31 March 1951 Blackpool 3 Stoke City 0
Half-pace Blackpool too good for Stoke
18th GAME WITHOUT DEFEAT
Blackpool 3, Stoke City 0
By “Clifford Greenwood”
ANOTHER STANLEY FROM THE POTTERIES ENTERED BIG FOOTBALL THIS AFTERNOON - AND HE WAS AN OUTSIDE RIGHT, TOO
Playing for Stoke City at Blackpool this afternoon was 16-year-old Stanley Bevans, who went on the Stoke ground staff 18 months ago from a Cheadle (Staffs.) junior club, and was the youngest player ever fielded by the City in the club's history.
Bevans will not be able to sign a professional contract until he is 17, at the end of next month.
Leslie Johnston led the Stoke forwards in a front line shuffle, and Blackpool had Johnny Crosland understudying again for Eric Hayward, who is not fit but, I am told, not a serious casualty.
Hours of rain left the field in the familiar semblance of a mud pack again. The sun shone early in the afternoon, but when the teams appeared the centre was littered with small standing pools.
One of these days, at this rate, they will be playing football on rafts.
SMALL CROWD
The attendance at the kick-off was one of the smallest of the season. I should estimate it 18,000.
How many more thousands there would have been if the Cup Final ballot had been announced last night instead of being deferred until the opening of the turnstiles this afternoon!
Teams:
BLACKPOOL: Farm; Shimwell, Garrett; Johnston, Crosland, Kelly; Matthews, Mudie, Mortensen, Brown, Perry.
STOKE CITY: Herod; Watkins, McCue; Sellers, Mountford (F.), Kirton; Bevans, Bowyer, Johnston, Siddall, Oscroft.
Referee: Mr. J. H. Clough (Bolton).
THE GAME
First half
Blackpool won the toss and the City defended the north goal with the sun - yes, actually the sun - glaring across it.
George Farm was the first goalkeeper in the game, fielding in the first minute a couple of speculative shots by Brian Siddall, another of the City’s young school.
Two more raids were halted by Crosland, hesitating before going into the tackle but each time coming out of it with the ball, before Blackpool built a raid of any proportion.
Then it was a raid which nearly had a goal in it.
One of Brown’s famous down-field passes made the position.
Mortensen went after it, lost the skidding ball in the mud, and could only stab it at Herod.
The goalkeeper beat it out to his left, was hit by Mudie’s shot as the inside-right lashed the loose ball at him.
EARLY LEAD
Mudie missed - but Morty was there.
It cannoned out for a corner in the end, and another corner followed it, and before this corner had been completely cleared Blackpool had put a goal on the record.
It was a right-wing goal. Mudie chased another ball rolling loose in a strangely open City defence, half lost it under a tackle inside shooting distance, and steered it out to Matthews.
The winger made a perfect centre as he ran on to the pass. Mudie hurled himself across to the flying ball and missed it.
But MORTENSEN was there, leaped at it, too, and headed it away from the falling Herod’s left hand as the goalkeeper fell a fraction late, unsighted, I suspect, by the flight through space, almost directly in front of him, of the other Blackpool forward.
That was goal No. 1.
DEFENCE RIDDLED
There might have been No. 2, No. 3 or even No. 4 in the next 10 minutes, with the City’s defence being riddled and forfeiting shooting positions everywhere.
The slime, a fatal hesitation in the last split-second, and a variety of other factors ensured that it should be still only 1-0 with 15 minutes gone.
Allan Brown made one raid on his own - a perfect corkscrew raid - before shooting a ball which hit a full-back and was skating out of Herod’s reach as the goalkeeper retrieved it in a despairing nosedive in the mud.
The City were in the game as an attacking force in the serious sense once only while this was happening.
YOUNG RAIDER
Young Stanley Bevans was concerned in the raid, and won a cheer for himself, too, as, after losing the ball, he retrieved it to glide across a pass which Frank Bowyer shot fast at the crouching Farm.
Otherwise, Blackpool were dictating the match almost at their leisure by football which had everything in it except a scoring shot inside scoring distance.
That 16-year-old City forward Bevans knows now to cross a ball. He crossed another with 20 minutes gone, and again there was nearly a goal for the outplayed City, Leslie Johnston leaping at it and heading it barely wide of the far post with the Blackpool defence massed closer to the other.
That one raid might have equalled all Blackpool’s pressure.
It might have been 1-1. A minute later it should have been 2-0.
HOOKED WIDE
Mortensen misses a big chance
This time Mortensen made the pass into the open space. Brown chased it, outpaced one man, eluded another, and crossed a perfect squared pass in front of a goal protected only by Denis Herod.
There was Mortensen - and there was the goalkeeper at his mercy.
In his present form it would have been a goal for the Blackpool centre-forward 99 times out of 100. This hundredth time Mortensen hooked his shot wide, and stood afterwards aghast as if he could not credit what had happened.
It was almost all one-way on the City’s goal afterwards. Seldom has a First Division defence been so often split open.
Yet again in the 30th minute an outplayed team nearly made it 1-1.
Stoke’s Johnston found an open path down the left wing of Blackpool’s defence. When the ball came over Shimwell lashed at it. It skidded off his boot behind him and away from him, and away, too, from Farm, and was cleared on the empty line by Harry Johnston, who had positioned himself there almost as if by instinct.
INCHES OUT
Nor had that raid ended, either, before Oscroft had headed only inches away from a post.
Blackpool, at the end of half an hour, could have been a distance in front. Instead, there was a lead of only one goal, and twice that lead had almost been lost.
Within a minute the old serial was writing itself again - the story of Blackpool so near to a goal and yet so far from one. Yet this time there was a new sequence.
When Brown served a pass a shade short to Matthews the wing forward still won it from his full-back, and this time went through alone and finished with a shot so fast that Herod, as he punched it out, reeled over backwards under the impact.
Yet for the first time in the afternoon afterwards the City were making the pace, and making menacing position, too.
GARRETT CLEARS
One of them ended in Farm racing out to a ball which was lost before he could reach it and in the end was cleared by Garrett with his defence in chaos about him.
Yet with five minutes of the half left it was the City who had an escape.
Matthews squared a perfect pass. Mudie moved to it, half hit it, but still passed the falling Herod with a shot which was crawling over the line as Frank Mountford hooked it out.
It had been a strange half. Blackpool could have won it by three or four goals instead of only one, and yet repeatedly in its last 20 minutes the City, no match for the Finalists in the football sense, might have levelled the scores.
Half-time: Blackpool 1, Stoke City 0.
The attendance had passed 20,000 when the second half opened.
The City’s defence was split the first time it was seriously tested by the Blackpool forwards. This time it was Mortensen who made the pass, Kelly who took it, and Perry who, instead of shooting, crossed it fast across goal, where there was no forward in position for it.
Yet in the opening minutes of the half it was the City forwards who were in the game repeatedly. Crosland twice sent them back in their tracks.
There was no punch in this Stoke front line, but always there was the chance that it might convert one of those scoring positions which all the afternoon Blackpool had been rejecting.
MATTHEWS SHOT
Yet twice within a minute Blackpool were near to that elusive second goal.
The first time Stanley Matthews, obviously intent on a goal against his own club, was as close to a goal as he has been all the season.
Taking the ball away from his full-back, he raced inside with it, and, close to Herod, stabbed wide of the goalkeeper a slow-crawling shot which Herod held as he fell forward, almost colliding with a post.
Within a minute, the goal was near again. Mortensen took a free-kick a yard outside the penalty area, and shot a fast, rising ball which hit the bar as Herod, beaten by its speed, leaped late at it.
Yet a goal had to come. It nearly came in the 11th minute of the half as Matthews squared across a pass which Mortensen and about half a dozen other men missed in a massed swoop on it.
ONE FOR BROWN
Scot scores after a Johnston raid
It was a goal delayed only a couple of minutes.
Again Matthews made a position, made it for Harry Johnston, who was zig-zagging into shooting distance when he lost a ball which rolled out loose.
BROWN was on to it in the next split second, and shot it back wide of the unsighted and impeded Herod with almost a lazy nonchalance, as if goals were simple.
Leslie Johnston brushed past Crosland once and lashed the ball wide when a definite scoring position had offered itself to the City.
But for a time the City’s raids became isolated events again, and it was Blackpool, moving almost leisurely on the City’s goal, who were determining the game’s course. Nothing in particular happened, however, except the winning of a corner which was taken unexpectedly by Brown.
CROSLAND CLEARS
Within a minute, in fact, it was the City who forced a corner and might have forced something else if Crosland had not been fast into the path of Oscroft, with the wing forward away with a lot of the field open in front of him.
A second corner followed the first, and this, too, was repulsed by Crosland as Mudie went limping out to the right wing and a minute later over the line for attention.
Mudie was soon back with a bandage round his left boot and, in fact, stabbed a shot barely wide as he fell under a tackle almost as soon as he had returned to the game.
With 20 minutes left, little was happening and there was even less to write about. Blackpool were still raiding, but it was a match this time being played, except in sudden spurts, at half pace.
GOAL No. 3
Perry dash - Mortensen header
Ten minutes were left and Blackpool’s third goal came.
In everything that mattered it was Bill Perry’s shot.
The South African went after a ball which few men at this time of the afternoon would have gone after at all.
Perry reached it, resisted a belated tackle, cut inside, and crossed a ball which, escaping Herod's clutch at it, brushed the face of the bar, fell down off it and left the unchallenged MORTENSEN to head it in slow time over the empty line. It was the centre-forward’s 27th League goal of the season, and it definitely settled this match.
Result:
BLACKPOOL 3 (Mortensen 5, 80, Brown 58 (pen))
STOKE C. 0
COMMENTS ON THE GAME
AFTER promising to win by the length of the Promenade Blackpool finished only three goals in front of Stoke City in this match. That, I suppose, was still the equivalent of the length of a street, and unquestionably sufficed.
Blackpool played this game as many teams play their football with a Wembley date in front of them. Some of the football was leisurely. There were too many short passes in it, and an inclination all the time, obviously, to play with plenty in reserve.
As a team, therefore, the Finalists were probably not as impressive as they might have been. But again it all sufficed, and again in the football sense there was a big gulf between Blackpool and the other men.
There were stars even in this sort of go-as-you-please engagement.
GARRETT’S CLASS
Nothing could disguise the class of Tom Garrett as a full-back, or the speed of Johnny Crosland at centre-half, or the superb football for an hour of Allan Brown.
Yes, it all sufficed, and that is about all that requires to be written of it.
It was Blackpool's 18th successive game without a defeat, and to be frank, in spite of the brave challenge offered at times by the City, it never promised to be anything else.
NEXT WEEK: And so to Huddersfield—and it will be no walkover
BLACKPOOL have to go twice into Yorkshire before the season ends. In each game a desperate team, under the shadow of relegation, will be met, writes Clifford Greenwood.
Next weekend it is Huddersfield Town. A fortnight later, a week before Wembley, it will be Sheffield Wednesday. It will be “Up Guards and at ’em!” against Blackpool in both engagements - and Blackpool know it.
Nobody can go to Huddersfield and expect to walk away with the points. In spite of the Town’s humble position in the First Division table, the mighty have often been cast down at Leeds Road.
It was there last season that Liverpool’s long undefeated sequence ended. It was there, too, that the potential First Division champions, the Spurs, met their Waterloo in the Cup nearly three months ago.
An unpredictable team are the Town with a forward line which on its day - and it had one of its days at
Blackpool last November - is among the best in the land. The Yorkshire team lost the match 1-3, but people in these parts still talk about the left wing of Harold Hassall and Vic Metcalfe as one of the best seen at Blackpool this season, as, unquestionably, it was.
Yet Leeds Road is still one of those grounds which it has been profitable for Blackpool to visit since the war. Last season’s match was won 1-0, and in the first game in post-war football the points were also taken, 3-1.
Seven visiting teams have won at Huddersfield this season, and Blackpool may be the eighth. But it will be no undisputed passage.
WEST BROMWICH FOOTNOTE. - And before the Yorkshire match there is to be the postponed game with the Albion in the Midlands on Wednesday (kick-off 5-0 p.m.).
Blackpool's recollections of last season at the Hawthorns are scarcely glamorous. They were fogged off when they were winning the first match, and when it was replayed lost by the only goal.
BIG DEEDS, TOO, IN THE LEAGUE
Chapter that has in Blackpool history
By Clifford Greenwood
FORGET THE CUP FOR A WEEK !
Blackpool’s recent sequence of conquests, culminating in the first 100 per cent. Easter weekend in the club’s history since the famous promotion Friday-to-Monday fiesta in 1930 - 21 years ago - deserves greater notice than it has been given.
For it has written a new chapter in the club’s annals.
What it has accomplished and all that it portends can be itemised.
(1) Before today’s match Blackpool had not lost a game since an under-strength team were beaten by the only goal at Liverpool on Boxing Day.
This means that for the first time in football history in these parts, either in the First or Second Division, a Blackpool team have been undefeated in 17 successive games - 10 in the League and seven in the Cup.
(2) During this sequence 17 out of a possible 20 points have been won - a rate of progress unequalled during this period by any team in the First Division and surpassed by only Preston North End in all the Leagues.
NEWCASTLE UNITED WILL
SAY IT IN LATIN
BY "CLIFFORD GREENWOOD" 31 March 1951
NEWCASTLE UNITED will play in new jerseys at Wembley in - Savile-row jerseys emblazoned with the city arms and the legend in not such good Latin “Fortiter Defendit Triumphans,” which, being freely translated, is “Triumphing in a Brave Defence.”
It happens to be a phrase in repetitive chorus in the song of the Newcastle Royal Grammar School.
“Anyway,” comments a satirical correspondent in the “Newcastle Evening Chronicle,” “let us hope that at Wembley not only the defence is ‘fortiter.’”
The United, by the way, writes Clifford Greenwood, have not yet made any announcement relating to the sale of Final tickets except that shareholders will be supplied with one £2 2s., £1 1s., 10s. 6d. and 7s. 6d. ticket each.
Jack Milburn, the Newcastle centre-forward, counted the letters which came in his mail within a week of the United reaching the Final. All were from applicants for tickets. When he reached 500 he gave it up.
“And,” he said, “nearly all of them have postal orders in them, and I’ll have to return them.” Such is the price of fame.
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There’s no secret
EIGHT goals Harry Johnston has scored from a wing-half position for Blackpool this season.
His seven for Blackpool is a club record which may last for a generation. The eighth was shot in distinguished company when he played for the Canadian tourists against the Rio team early in the season in London.
People think it is all part of a plan. One newspaper made it the subject of a headline before one of this season’s Cup-ties; presented it as a rehearsed move, perfected in secret behind the scenes.
What some of them will do for a story!
But listen to the Blackpool captain: “Forget it. I’ve scored those goals because I’ve been in the right place at the right time. I’ve moved up, I know, into a scoring position, but it’s not been worked out in advance.”
Opening the season with a couple of goals at Tottenham, Johnston has since scored against the Wolves - a goal which won a point at Blackpool last September - Sheffield Wednesday, the Villa, Derby County and Bolton Wanderers.
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ENQUIRER (Grange Park). - Cup Final tickets were not sold to the general public by Blackpool in 1948. The only time queues waited at the ground was when season-ticket holders in the lower-priced grades were supplied.
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Sportsmen both
YOU can take your hat off to Everton’s new full-back from Glasgow Celtic, John Lindsay.
It was his misfortune to meet in his second game in England a forward whom a few full-backs pray they will never meet again.
Often, at Goodison Park last weekend, Stanley Matthews left the Scot wondering exactly how a man can be in one place one second and materialising in another a second later. Jack Lindsay chased the shadow all the afternoon. Once or twice he whipped the ball off the famous twinkling toes and was rewarded by a cheer which was probably audible at Anfield.
But never once was he guilty of a tackle punishable in football law.
Nor, when he went to assist him, was that big-hearted son of Old Ireland, the Everton captain, Peter Farrell, who, to be frank about it, is such a good wing-half that without him Everton would be in waters of even greater peril than those they are at present navigating.
MESSAGE FOR STAN
FROM a mess deck of HMS Unicorn, serving in foreign waters, came a letter in my mail this week. It was written by LSM Dennison (J.), whose home is in Blackpool and whose loyalty to Blackpool football not even a separation across the distance of half the globe can destroy.
He and the rest of his mess deck, including a Newcastle United adherent, composed a message for one of the men they will never see at Wembley - Stanley Matthews - and asked that I should print it for them. This is the message:
We footballer-followers of HMS Unicorn take the opportunity of wishing you every success in the Cup Final at Wembley this year, and we sincerely hope that you gain the coveted winner’s medal.
And from those of us who have been lucky to watch you play, well, we think this Final will see a footballer and a gentleman receive his just reward.
Having written which, they sailed away into waters which the Royal Navy call “dangerous.”
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Players' own souvenir
THE Blackpool Cup Final team are preparing a souvenir to celebrate the club’s appearance at Wembley next month for the second time in four seasons.
It promises to be an attractive publication, illustrated with photographs of some of the goals which have sent Blackpool to the stadium and with an autographed photograph of all the players who have appeared in the 1951 series.
Tables will tabulate the progress of both Blackpool and Newcastle United to the Final.
It will be a 1s. magazine produced for the players’ own benefit and with their cooperation, and will be on sale before the Middlesbrough match on April 14.
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No-corner record
THIS may or may not be a record in a first-class match.
But it is a fact, according to Mr. George Sheard’s census chart, that the Blackpool defence did not concede one corner to the Everton forwards during last weekend’s match at Goodison Park.
Blackpool forced six. And whereas George Farm took only 13 goal-kicks all the afternoon Ted Sagar had to take 22.
Another curiosity: The Blackpool forwards were not once offside.
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