28 April 1951 Newcastle United 2 Blackpool 0
Two Milburn goals in five minutes deal death blow to Blackpool's hopes
OPEN, DIRECT GAME THE SECRET
Newcastle United 2, Blackpool 0
TWO GOALS IN FIVE MINUTES BY THE NEWCASTLE CENTRE-FORWARD JACK MILBURN WON THE CUP FOR THE NORTH-EAST IN FRONT OF 100,000 PEOPLE AT WEMBLEY THIS AFTERNOON.
IN THAT ONE PURPLE PATCH THE MATCH WAS DECIDED.
The United, I think, won because their forwards played football to an open game which the Blackpool front line, without ever being outplayed, too seldom introduced.
The centre of the field, too, was always closed to Stanley Mortensen. Not all the raids of Stanley Matthews - and not all his shooting too- could affect the result.
It was not a match of failures. Neither was it a match of stars. The Newcastle machine operated to a direct plan, and that made all the difference.
Repeatedly the pass was made which left a man in an open position. Blackpool, by contrast, always required the one pass too many, the pass which enabled the open space to be closed.
The pity was, almost the tragedy, that Blackpool had such a lot of the game, and yet seemed doomed to lose it in that two-goals-in-five-minutes death sentence.
It was Newcastle’s Cup, and Newcastle were entitled to it. There can be no question of that.
The attack had the greater punch, the defence was close-packed to meet every advance.
Yet admiration . for Blackpool is, nevertheless, compelled, and to Blackpool must go praise for playing and playing on to the end, the bitter end, when the Cup had become only a fading mirage.
THE TEAMS
BLACKPOOL: Farm; Shimwell, Garrett; Johnston (captain), Hayward, Kelly; Matthews, Mudie, Mortensen, W. J. Slater, Perry.
NEWCASTLE UNITED Fairbrother; Cowell, Corbett; Harvey (captain), Brennan, Crowe; Walker, Taylor, Milburn, Robledo (G.), Mitchell.
Referee: Mr W. Ling (Cambridgeshire).
The story of the game
JOE HARVEY wins the toss, and Blackpool play into the goal they attacked in the second half three years ago. Three o’clock to the minute, and “ They’re off!”
It seems from the height of the Press box that they are playing the opening moves almost as studiously as the first gambits in a game of chess.
But that is probably illusory. It is fast, probably insensately fast out there and, in fact, neither forward line is within shooting distance of a goal until the Newcastle right wing darts into the range and, of all players on the field, it is W. J. Slater, racing back to the aid of his defence, who clears the raid.
But Newcastle continue to move on the Blackpool goal, and as early as the third minute George Farm is out, catapulting at the feet of the United's right wing forward Tommy Walker as the offside whistle blows.
Again too, a minute later Shimwell is punished for a tackle, and Corbett lofts a free-kick high towards the Blackpool goal where it is cleared and, to a hullabaloo of cheers, the ball reaches Stanley Matthews, who loses it, and the United are raiding again.
OVER THE BAR
Yet with exactly five minutes gone the Blackpool front line, builds a raid which can be traced all the way from a fullback’s clearance to a shot
Tom Garrett makes the clearance. Downfield after it races Mortensen, puts the pass inside to Bill Slater, who lashes the ball fast over the bar, with Fairbrother rising up in the air to it as if shot up by a springboard...
Eric Hayward makes a desperate any-port-in-a-storm clearance as the United continue to raid, and no fewer than four times in the first six minutes Jack Milburn is whistled offside before he takes a forward pass from little Ernie Taylor and Farm dives at his feet and the leader takes a nose-dive over it.
Yes, it has been the United’s match in the first 10 minutes. Yet again Blackpool makes one raid and this one raid had the menace of a goal in it.
FREE-KICK
Out after a pass races Stanley Mortensen and his shadowing centre-half big Frank Brennan. Down falls the centre-forward.
First-half play lacks sparkle
Mr. Ling decides it is a free kick, and Stanley Matthews crosses it and a massed defence repels it, and away race the United again, where, into a gap on the right flank of the defence, Harry Johnston hurls himself to make a sliding clearance, desperation in it.
Another minute, and the United have a goal disallowed.
Again it is Milburn who is there. And again the Newcastle leader is a half-yard offside as he swerves into shooting position, and from a position almost on top of Farm shoots the ball between his legs into the net.... You can see the black and white ribbons waving on a thousand rattles. You can see Jack Milburn leap in the air, race downfield, hand held out for the congratulations and no man running to him, for they have all heard the whistle except the United’s centre-forward.
The first 15 minutes were only a pale shadow of the football I watched at Wembley three years ago.
PASSES ASTRAY
The United were finding their men with the passes as Blackpool seemed unable to, but few raids had a planned design in them.
The first pass was made and the second and the third, but the last pass always drifts into an open space where the Blackpool half-backs or full-back is first to it by yards.
Nothing exciting happens at all, and it is strangely quiet for a time until Newcastle’s fevered protests when Garrett casts himself into the aggressive Milburn’s path are silenced by Mr. Ling’s refusal to take any sort of notice of it.
It is, in fact, the Blackpool left-back who opens again at last a Blackpool raid, with a long crossfield clearance to Matthews, who with one adroit swerve leaves his full-back flat on his back before refusing to accept the half-back’s challenge and crossing a ball which in the end Slater heads nigh and far away.
MATTHEWS CENTRE
Yet this raid prefaces others by Blackpool, and in one of them Matthews is put again in the game by Johnston’s short stabbed pass and flights across a centre which in a two man leap at it Slater and Perry miss in midair.
Another minute - the 20th of the match - and the United have twice nearly lost the vital first goal which so often decides this match.
Tom Garrett takes a free-kick, hits a fast rising ball which Ernie Taylor leaps from his 5ft. 3in. to intercept.
It might have been fatal. The flying ball glances off the little inside-left’s thatch of fair hair, ricochets away, is soaring away over the bar and yard! away from the leading Fairbrother for a corner.
A second corner comes and a third, and from the third the United goal almost surrenders again.
And this time it is a major escape. Over flies the ball, misses one post, misses the other.
HEADED OUT
Close to this far post, with Jack Fairbrother impeded and unable to chase the ball. Mortensen and Matthews appear to lean at it together.
Off one of their heads the ball curls in, is passing under the bar as Cowell hurls himself at it and heads it out.
It may have been Newcastle during the first quarter-hour. It is all Blackpool-everywhere it is Blackpool-during the next five, six, seven, eight minutes.
The Newcastle defence is losing none of its order, but it is going back and back and back.
It concedes another corner as a Shimwell thunderbolt hits a Newcastle man, and off him cannons high over the bar in a carbon copy of the Tom Garrett episode seven minutes earlier.
BLACKPOOL ATTACK
It has taken Blackpool a long time to begin firing on all three cylinders, but the cylinders are firing now.
Stanley Matthews twice in a couple of minutes walks past his man as if the fullback were insubstantial as a ghost, and the second time puts away to the wing a perfect centre which little Mudie slices out over the platoon of Press photographers waiting for a goal which at this time always seemed imminent.
The course of the first half is reflected in the census chart. During those first 30 minutes George Farm had taken only two goal-kicks and his opposite number, neither by the way wearing their Newmarket caps, 10.
Yet in exactly 31 minutes in this match which is beginning to surge backwards and forwards again like a restless tide Newcastle swoop off in a breakaway, and the breakaway is nearly worth a goal.
Jack Milburn’s name must be in this game as often as King Charles’ head in the famous Memorial.
WONDER SAVE
He was in it again, took a forward pass away 40 yards from goal, raced on alone 20 yards, and from this range shot a ball which was passing Farm fast as a bullet as the goalkeeper fell to his left to it, reached it, and punched it out for a corner as the hundred thousand people say, “ O-o-o ” in one vast sigh.
One is not surprised to notice a couple of men in tangerine jerseys racing up to the goalkeeper to pat him on the back, to ruffle his hair as he rises to his feet slowly as if dazed by the impact with the flying ball.... Back come Newcastle again after the corner has been repelled. But Eric Hayward halts the elusive little Taylor in his tracks, glides forward a pass which Mudie passes on to Matthews and which the unpredictable Matthews decides to take inside before shooting it so far wide of a post that it finishes near the comer flag.
That was one shot by Mr. Matthews, which is one above his average per match.
YARD WIDE
But as if to indicate that he had finished with shooting, the next time the wing forward is given a pass by his partner he crosses almost as soon as he reaches it, a ball which Bill Slater, out there all on his own, hooks a yard wide of the near post as it is passing him nearly chest high.
Whereupon both forward lines go into action inside a minute.
Jack Milburn - yes, it’s that man again - cuts inside and hooks in a shot which cannons off the taut side net.
Inside the next 45 seconds
Perry chases a long clearance by Garrett, takes it away from his full-back almost on the goal line, and lifts it high inside where Fairbrother fields it in a soaring leap.
It is 50-50 afterwards until passes out to the waiting Matthews by Kelly and Mudie are lost as the ball bounces off the firm turf and Perry, after eluding his full-back superbly, puts away a pass which is that half-yard wide of the crouching, alert, Mortensen, which makes all the difference.
NEGATIVE PLAY
The rest of the half is more or less negative, even if it is played almost exclusively in Newcastle’s half of the field, with the United forfeiting one free-kick to the first thunder of protest there has been all the afternoon.
The free-kick ends in Bill Slater taking the pass from it, swerving away, and crossing a ball which is lost, as many others have been lost during the first 45 minutes in the two fast-packing
What of the half? During it Blackpool won three corners and Newcastle two. and the almost incredible fact is revealed in the census that the United—or, to be exact, Jack Milburn nearly every time—had been offside 11 times.
Goal-kicks conceded, totalling 13 by Newcastle and four only by Blackpool indicated, I think, that whatever front-of-goal punch either attack had possessed had been packed in the Blackpool attacks.
The one purple patch had been during those amazing five minutes when, after Newcastle had almost dominated the first quarter hour, Blackpool won three of their four corners, twice had shots which rose over the bar off a Newcastle man, and once had a ball cleared off the line by a full-back.
There was not a lot in it with half the game gone. A lot of what there had been had obviously been shorn of its order by the high-charged tension of the game.
Half-time: Blackpool 0, Newcastle 0.
Second half
They came out two by two again after the Guards had been on parade for a 15-minute interval.
Bright shone the sun as it had been shining since the kick-off.
Hugh Kelly, always so unobtrusive, but always so decisive in the tackle, not only scattered the United’s first raid but opened one by Blackpool which discovered the Newcastle defence in a state of confusion.
The centre came over at last from the right-Frank Brennan moved to it, hesitated under Slater’s challenge, and eventually half-stabbed a ball which hit one of his own men before cannoning off and away from the unprepared Mortensen.
That was the first big raid by Blackpool.
MILBURN RAIDS
But twice inside a minute afterwards there was the familiar spectacle of Jack Milburn racing in, the first time down the left wing, the second time through the centre, before shooting a ball which each time the composed Farm fielded as if he were at practice.
And in between these attacks the Blackpool front line was in no less furious action.
The second attack nearly had a goal in it, too.
Down went the Blackpool right wing. Matthews galloped fast inside, reached the line, and crossed a pass which went in and out in front of the dancing, prancing Fairbrother, without a Blackpool forward being able to reach it.
Came the fourth minute of the half and another Blackpool attack.
This time Mudie was fast on to his partner’s pass, shot it so fast that as it missed a post by inches it hit the low palisade behind the Newcastle goal and bounced off it 20 yards downfield.
MILBURN GOAL
The goal kick followed. And, fast as a bolt from a cloudless sky, came a goal almost direct from it for the United.
It is a goal which, I suppose, will be debated and argued out for years.
Downfield the ball rolled. A man in a black and white jersey whom I could not identify assisted it on its passage to the waiting Milburn.... Was the centre-forward offside? I think he was. So, I suspect, did Mr. Ling. But, as I saw it, too, the ball rolled forward off a man - and if it was a man in tangerine it put the leader on-side.
I saw Mr. Ling glance out to his linesman. I saw the linesman’s maroon flag held out and not up.
On went JACK MILBURN out by himself, collected the bouncing ball, steadied himself, and shot it fast and low away from the falling, deserted George Farm.
Was there bedlam then? Did ever “Blaydon Races” rise to the skies in such exultant chorus?
The next four minutes were almost completely in Blackpool's possession.
Stanley Matthews ended one raid in the centre-forward position, and at the end of it actually shot high over the bar.
The fifth minute since the first goal was on the clock. The United raided again—and scored again. And what a goal it was!
Nobody could dispute this one No peril apparently beset the Blackpool goal. There was, I think, no peril at all until Ernie Taylor darted to the rolling ball took it away all-in-one movement, stabbed it forward.
On to it JACK MILBURN pounced, pivoted on one foot, hit this ball with the other, hit it so ferociously that it was lifting the roof of the net wide of George Farm’s right arm before another man had moved a muscle.
Bedlam broke loose, an almost berzerk exultation from the Cup-mad Newcastle thousands packed behind this goal which twice in exactly four minutes 25 seconds had fallen.
GREATEST SHOT
They mobbed the United’s centre-forward, these Newcastle men, and as he escaped their clutches and raced into the centre circle even Stanley Mortensen brushed hands with him in acknowledgment of one of the greatest shots ever to score a goal at Wembley.
I may be wrong, but I think those five minutes will go into history as the five that won the Cup for the North East in 1951.
Not since the third round tie at Charlton had Blackpool been in arrears in a Cuptie.
Never before had the arrears been as many as two goals.
If this was not a death blow nothing ever would be.
Yet there were raids, raid after raid afterwards by Blackpool.
But none of them was coming to anything approaching a definite conclusion.
Shots were there but all off the beam, and passes which found the man but the next time missed the second man for whom they were intended.
UNITED PLAN
With as many as 25 minutes left, Newcastle were playing to a plan which often had only three forwards in it with the other two retreating into the position of half-backs.
Yet when there was a Newcastle raid, the tireless Taylor was up with it, gliding forward another of those passes on to which his centre-forward was always waiting to dart but which this time he lost as two Blackpool men crossed his path.
The United, in fact, were near to making it 3-0 in the 23rd minute of the half.
One of those long crossfield passes which Blackpool had introduced too seldom finished near Walker with the wing forward on his own.
The next pass was stabbed inside to the waiting Taylor, agitatedly calling for it. Over the little man crossed the pass when it came, and up to meet it leaped Milburn, heading inside a ball which seemed to hit a man as he crouched on the line near his goalkeeper and was desperately cleared.
IMPOSSIBLE ODDS
The sun had faded out of the sky as Blackpool, facing impossible odds, were fading out of this game with the last quarter hour approaching.
I was reconciling myself by that time to waiting for the inevitable end.
Stanley Matthews, who seemed intent on scoring a goal today even if he lost the Cup medal, raced inside from his partner’s pass to shoot over the bar as rain began to fall.
It was still falling, falling fast with all the Press photographers beginning to build wigwams for themselves out of tarpaulins.
SLATER’S LEAP
Twice in rapid succession
Matthews was in the game again, crossing one centre which Fairbrother fielded magnificently under a bar and crossing another which Slater headed wide of the far post in a leap which had little except despair in it.
Yes, it was often at this time half a dozen approaches by Blackpool against one by Newcastle.... But it was significant that every time the United built a raid the pass found its man as Blackpool passes so seldom seemed to, and, in fact, in one of these raids Milburn went fast after another forward pass before, in the end, racing it over the line as Farm cast himself desperately at his feet.
Strangely, it was Stanley Matthews who was shooting for Blackpool, shooting as no other forward was able to make position for a shot.
OVER THE TOP
Another he lashed over the bar with his left foot before centring a ball which Perry headed back into the arms of Fairbrother, given all the time he wanted to leap at it and to hold it.
They were singing “ Blaydon Races ” by this time, 10 minutes from the end. with all the religious passion of an evangelist’s hymn.
It was a song of triumph now whatever it may have been earlier. It was merely a case of waiting for the end.
Five minutes were left and the United were cutting through again and again the tall, long-striding Milburn was there in the van of his men, making another forward pass in an open space, racing in on Farm, losing the ball as Tom Garrett fell full-tilt in front of him.
UNITED CONTENT
It could have been 3-0 then. It remained 2-0, and with that, for good and obvious reasons, the United were content.
The final whistle came at last. Exultantly, the men in the Newcastle defence leaped in the air as if it were the sweetest music they had ever heard - as probably it was.
They hugged each other, capered up and down like jumping jacks until the Blackpool men began to move among them, to compliment them, and in the end tangerine and black and white were tangled in a pattern on the green turf and it was not sorted out until Joe Harvey led his men up to the King for the Cup, and Blackpool were left disconsolate on the field.
Last scene at Wembley, 1951, was the Newcastle captain on the shoulders of his team being photographed by the Press as the team in tangerine trooped slowly round the sanded perimeter to the dressing room.
Result:
BLACKPOOL 0
NEWCASTLE 2 (Milburn 50, 55)
"Blaydon Races” song of triumph as Newcastle finish on top
FROM the time he makes his League debut to the day when he retires from the game the professional footballer experiences a number of nerve-racking moments.
Yet none is more calculated to excite and upset than playing the FA Cup Final at Wembley Stadium.
Today many of the 22 players from the Blackpool and Newcastle United teams faced this ordeal for the first time in their careers, and few among them can have escaped the nervous tension associated with such an occasion.
Each year managers and trainers of the competing sides have the task of trying to combat these “Wembley nerves,” which may affect the hardened campaigner as much as the comparative newcomer.
In some instances these club officials are the best qualified to understand the feelings of their men, having themselves taken part in a Cup Final.
Mr. Joe Smith
MR. JOE SMITH, the present manager of Blackpool, is an excellent case in point.
He captained Bolton Wanderers in their Cup-winning years of 1923 (the first Wembley Final), and 1926, and is, in fact, the only person to receive two Cup winners’ medals from King George V.
Like the average human being the professional footballer responds to encouragement, and a convincing personal start to a match of this nature can make all the difference to his subsequent play. Conversely, an early mistake may throw a player out of his stride and possibly upset him for the remainder of the game
Drive to Stadium
THE drive to Wembley is apt
to heighten the nervous strain which seems to become more apparent in an unreal atmosphere of forced jocularity.
When the coach approaches the players’ entrance at Wembley the heavy green gates swing slowly back, and within a matter of seconds the team have been taken to the door of their dressing room.
These spacious rooms, situated on either side of the pageant tunnel, are decorated in a colour scheme of light fawn and cream.
Every comfort
THE DRESSING ROOM attendants hover in the background to ensure that the players have every possible comfort both before and after the game when luxury tiled plunge baths, showers and hand basins are available on the floor above.
It is in these surroundings, then, that the 22 players prepare for what generally is considered the showpiece of the soccer season. and no one is more relieved than the participants themselves when they hear the voice of the steward calling them out for the pre-match procession to the Royal Box.
The weeks of waiting are over, and another Wembley Cup Final is about to begin....
NOBODY can say that it is to be a stalemate finish to Blackpool’s season, writes Clifford Greenwood.
The Cup Final this afternoon will be followed-unless there is a draw after extra time at Wembley and a replay at Villa Park next Wednesday evening-by a visit from Arsenal on Wednesday and by Manchester United three days later.
It could be next Wednesday evening at Blackpool- and one hopes unashamedly that it will be-a meeting between the team that won the 1951 Cup and the team that won it in 1959.
But whatever It is it will be no end-of-the-season match, for Arsenal games, defying the calendar, never are at Bloomfield-road. It is a remarkable fact that the Highbury team, so often victorious elsewhere, have not won at Blackpool since the war, and, in fact, in four games have managed only one draw.
All I ask, all that could reasonably be asked, is that it is a game as good as the classic 4-4 draw the clubs played at Highbury last December. If it is only half as good nobody will want his Is-3d., or even his 7s. 6d. back !
Then, on Saturday, will come the repeat performance of the 1948 Final, with Manchester United in the field as a team that during the last month or two has been playing football probably unequalled by any other sidq in England.
This should be a great final curtain for Blackpool.
The United have been four times to Blackpool in postwar football, were concerned in a dramatic 3-3 draw last season, won in 1948-49, lost four days after the Final in 1948, and lost also a year earlier.
This is the match which had to be postponed because of a snowstorm last December. Tickets sold for the December fixture will be eligible next weekend.
By Frank Mellor
It’s all part of the Cup magic
By Clifford Greenwood
JUST TO REMIND YOU .... WHAT WAS HAPPENING IN BLACKPOOL THREE YEARS AGO, WRITES CLIFFORD GREENWOOD.
TUESDAY: Manager Joe Smith sent his team to the famous green at Lytham to practise on grass.
There was no grass left at Bloomfield-road, and the Blackpool manager considered that his men should accustom themselves to the carpet of turf awaiting them at Wembley.
Ronnie Suart, the fullback, took time off to sit on a breakwater while the sad sea waves soothed his swollen leg.
WEDNESDAY: Sensation when the Blackpool team was announced without Jim McIntosh at centre-forward, where he had played in all the previous ties. Stanley Mortensen moved into the centre, admitting Alec Munro at inside-right.
THURSDAY: The team left for Ascot, reached in the early afternoon a hotel so close to the famous racecourse that the rails were visible from the bedroom windows.
FRIDAY: A test for Ronnie Suart on the famous Virginia Water golf course. On one of the fairways close to the clubhouse the fullback meed and zigzagged and punted a ball, but when he went into a tackle with Jim McIntosh, who, never complaining of his omission from the team, volunteered as a guinea-pig, Suart winced, said “I can’t make it; it’d be unfair to the rest of the lads to play.” Johnny Crosland, who had never before been in an FA Cup-tie, was chosen as a full-back.
SATURDAY: Everybody knows what happened.
The weather all week was fair, and the barometer was climbing high to a summer temperature on the day of the match.
Microphone star
IF ever Harry Johnston, the Blackpool captain, had a complex about microphones he must long ago have been cured of it.
There can be few footballers in the present-day game who have made so many broadcasts.
He was one of the pioneers among the game’s broadcasters in the war years when he went on the air a few times while he was serving with the RAF in the Middle East and playing often in representative football there.
He has often since had a BBC contract. But he attained his all-time high last week, when he recorded three interviews for the wave-lengths, one of them for transmission to Australia, and-all this within 48 hours-went to London with Stanley Matthews and appeared on television with Newcastle director, Mr. Stanley Seymour.
All this could be a build-up-without the BBC intending it-for a new role as captain of England.
It is not too incredible. His selection for the next England team is being taken for granted by everybody except Harry Johnston himself, and if Billy Wright is not in the team the Blackpool captain should obviously be the selection for the position.
Proud would be the Blackpool captain if that honour were awarded him. But it would not be undeserved.
***
Jock calls it a day
TOOK DODDS will not play again.
The big-and-big-hearted Scot who has been reinstated in the League since the Bogota incident of last summer, has made that decision.
It is not such good news for Lincoln City, and Jock, I know, regrets it for that reason-but for no other.
“I’ve a business in Blackpool,” he said, when I was talking to him this week, and when, by the way, he was saying, “I’ll be one of the happiest men in town if Blackpool win the Cup on Saturday.”
Added Jock: “I’ve to think of the future and, frankly, football has no future in it for me now.
“Isn’t it preferable to go out, as I shall have gone out, still in the League, still playing in first-class football, than slowly going down hill, until, when you play your last game with some obscure club, people say, ‘Jock Dodds finished? It’s about time he packed it up.’”
Jock knows that there’s nothing in this world shorter than the public’s memory. The public will always think of him now as one of the greatest centre-forwards of his generation.
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