24 March 1951 Everton 0 Blackpool 2
Blackpool stroll away with the points
CLASS TELLS AGAIN
Everton 0, Blackpool 2
By “Clifford Greenwood”
BLACKPOOL WERE AT GOODISON PARK THIS AFTERNOON FOR THE SECOND TIME.
The team were in their dressing room nearly an hour before the kick-off - the team that defeated Bolton Wanderers yesterday, for unexpectedly there was an announcement of "No change" after several players had been tested shortly before the coach left the coast.
The roads were not as thick in traffic as they were for the replayed Cup semi-final last week, but with half an hour to go before the "off" the queues outside the turnstiles were of remarkable length, and inside the gates there were between 40,000 and 45,000 waiting in the sunshine and cold wind.
Everton, who had not scored in the last three games, had a forward line led by Jimmy McIntosh, who will always go down to fame as the man who missed Blackpool's 1948 Cup Final without ever complaining about it.
At outside-left, making his first appearance in the First Division at the uncommon age for a debutant of 25, after four years in the reserve, was John Parker, deputising for the Irishman Tommy Eglington, who was unfit.
POTTS PLAYS
His partner was Harry Potts, the forward from Burnley who nearly became a Blackpool forward last autumn.
Teams:
EVERTON: Sagar; Moore, Lindsay; Grant, Jones, Farrell; Fielding, Hold, McIntosh, Potts, Parker.
BLACKPOOL: Farm; Shimwell, Garrett; Johnston, Hayward, Fenton; Matthews, Mudie, Mortensen, Brown, Wardle.
Referee: Mr. A. E. Ellis (Halifax).
What box office Stanley Matthews is! As soon as it was announced over the loudspeakers that he was in the Blackpool team nearly 60,000 people cheered as if Everton had scored.
THE GAME
First half
Blackpool faced the wind after losing the toss.
John Lindsay, the new back from Glasgow Celtic, was on Matthews like a dog after bone in the first half-minute, took the ball off him the first time, but lost it to him the second, forfeiting a position from which the wing forward crossed a ball which was lost in a maze of short passes.
Another minute had gone - the game, in fact, was scarcely 60 seconds old - when John Parker had his First Division baptism of fire, and with it nearly a goal.
A long forward pass was crossed over to his wing. The outside-left went after it, reached it in a shooting position and lost it to Shimwell's forthright tackle in a raid which ended in Farrell shooting fast but high over the bar.
Afterwards the game went the way of the wind, and for a time was ruined by it, with the ball skittish as a colt on the ground and in the air blowing back on the Blackpool men who cleared it
FENTON'S TACKLE
Except that Everton continued to move in the correct direction and that young Fenton halted one of these raids with a razor-sharp tackle there was little to write about.
Harry Potts, always a specialist in the crossfield pass, opened one of these raids with one of those passes out to a gaping wing, but when Parker's centre was crossed Jim McIntosh could only stab the ball slowly towards the crouching Farm.
The wind was winning everywhere in the first 10 minutes.
Everton were chasing a ball which was bouncing fast away from them everywhere, and Blackpool were chiefly concerned with booting it away and waiting for it to come back - as, almost inevitably, it always did.
OFFSIDE
McIntosh twice caught in the trap
Three times in those first 10 minutes the Everton forwards were offside, Jim McIntosh twice being trapped out on the right wing, where repeatedly he was wandering.
There was no flash of drama at all until, with 12 minutes gone, Parker was in the game again, leaping high at a flying centre and colliding with Farm, who fell, lost the ball and snatched it up again, all in one swift movement.
There were several Blackpool raids afterwards.
One lone swoop by Mortensen was halted inside the penalty area. In another, Matthews, from a position out on the left wing, glided forward a pass which Wardle shot over the bar.
Twice afterwards Johnston made clearances close to his own goal, one a flying dive to head away a centre crossed from the left.
It was all, however, football with no particular colour in it.
Nobody could have expected the drama which abruptly entered the match between the 18th and 20th minutes.
DOUBLE THRILL
Two minutes and two goals for Morty
During those minutes Everton's defence was torn wide open, and Blackpool scored two great goals. Young Ewan Fenton made the first with a downfield pass from almost inside the centre circle.
The ball bounced awkwardly for Tommy Jones, the Everton centre-half. He moved to it, missed it, lost balance as he lurched at it, and was still reeling as STANLEY MORTENSEN, the prince of opportunists, raced past him.
A third of the field was open in front of the Blackpool leader.
He raced into it, reached the ball, took it away with him, steadied himself in front of Sagar, and shot fast and wide of the diving goalkeeper before Everton's unprepared defence could marshal any sort of order at all.
In the next minute Allan Brown raced half the field's length, reached shooting position, and lost the ball under a desperate tackle.
MADE BY MATTHEWS
There was still, however, a goal in the move.
The raid was never halted. In the end, the ball flew out to Matthews, deflected to him by a full-back. The wing forward darted on to it. In two gliding sidesteps he left the full-back standing, cut in, and left the wing half standing, too.
Over flew the centre, MORTENSEN was in position again, leapt high at the ball and headed it far away from the falling Sagar's right hand - so far away that right back Moore fell with his goalkeeper, clutched the ball, but could merely claw it over the line.
That was a lead won - and probably a match won with it - in two remarkable minutes.
Everton continued to press with the wind's aid, but all the pressure led nowhere until Garrett made a short back pass.
Hold chased it and reached it, but, as Farm came out to him, could merely shoot a ball which went out off the goalkeeper as he fell bravely at the forward's feet.
EVERTON BARRACKED
Blackpool's football as the end of the first half-hour approached had in it all the design which had forsaken Everton's - so completely forsaken it that for a time the Goodison Park men were actually being barracked by their own public.
Fickle are football crowds. Any errors today in this wind were pardonable. Everton were making plenty - were making them all the time - but this sort of demonstration against a team - a losing team - is never good to hear.
The Everton forwards continued to build raids and a few of them were good raids, too.
One of them, designed in a series of passes, with the ball never off the turf, by Fielding, Hold, and McIntosh, was, in fact, one of the best of the half.
SO COOL
But all that happened at the end was a shot which Farm beat down, and when the ball was punted back to him by Hayward the goalkeeper took it as nonchalantly as at practice.
Almost as nonchalantly the Blackpool defence was repelling all these raids. And as the half neared its end there were fewer of them.
Seldom have I seen the Blackpool forwards and wing half backs find their men so often in the open space. And how many of these open spaces there were.
Matthews went into one of them from Mudie's backward pass, beat a couple of men as he had been outwitting them all the afternoon, and this time actually shot so fast that the ball was rising fast over the bar as Ted Sagar leaped late at it.
It was, this football of Blackpool's, football made to look excessively simple. It was outwitting Everton everywhere at the end of the half - almost exhibition in its quality and yet played at a deceptively fast pace.
Half-time: Everton 0, Blackpool 2.
Second half
Everton opened the half as if desperately intent on redeeming a fading reputation. In the first minute Farm was in action, falling forward to snatch away from Potts a fast low ball crossed by Parker. In the next minute Hayward headed out Fielding's centre superbly.
And in the next minute - all this in three hurricane minutes - McIntosh missed the sort of chance which had never offered itself to an Everton forward in the first half, stabbing at a ball which Parker eventually lashed high and wide of the far post.
Nobody could say that Everton were disposed to surrender even against two goals and a wind which appeared to be freshening.
SHIMWELL'S CENTRE
Yet this early pressure soon waned.
Back went Everton, and with three men penning in Matthews the wing forward still contrived to elude them before passing back a ball to Shimwell, whose fast centre Mortensen missed only by inches in a huge leap at it as it flew past him.
That was nearly 3-0. It was as nearly 3-0 again a couple of minutes later as Mudie almost impudently took the ball away from his full-back before squaring a pass which Brown, impeded by a pack of men, hit a split-second late in front of a nearly open goal.
Everton's game had all the signs of desperation in it.
Blackpool's football still possessed all the little subtleties and refinements, probably at times a few too many of them. But in the football sense there was still a great gulf between these teams, and, to be frank, Everton's raids were never promising to bridge it.
DISALLOWED
McIntosh heads in - the referee says "No"
Yet, with 16 minutes of the half gone, Everton were convinced that they had made it 2-1 and 60,000 people will probably take a lot of convincing that they had not.
Tommy Jones took a free-kick.
Grant glided it forward. A high ball flew into the massed Blackpool area.
McIntosh leaped at it and headed it backwards into the net. Everybody waited for the signal to the centre. Mr. Ellis instead gave a free-kick for Blackpool, and, I think, was entitled to give one.
For, as I saw it, Hayward was being flagrantly impeded by an Everton forward in the swarm battling for the ball almost in the jaws of the goal.
Everybody made a great deal of noise about this refused goal, and for the first time afterwards Everton began raiding to the cheers of a populace at last in a state of raging excitement.
EVERTON STORM
Whilst it lasted this Everton storm was furious. Harry Johnston made one goalmouth clearance with a pack of men in blue jerseys on top of him.
And a minute later, too, Parker, hurling himself desperately at a centre from the other wing, seemed to brush Farm out of his path, to find the ball bouncing at his feet in front of an open goal, and lashed it far away wide of the far post, with the goalkeeper sprawling beneath the bar.
Yet as soon as Blackpool built a raid again, Wardle shot barely over the bar at a great pace from another of those shooting positions which the in and out Everton defence were still conceding, and in another raid shot again.
HITTING BACK
Everton make a match of it
Everton were at least making a match of a game which half an hour earlier had seemed irretrievably lost.
It was football notable chiefly for its desperation, but it was sufficing to defy the wind and at times to send Blackpool hurtling backwards in an unexpected retreat.
The game went into almost a stalemate for a time, with the ball seldom inside shooting distance.
BROWN SHOOTS
That did not discourage Brown from shooting twice in rapid succession before, in front of the other goal, Fielding stabbed the ball wide.
Blackpool employed the next five minutes shooting from all sorts of ranges and angles as a team with the wind at its back should shoot, but with 15 minutes still to go people were drifting off in hundreds.
It seemed to be merely a case of waiting for the whistle - a whistle which came at last, with Blackpool almost strolling away with the points.
Result:
EVERTON 0,
BLACKPOOL 2 (Mortensen 18, 20)
COMMENTS ON THE GAME
BLACKPOOL won this game in two dramatic minutes during the first half, but all the afternoon it was a simple case of class telling the tale it always will tell.
One has to admire the fighting qualities of Everton after half-time, pitted against a wind and a team who were their masters everywhere.
One acknowledges, too, the great football played in a forlorn cause by those two wing half-backs, Peter Farrell and Jack Grant. But for the rest there was this afternoon only one team playing the football which wins games, and that team was Blackpool.
MORTENSEN'S PACE
Blackpool's forward line was at times magnificent in the precision of its passes in the first half.
It tore Everton's defence as wide open as a creaking gate. Mortensen has not been as fast or as aggressive for a long time.
On the wings there were raiders who took the pass away before a full-back could position himself, with Stanley Matthews as great as ever.
The inside men were always gliding out the passes to the wings, as were the wing half-backs. Never have I seen Ewan Fenton play a game comparable with this one in the First Division.
DEFENCE'S GRIP
The defence conceded not one corner all the afternoon.
That revealed the sort of grip it had on an Everton front line, which, except in a few desperate assaults after the interval, scarcely ever disturbed this defence's staunch front.
There were 61,387 people at the match. They left it - those who remained until the end - convinced that Blackpool were a team entitled to be at Wembley next month.
NEXT WEEK: BOLTON (a) STOKE (h)
LAST instalment of the Easter serial at Burnden Park on Monday afternoon, writes Clifford Greenwood.
Blackpool teams these days never go to Burnden without thinking that the journey is not only necessary but could be profitable.
Of the four games played there in postwar football one only has been lost, and the three others drawn. Which is an uncommonly good record for a club that for 20 years lost so many home games to the Wanderers that it became almost an occupational disease.
There are seldom many goals in these Blackpool-Bolton games at Burnden Park.
There was not one last season. Four were divided a year earlier in the first game in which George Farm ever played for Blackpool's First Division team - the beginning of a long and remarkable sequence which has not yet terminated.
It was 1-0 in 1947 in the only game the Wanderers have won in the series, and in the first of the postwar matches the teams settled for a 1-1 draw again.
Little different is the Stoke City story at Blackpool which will be continued next Saturday. The City have played four League games in after-the-war football at Blackpool, have lost the last two but won the first two in successive years. And that is not counting the Cup replay which was also won in 1949.
"Stanley Matthews' old team" - which is the title inevitably given to the City in these parts - may have scarcely set the Potteries on fire this season. Yet invariably they pull out something a little extra at Blackpool, and there is a promise next weekend of a closer game than records would lead you to expect.
20,000 INTO 12,000 JUST WON'T GO
But this is what happened last time
By Clifford Greenwood
AND THEY WILL GO ON SEEKING THEM UNTIL A MINUTE OR TWO BEFORE THREE O'CLOCK ON THE AFTERNOON OF SATURDAY, APRIL 28.
That is the day when Blackpool and Newcastle United are booked to play a football match which not fewer than a million of this island's population want to see - including the entire population of the Fylde - and which only 98,249 people will be able to see.
It is because those 98,249 people, the number admitted to Wembley last year, will each require a ticket to enter the Stadium that the hunt for the tickets is already on.
Not a ticket has yet been printed. Blackpool and Newcastle have been asked by the Football Association not to sell one until after April 14, which is exactly a month today.
Except that the Blackpool board are to give the priority, which unquestionably is their rightful privilege, to the shareholders and the season ticket holders, the ultimate destination of Blackpool's miserable allotment of 12,000 has not yet been decided.
All that is certain is that not fewer than 20,000 people will consider themselves entitled to them - and as 20,000 into 12,000 won't go the answer would appear to be as big a lemon as ever.
They’ve a nerve
BY "CLIFFORD GREENWOOD" 24 March 1951
CORRESPONDENTS writing to the Birmingham papers have protested against the late kick-off in the Cup semi-final at Goodison Park last week, writes Clifford Greenwood.
According to one commentator, the majority opinion in the Midlands appears to be that "because the waiting period might have reacted adversely on the nerves of the Birmingham City players the match should be declared void and a replay ordered."
Dear . . . dear . . . dear.
I suppose the Blackpool players, crawling to the ground in a coach, watching the clock approach nearer and nearer to zero hour, reaching the ground exactly seven minutes before kick-off time, tumbling into the dressing room and making a quick-change act which would have graced the halls - I suppose all this time they were in a state of serene placidity?
Blackpool should not have been late. Whatever the extenuating circumstances - and there were several - nobody can reasonably deny that.
But I should think the tension took a greater toll on the team late at the ground than on the team waiting there.
***
THEY MUST WATCH ROBLEDO
WHEN GEORGE ROBLEDO, the Newcastle forward who led the Chilean front line in the World Cup at Rio - the forward, who, by the way, has already scored four goals against Blackpool this season - takes the field at Wembley on April 28, it will be the second Cup-tie he has played against Blackpool in postwar football.
He was in the Barnsley team that lost to Blackpool at Oakwell in the Third Round two years ago. It was not long afterwards that Newcastle signed him and his brother, a wing-half.
I wrote in 1949 "This Chilean may yet make a name famous in the First Division as already it is famous in the Second." Sometimes even football prophets live to see their prophecies fulfilled.
***
Met two good friends of the Blackpool club during my visit to Manchester for the Cup semi-finals. Met, to be exact, a dozen or two.
But Mr. Sam Gaskin, former manager of the Clifton Hotel at Blackpool, at whose hotel in Manchester the Blackpool team had dinner after the match, has been for so long faithful to Blackpool football that he demands special reference.
One could only regret that ill-health had prevented his attendance at a game which I know he would have dearly loved to see. He has been very ill, has had two operations, is still strictly under doctor's orders.
The other devotee was Mr. Eddie Standring, the London music publisher, who has watched Blackpool in all parts of the kingdom since the war.
He proudly declared when I was talking to him that to attend the Maine-road semi-final he had completed his 15,000th mile following the team in postwar football.
***
On Good Friday
NOT many people know it, but there is a clause in every professional footballer's contract which exempts him from playing on Good Friday and Christmas Day.
Few players have ever exercised this privilege. The few who have exercised it have compelled my admiration. They have revealed themselves as men of principle, and as such have commanded respect.
My own personal opinion, for whatever it may be worth, is that as Christmas Day is essentially a day of rejoicing, football matches on it can offend no scruples, but that Good Friday, the most solemn day in the Church's calendar, is not a day for the high jinks and junketing of big football.
There is one man in Blackpool, who, when he was playing football, never played on either day.
He is Mr. Frank Stott, of Marton, to whom I make reference elsewhere.
He will not even queue for Cup-tie tickets on a Sunday, and writes "If I never get a ticket I'll never do it." That's one little aspect of the ticket allocation which the Blackpool directors might consider without making themselves 'purists,' and without making myself and all those others who think like me 'purists,' either.
There's something in it, too.
***
THEY are going from verse to worse these days. A poem which has Stanley Matthews for its subject opens with the stanza:
All of which may be infallible truth but not such immortal poetry.
And the question in it can soon be answered. Stanley Matthews is 36. He had his birthday early in February.
But, obviously, if a man is as old as he feels, or, in this case, as he plays football, he is nearer 26.
***
GIANTS OF OLD
ONE who watched the Blackpool-Newcastle Cup Final preview last weekend recalled another match played years ago at Hillsborough - or "Owlerton" as they called the Sheffield Wednesday ground in those days, and as a few people still call it.
Frank Stott, who has celebrated his 70th birthday, was in that other match. This footballer of another age, who lives in Newhouse-road, Marton, was playing against the United. In an accidental collision, George Jobey trod on his heel. "Out," as he writes in an interesting letter this week, "went the cartilage . . . Three weeks in Sheffield Victoria Hospital - and 'Finis.'"
Mr. Stott sailed to the States three weeks later. That was 46 years ago. Now he has watched Blackpool's Cup Final opponents again, as he watches most matches at Blackpool, standing, as he stood in the soaking rain last weekend, thinking again, as he writes, of the giants of old in the Newcastle jersey - Peter McWilliams, Colin Veitch . . . Rutherford . . . Appleyard, all the others whose names have become legends up in the North-East.
"I could have cried," he writes, "as I went back 50 years to the days when matches were so often played on 'muck-heaps' such as Saturday's pitch was."
"Mr. Joe Smith is dead right," adds Mr. Stott. "This is the best team Blackpool have ever had."
Such an opinion deserves respect.
***
Climbing star
IT seems a long time ago, even if it's only a month, since Fulham lost in the Cup at Blackpool.
This week has come the epilogue to the match in a letter from Mr. Ronald Legge, who once upon a time was on the editorial staff of "The Gazette," and is now assistant editor of "The Outspan," one of South Africa's leading magazines.
Ronald met Tommy Trinder not long before the Fulham match. Tommy, a director of the Fulham club, was convinced that the Craven Cottage men would win at Blackpool and apparently was intent on telling the entire Union so.
The day of disillusionment came soon after this letter was written.
I was interested to hear from Ronald Legge that the famous comedian told him that such had been his passion for Fulham that even as a little boy he used to crawl up a dry river bed and climb over a fence to watch the matches at the "Cottage."
"At a recent board meeting," said Mr. Trinder, "the directors proposed that this fence should be fortified with barbed wire. I voted against it, told them that they might be thwarting a future director!"
Which is just like Mr. Trinder - if you know him.
***
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