball, headed it far away from a post.
BOWIE HALTED
Fifteen minutes had gone. Blackpool were still being outplayed, and Bowie, the forward from Chelsea, took a forward pass, swerved one man with it, had only Hayward between himself and the crouching Blackpool goalkeeper, and was brilliantly halted by the Blackpool centre-half with a tackle which had dynamite in it.
Blackpool’s passes were missing their men continually. It was seldom that a concerted raid was built. All the progressive football, even if it was being broken on the barrier of Blackpool’s full-backs and a great centre-half, was being played by Fulham.
Eric Hayward was in the match again, sliding into the path of Jezzard as the Fulham inside-
left went fast after a forward pass into a shooting position but was never allowed to reach it.
AGGRESSIVE LINE
The story of the first 20 minutes was a goal for Blackpool in one raid and no goal at all for Fulham in a dozen.
Yet aggressive as this Fulham front line was and continued to be, it was still not making the positions from which goals are shot.
Blackpool, in fact, were nearer one of these in the 21st minute as Mortensen took a loose ball rolling towards him, hooked it on its path away from Jim Taylor but was still brilliantly halted by Fulham's tall centre-half as he went after it.
Another minute, and at last I saw a referee assert the authority which the laws give him.
There was a Blackpool raid on the right, a tackle on Matthews which was punished by a free-kick and, as the free-kick was awarded, an almost contemptuous booting of the ball downfield by Campbell, the Fulham outside-left.
“BRING IT BACK”
Mr. Ellis would not allow the game to begin again until he had sent the wing forward trotting 30 yards to retrieve the ball.
This free-kick, too, nearly produced a second goal for Blackpool in spite of all Fulham’s pressure, Matthews steering forward a pass on to which Mortensen raced full tilt before hooking it fast into the arms of the waiting Black.
Fulham were still making the raids, but Fulham were still losing by a goal with the 25th minute gone.
It was Fulham’s two wing half-backs who were determining the game’s course - often too fast for Blackpool’s inside forwards, fast back, too, to aid their own front line.
Matthews escaped them once, cut inside, was reaching the line as Bacuzzi went after him, reached him, and settled for a corner, which was worth nothing.
NONSTOP PRESSURE
That, however, was merely an interlude in Fulham’s almost ceaseless offensive.
Direct from the goal kick another raid was built.
Quested built it and completed it too, with a short stabbed forward pass which
Stevens took before shooting from the penalty area edge a ball which Farm reached as he lurched and fell sideways to it, beating it out away from the far post.
The Blackpool raids were still fewer with the first half hour gone. Yet there were signs that a plan was at last being evolved and a plan, too, based on the long pass which Fulham were too seldom introducing.
A PERRY CROSS
Mortensen created one raid on the left wing - a raid which ended in Perry racing past his fullback and from a position which Mr. Ellis decreed was inches over the deadline crossing a ball which the tall Black fielded with complete competence.
Rain clouds were massing over the ground, which, as the end of the half approached, was almost in twilight.
Still Fulham raided, fast on the ball everywhere, never allowing a man in a tangerine jersey to settle.
Another corner came, stampeded - that was the only word for it - out of the Blackpool defence by a line of forwards hurling themselves on the ball with an almost ferocious intensity.
NEAR AGAIN
Yet within a minute of this corner being cleared Blackpool were yet again nearer in one raid to a goal than Fulham had been with all their streamlined attacks.
Again the raid was started on the Blackpool right wing. This time Matthews raced his man over nearly 50 yards, gained on him every yard, and crossed the ball at last almost from the post.
Mortensen, as he fell, hooked the ball so fast that it was skidding out of the falling Black’s reach as it hit Bacuzzi and bounced away off his knees.
The next minute came the storm which had been threatening, sheets of sleet and rain which inside a couple of minutes had the field thicker in slime than ever, almost waterlogged in front of the north goal.
HITTING BACK
While it fell, Blackpool raided and for almost the first time in the match raided continuously.
And under these attacks the Fulham defence, except for the brilliant Taylor, towering at centre-half, revealed no particular conviction either in its positioning or in its repelling of raiding forwards at close quarters.
Anything could have happened during this five-minute tempest.
There were signs, in fact, with only five minutes of the half left, that the other storm - the Fulham storm - was beginning to blow itself out.
While it lasted it had been good - at times very good - but it had not produced a goal and, to be frank, had not often threatened to produce one.
Four men were after Matthews again when he was given another pass, and this time the fourth man, left wing forward Campbell, was guilty of the tackle which Mr. Ellis punished with another free-kick.
SIXTH CORNER
No sooner, however, had this been repelled than Fulham were at it again, and this time were threatening a goal.
Bowie took away a forward pass superbly, and was racing into position with it for a centre to rake Blackpool’s goal as Garrett tobogganed through the mud at his feet and conceded the sixth corner Blackpool had surrendered during a half which had definitely not gone according to general expectations.
But then nothing else was going according to anticipations, for when Brown, in a perfect Blackpool movement, finished with a high falling centre across the face of the goal Matthews leaped up to meet the ball and actually headed it into Black’s hands.
It had been a great half for Fulham, great except for the absence of goals - and, as so many people have said so many times, goals alone count.
Half-time: Blackpool 1, Fulham 0
Second half
Within a minute it was nearly 2-0. There was a back pass - suicidal in such mud - by a Fulham half-back.
Brown was on to it fast as a hare, and stabbed forward a pass which Mortensen volleyed so fast at Black that the goalkeeper was almost rocked off his feet.
Another minute, and with Blackpool apparently intent on establishing that a lot which had been happening in the first half was all wrong, Mortensen was in the match again, leaping high to a flying centre - higher than Taylor - and heading down a ball which Black palmed out superbly.
That was an opening by Blackpool with punch, pace and nearly everything else in it.
JEZZARD SHOOTS
Yet in their first raid of the half, as early as the third minute, the Fulham forwards were near a goal as a raid was built on the right, the ball crossed and a bare shooting position left.
Jezzard took it magnificently. Farm, who must have been half unsighted by his own men, held the ball just as magnificently, and cleared it to a great cheer from the Kop.
But the opening minutes of this half were a reversal of the first half.
Blackpool were advancing all the time on to a Fulham defence which was once discovered in a state bordering on panic as Matthews crossed a low centre which missed Mortensen by inches, hit a full-back racing in on to it, and bounced back off his knees to the waiting goalkeeper.
SKILL IN MUD
Now Blackpool’s turn to attack
In spite of the mud which by this time was thick as treacle there was a quality in a lot of the football, and in particular in the football of Blackpool, which was remarkable.
Fulham were retreating - retreating everywhere, not yet a tired team, still a game team, but with a lot of the rhythm gone from their attack.
It was Blackpool who were attacking almost continuously, and packing all the punch, too.
Matthews made two swoops on Fulham’s defence and left it standing each time, the first time crossing a ball which was lost in a swarm of men, the second time a centre which Mudie volleyed back so fast that when it cannoned off Taylor the ball flew wide of a post and missed it only by inches.
WIDE AND HIGH
Twice in rapid succession Perry shot, too, the first shot mowing a swathe in the packed south paddock like a scythe in long grass.
The second shot sailed high over the bar.
But Blackpool still attacked. Down went Stanley Matthews under a tackle by Reg Lowe which had thousands barracking the tall, fair-haired full-back.
Inside the next two minutes the right wing-forward went down again under a tackle by the Fulham full-back.
And this time Matthews went over the line for attention, and when he came back, with the west paddock in a tumult, limped about dejectedly while the four other forwards made the pace.
And what a pace it still was with 65 minutes of the 90 gone!
Campbell stabbed a shot wide from the only shooting position Fulham could carve out of the game for nearly 10 minutes.
SLICED SHOT
And Bowie should have made it 1-1 with exactly 20 minutes left.
In one fast, direct raid Stevens left Garrett standing, waited until a man was in position, crossed a pass into the vacant space, and watched Bowie slice a shot wide from a position which had a goal in it.
That released a storm of Fulham attacks, two of which were repelled by the decision in the tackle of Harry Johnston before another was halted by the vigilant, assertive Hayward.
Twenty minutes were left, and this tie was still not settled.
Seventeen minutes to go, and Fulham had an escape.
It was Matthews again who was in it - a Matthews limping still when he walked but not when he ran.
He ran past Reg Lowe, waited for the full-back, eluded him again, crossed from near the post a ball into which a Fulham full-back thundered full-tilt, hitting it back into his goalkeeper’s arms at the pace of a forward shot.
Another minute, and Jezzard was left out on his own after Brown’s delayed pass had been intercepted and the Fulham inside-left had been sent chasing a clearance from it.
FARM CLEARS
It was forward v. goalkeeper in that one tense second. The forward shot too soon. George Farm, the goalkeeper, fell to the skidding ball, reached it, and cleared it with the ground in a pandemonium.
Another minute and there was another Matthews raid, another pass stabbed back and Mortensen, as the ball skidded away from him, appeared to hit the base of the near post.
Minutes were passing, minutes precious to Fulham as with only 10 of them left Perry escaped his full-back, ran on, and on, crossed a centre which shot off Mortensen’s head fast as a bullet, almost grazing the top of the bar.
This was a finish - a great finish.
DREAM CHANCE LOST
Five minutes left. Fulham advanced on the right in a swift exchange of passes.
The last pass gives Jim Bowie a dream position. The little Scot falls as he hooks the ball - hooks it wide of the post with George Farm alone in front of him.
That could have made it 1-1. Two minutes passed. There is another raid on the Fulham right wing. Farm races out - far out of his goal. The ball halts instead of skidding in the mud.
Stevens is on to it, crosses it as the goalkeeper races back desperately into an empty goal, is still racing back as Johnston under the bar heads away in a cat’s leap.
Another minute, and as Stanley Matthews sprawls in the mud again Mr. Ellis takes action, produces his little book, and enters Reg Lowe’s name.
A minute later, and unexpectedly - for nearly all the
watches in the Press box give another minute to go - Mr. Ellis blows his whistle and Blackpool are in the semi-finals for the second time in three years.
Result:
BLACKPOOL 1 (Brown 4 (pen))
FULHAM 0
COMMENTS ON THE GAME
As a Cuptie this had everything. Great football it may not always have been and could not be on such a mud flat, but there was drama, pace, tension, everything that in a Cuptie is expected.
Blackpool were outplayed in the first half in spite of scoring the first goal during it. Fulham were in retreat afterwards and yet repeatedly, as the end approached, were often near a goal which would have made a replay at Craven Cottage on Wednesday necessary.
There was as little in it in the end, as 1-0 on the score sheet indicates.
If there was a failure in the Blackpool team I did not note him.
For a long time there was no particular plan in the team’s football, with Fulham fast as terriers on the ball everywhere and every man playing all out every minute.
HAYWARD GREAT
Towering in a Blackpool defence often retreating before half-time, making a magnificent comeback, was Eric Hayward. All the time, too, against Fulham’s finest forward Tom Garrett had another of those games with a classical signature on them.
But everywhere there was the resolution which the game demands, and in the second half Harry Johnston was nearly a team in himself, chasing the Fulham front line everywhere, racing up with his own forwards.
And among those forwards Stanley Matthews again presented an insoluble riddle to the men facing him, and Allan Brown contrived to play football which not all the raging excitement of the match could disturb.
PERRY’S ADVANCE
On the other wing, on a limited number of passes, Bill Perry’s football sufficed to reveal the great advance this young South African has made in his game during recent months.
But definitely it was as a team, not as one or two men and the rest, that Blackpool won this match. Defiant in its defiance when Fulham were dictating the game in the first half and progressive - and aggressive, too - in attack afterwards.
There was little in it, but Blackpool scored the one goal and that goal entitled them to a semi-final passport.
NEARLY everybody is fond of Blackpool. But you can count out the Portsmouth football team, who come to town next weekend, writes Clifford Greenwood.
No Portsmouth team has won at Blackpool since a time so long ago that it requires patient research to establish it. It made no difference when Portsmouth won the League title last season and in 1948-49. They still lost at Blackpool.
Until, in fact, a couple of goals in the last 12 minutes decided the match at Fratton Park last October, no Portsmouth team had beaten a Blackpool team anywhere since postwar days.
It was 1-0 and 4-3 for Blackpool in 1946-47; 1-0 and 1-1 in 1947-48; 1-1 and 1-0 in 1948-49; and 2-1 and 3-2 last season.
Such scores are calculated to give even a League championship team - and, to be frank, Portsmouth are not playing like one these days - an inferiority complex.
Undefeated at home since December 16 - and when the Spurs won on that day it was only the second time Blackpool had lost a home match this season - Blackpool should still be undefeated after Portsmouth’s visit.
For - apart from the Fratton Park club’s dismal record in Blackpool fixtures - a team that have won only four of their 14 away games this season can scarcely enter on next week’s match with anything except hope and with little faith.
Portsmouth are obviously not League champions for nothing, however humble their position in the First Division table may be today. But Reg Flewin and his men - and on his day Flewin is one of the best centre-half backs in England and one of the best captains, too - are finding it such hard labour these days that Blackpool, even with a game in London in midweek, should win this one.
Jimmy Hampson settled it
By Clifford Greenwood
THERE are times when, with the best will in the world, I despair of a few present-day referees, writes Clifford Greenwood.
I am always disinclined to criticise them. Yet a few of them invite it. Some of their decisions are strange and peculiar.
For that I can forgive them. Too often, particularly in the case of offside, they are the victims of their own linesmen. And no man is infallible.
I think, as one example,
that Mr. H. Holt, the Rochdale referee who was given the Derby County match at Blackpool last weekend at comparatively short notice, was in error when he refused Blackpool a penalty after Jack Mudie had gone down into the mud under a despairing tackle by Terry Webster, Derby’s boy goalkeeper, which would have graced Murrayfield but nowhere else.
But such cases are often, admittedly, a question of opinion governed by angles of vision and other factors.
A false impression may have been created by the distance of the particular incident from the Press box.
Other comparable episodes are often open to two entirely conflicting interpretations.
But there can be no disputing the fact, I think, that the major sin of the referee of these days is his disinclination to punish a player for a tackle which can cripple a man and often has been known to cripple him.
There was one team at Blackpool in recent times - and I will not give its name - that surrendered nearly 25 free-kicks, all for practices which are a disgrace to the game, and yet except for one or two rebukes, which appeared to be delivered with no particular emphasis, nothing whatever happened except the awarding of those free-kicks.
The generation of referees which lived in the days of the Howcrofts and his contemporaries would never have tolerated such conduct.
It would have been “Off” - without even the option of a warning.
***
The gallant Jackie
STRANGE that Jackie Wright should have been recalled to the Blackpool defence for the Derby County match last weekend.
For it was against the County that this young Blackpool fullback played, I think, one of the most gallant games I have ever seen a Blackpool player play anywhere - and I have seen a generation or two of them.
In the first minute of the match - it was at the Baseball Ground two seasons ago - Wright collided with the County outside-right, Les Mynard, who was making his first appearance in the First Division. He had to go off for repairs, returned with his head in a thick bandage.
Six times Jackie was off the field - once while stitches were inserted - but he refused to call it a day.
When at last he went to the dressing room for the last time - and that was only when everybody else was going there, too, at the game’s end - nearly 20,000 rose and gave him an ovation.
***
PENALTY EXPERT
THERE was one man on the field in the Blackpool Cuptie this afternoon - and he played against Blackpool for Fulham in the other quarter-final in 1948 - who is reputed never to miss a penalty.
Arthur Stevens, the Fulham forward, scored the first goal which defeated Chelsea in last week’s replay - and it was from the “spot.” It was the seventh in succession he has converted.
That is almost a record in postwar football. Yes, a record. It has become that when a professional footballer can shoot a ball past a stationary goalkeeper from penalty-range seven times in succession.
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