7 April 1951 Huddersfield Town 2 Blackpool 1
They finish with ten men
BROWN INJURED
Huddersfield Town 2, Blackpool 1
By “Clifford Greenwood”
SPRING (IN THE WORDS OF THE SONG) WAS BURSTIN' OUT ALL OVER TODAY, EVEN, OF ALL TOWNS, IN HUDDERSFIELD, WHICH IS SCARCELY A TOURIST'S RESORT.
The sun shone, and the afternoon at Leeds-road in the vast bowl of its valley was as mild as on a summer day - milder than it often is on a few days in an English summer.
And there was scarcely a breath of wind. Yet that was about all end-of-the-season there was about it.
The presence of the Cup Final team, plus the appearance of five of the men who will be playing in the England-Scotland match at Wembley next Saturday - among them the Huddersfield forward Harold Hassall, who at Blackpool last November, played a game which made a lot of people sit up and take notice - packed the unreserved parts of the stands an hour before the kick-off.
Half an hour later they were massing fast, too, on the high terraces of this ground where one of the Cup semi-finals was played last month.
Forty thousand was the estimated attendance, which is uncommon in Huddersfield for April or any other month.
TOWN UNCHANGED
The Town fielded the men who have played in the last four games for a club not yet absolutely clear of the relegation zone.
Jack Ainscough, who was again translated in one week from the obscurity of the Lancashire Combination to the limelight of the First Division, had his second first team game for Blackpool.
Teams:
HUDDERSFIELD TOWN: Wheeler; Gallogly, Kelly (L.); McGarry, McEvoy, Boot; Nightingale, Glazzard, Taylor (J. M.), Hassall, Metcalfe.
BLACKPOOL: Farm; Shimwell, Garrett; Johnston, Ainscough, Kelly (H.); Matthews, Mudie, Mortensen, Brown, Perry.
Referee: Mr. G. Todd (Darlington).
First half
For the first time for months the field had something other than an accidental resemblance to a football pitch - smooth, level, tolerably firm, and with no mud anywhere.
Hassall, who was made captain for the day by the Town in recognition of his England selection, won the toss in front of the biggest crowd at a Huddersfield League match this season.
Not that it made any difference detectable from the Press box in the back row of the stands.
Tom Garrett and Hugh Kelly, in an unruffled partnership, halted the Town's first raid which was built on the hit-or-miss principle.
It was a move not comparable with Blackpool's first advance, which had class written all over it from Harry Johnston's first pass out to the wing to the long throw-in by the Blackpool captain which Wheeler held as Allan Brown challenged him.
HASSALL'S MISS
In the second Town might have gone in front, and, of all people, it was Harold Hassall who missed the chance.
The inside-left, taking a pass in the inside-right position, reached it where no Blackpool man was stationed, and, with the goalkeeper alone in front of him, lifted it gently into George Farm's uplifted arms.
Afterwards the Huddersfield forwards made a lot of progress with crisp, direct football, building one raid on the right which ended in Shimwell hurling his 6 ft. and 12 st. across the face of a gaping goal in a flying leap to head away a soaring centre.
Again, too, Jeff Taylor, the Town's leader, lost a bouncing ball inside shooting distance, with the Town raging on the attack non-stop.
EASY GOAL
That a goal would come was always on the cards while this pressure lasted and while Blackpool were so obviously vulnerable to it.
It came in exactly five minutes, and so simple it seemed, too.
Out on the left, Vic Metcalfe took a pass, raced away with it from Shimwell, and crossed it with a studied precision, and there, waiting for it unmarked, the centre of the field open, young TAYLOR, with all the time in the world, stood and merely sidestepped it over the line.
It is a long time since I saw a Blackpool goal surrendered with so little serious challenge.
Blackpool were, in fact, for a long time recognisable only by their tangerine jerseys as the team of recent conquering weeks.
MORTENSEN'S REPLY
Wave after wave of attack beat on a defence forfeiting too many positions, strangely irresolute in the tackle.
One, two, three raids Blackpool made, all on the right wing. All were repelled.
Yet in the 11th minute Blackpool were level, and level with a goal as brisk and crisp and undisputed as the Town's had been.
Three men were in it. Brown made the first pass square inside to his leader. Away Mortensen took it, glided it all in one fluent movement to the right. Away Matthews took this second pass, crossed it into the gap between the Town's two full-backs, where the Town's centre-half should have been but where the Town's centre-half was not.
But STANLEY MORTENSEN was there, fast as a greyhound out of the trap, to shoot this ball high into the roof of the net for a goal which made his total 29 in the First Division this season and his own personal record in League football.
And within a minute, too, it was nearly 2-1 for Blackpool, and would have been if Wheeler had not come galloping out desperately to cut out and clear the last pass, after a fast interchange by Brown and his centre-forward.
HASSALL SCORES
Yet in the 20th minute the Town were in front again - with a good goal, too. Three Blackpool raids in succession had reeled back off a Town defence still a little open but not as open as it had been.
Away went the Town's front line for the first time for 10 minutes.
Jeff Taylor had a chance, a clear chance, in the centre of the field, not so closely guarded by Blackpool as it should have been.
He took the pass, and shot low at the falling Farm, with the goalkeeper deserted.
A minute later this young leader atoned. Another down-the-centre raid was built.
Another pass discovered the leader unmarked.
This time there was no shot, but instead a perfect squared pass to his right, where HASSALL took it, ran half a dozen yards and shot a rising ball into the roof of the net before a Blackpool man could cross his path.
Blackpool's immediate retaliation ended in Mortensen shooting a free-kick fast into a pack of men and Johnston tearing in a split second late for one of Stanley Matthews' passes.
BLACKPOOL RETREAT
But afterwards in this switchback of a half it was Blackpool who were going back, except for an occasional foray.
The Town, in fact, raiding down the centre, might have gone further in front in the 33rd minute.
Then, as he accepted a pass, Harold Hassall showed why he is playing for England next week.
Fast away with the ball, he raced away from the Blackpool man chasing him, made position perfectly for himself, and steered across a made-to-measure pass which Taylor missed by inches under the bar of an empty goal.
Two minutes later, too, Taylor beat Ainscough to a loose ball, raced inside with it, and was dispossessed by Garrett's brilliant tackle, while 40,000 people demanded, without any warrant at all, that a penalty should be given.
NEARLY 2-2
Blackpool, as I saw it, should have made it 2-2 with seven minutes of the half left.
Then it was Stan Mortensen, too fast to the ball again for his centre-half, took a pass away from McEvoy, left him standing, and squared across the face of a gaping goal a ball which Brown appeared to miss within half a dozen yards of the deserted Wheeler.
A goal would not have been undeserved, for Blackpool, after this incident, were again in almost complete command of a half which had surged backwards and forwards all the 45 minutes.
In the last minute Mortensen, always alert and aggressive this afternoon, chased Shimwell's long clearance and had the Town defence in a state of panic before he was suppressed by numbers.
In the last half-minute Nightingale swooped on a forward pass in a big gap in Blackpool's defence, reached it, and shot a ball which Farm beat down and retrieved in a dive at a forward's feet.
Half-time: Huddersfield Town 2, Blackpool 1.
Second Half
Mortensen was in Blackpool’s first raid of the second half- in it because he went after a ball which few men would have con descended to pursue, reached it near the line and crossed it brilliantly into the Town goal area, where its bounce eluded Perry.
Except that Town went back and back without forfeiting a shooting position until Brown made one by his sudden spurt and finished by shooting slowly at the waiting Wheeler, there was not a lot of excitement in this half’s early stages.
Twice centres raked the Town’s goal from Blackpool’s progressive right wing, the second by the serene and debonair Matthews gliding off a desperate full-back’s head as Perry raced in to meet it and lost it when its flight was deflected.
Then, in a raid built on the Huddersfield left wing, a goal nearly came, Taylor rising like a rocket to Metcalfe’s high centre and missing it almost at the height of the bar.
There seemed to be the threat of a goal in every raid by the two attacks, so often were the forwards being given the ball in open spaces.
Jack Ainscough crossed to Blackpool's left wing to halt one Town raid by sheer stark resolution, and out on the other flank Taylor, given a pass by Metcalfe in a position which appeared to be a couple of yards offside, was allowed to cross a high centre which Garrett cleared, with another 'state of emergency' developing.
BROWN LIMPS
In one raid by Huddersfield Allan Brown was left sprawling out for the count.
He was still limping out on the Blackpool left wing when Blackpool front line raided, and down under a merciless tackle went Matthews in the area without one Blackpool man asking for a penalty with which such a tackle might have been punished.
Back went the Town to the attack, were repulsed and rocked back themselves, conceding two corners in a minute, the second won by Kelly's brilliant centre from the line.
Twenty minutes of the half had gone and Blackpool's first defeat of 1951 was threatening, might, in fact, have been nearly inescapable if Johnston twice in rapid succession had not put the brake on Huddersfield's forwards racing into scoring positions.
Yet inside another minute, with the game still the switchback it had always been, Matthews crossed a centre which Wheeler held under the bar.
Within the next two minutes Blackpool were three times near to a goal again.
The first time Jackie Mudie cut inside and shot brilliantly a fast low ball which Wheeler fielded magnificently as he fell forward to it.
PUNCHED AWAY
The second and third times Mortensen was in it, heading in after a big leap a ball which the Town goalkeeper punched away, and shooting half a minute later a ball which went over the bar as if it had come out of a gun.
It was nearly all Blackpool afterwards, but with the game approaching its last quarter the Town defence was standing firmer than it had stood all the afternoon.
With exactly 15 minutes to play Matthews nearly averted the threatened defeat. Outwitting two men, he raced away from a third and punted gently over a ball which seemed to graze the bar and nearly hit a full-back standing on the line before passing out by the far post.
Another minute later and Taylor brushed past Ainscough, outpaced him, and shot a ball which almost lifted a cloud of white dust off the bar.
BROWN GOES OFF
Another minute and down went Allan Brown again, went over the line, limped down it, and for all practical purposes was out of the match.
Even then Mudie shot fast into Wheeler's arms as the inside-left was hobbling round the field to the players' exit.
But it was a remote chance with 10 men.
Blackpool raided in vain to hold the record in the last two minutes.
Result:
HUDDERSFIELD TOWN 2 (Taylor 5, Hassall 20)
BLACKPOOL 1 (Mortensen 11)
COMMENTS ON THE GAME
IT had to come - and it came at Huddersfield today - Blackpool's first defeat in 20 successive games.
The defence was not guiltless.
One had the impression all the afternoon that it was massing its forces too often in the centre to protect its young centre half-back.
One result was that shooting positions were forfeited repeatedly in the first half-hour.
It was not without significance that it was during those 30 minutes that the Town won.
For a long time, too, the inside-forwards were losing the ball in the tackle to the Town's wing half-backs.
One can have only praise for the full-backs.
GOOD TO WATCH
The Blackpool front line, too, even if it was always stronger on its right than its left, was as good as ever to watch in the open.
Stanley Mortensen has never played a game of greater resource and would, I think, have won this match on his own or, at least, snatched a point from it if so many of those forward passes to him had not this afternoon gone astray.
The attendance of 52,479 was a post-war record for the ground.
"'The team of all the talents" was one of the names they gave in the old days to Middlesbrough, Blackpool's visitors next weekend, writes Clifford Greenwood.
They are still that at times, the Ayresome Park cast, and often, too, anything but that.
When they are good they are very, very good, and when they are bad . . . you know the rest.
Middlesbrough's records at Blackpool since the war are illustrative of this unpredictable team's vagaries. They won the first of the post-war matches by the remarkable score of 5-0, with quicksilver Wilf Mannion making the scoring positions and And there are those other days . . . . There have been a few too many of them during the last few weeks.
Otherwise Middlesbrough might be coming to the coast next weekend as First Division leaders and potential champions.
Theirs, in fact, has been probably the strongest challenge offered to the 'Spurs this season.
Such a team commands respect - and could, and probably will, make a great game of it in the last match in which most of the Blackpool public will see their own team before it treads Wembley turf a fortnight later.
National event, say FA - and the Finalists go short
By Clifford Greenwood
BLACKPOOL'S recent 100 per cent Easter has had a sequel in half a dozen letters from correspondents asking when last a Blackpool team took six points from three Easter matches.
I have already reported, writes Clifford Greenwood, that it was 21 years ago - in 1930 during a weekend which ended in Blackpool being assured for the first time of promotion to the First Division.
In the first match Blackpool won 3-0 against Oldham Athletic, promotion challengers all the season, and this in spite of the presence on one wing half the afternoon of Stanley Ramsay, the ex-Sunderland full-back, with an arm in a sling and his collar bone broken.
The attendance of 23,868, not including the thousands who swarmed into the ground when one of the closed gates was broken down under the pressure, was a record for Blackpool, and the receipts of £1,825 approached one for a League match in the town.
Jimmy Hampson, Jack Oxberry and Charlie ("Jazz") Rattray scored the Blackpool goals.
The following day, which was, I recall, a day of storm and tempest, Bradford City were defeated 3-0, Hampson scoring two more goals and Oxberry one.
And at Boundary Park on Easter Monday the treble was completed, when, after missing a penalty - a major error of which he was seldom guilty - Jimmy Hampson made position for Jack Oxberry to shoot his third goal of the holidays and scored another himself in a 2-1 match.
Blackpool as a town was so surprised by this abrupt and triumphant end of the promotion race that the reception given to the team on its return had to be improvised at such short notice.
It was repeated on an infinitely bigger scale with thousands massed in Talbot Square, when a fortnight later Blackpool, on the season's last day, came back from Nottingham as Second Division champions.
***
ACCENT ON YOUTH
They have seldom played younger against Blackpool than the 16-year-old Stan Bevans, who played on Stoke City's right wing at Blackpool last weekend. The nearest approach this season was the blacksmith's apprentice, Kenneth Scott, who also appeared as an outside-right when Blackpool visited Derby last September.
He is only 17.
Youngest professional ever to play for Blackpool was Jim McIntosh, the present Everton forward, who had celebrated his 17th birthday only a few months earlier when he appeared for the club in a Second Division match at Swansea on September 14, 1935.
Youngest professional to take the field in a Blackpool First Division team was Harry Johnston, the post-war captain, who was older than Jim McIntosh had been for his League baptism, but not a lot older, when he walked out on the field at Deepdale on November 20, 1937.
***
The South African newspapers have gone to town on Bill Perry, the Blackpool wing-forward.
The mammoth "Cape Argus," which was in my mail this week from Mr. J. Ratcliffe Airey, former captain of the old Blackpool Golf Club, who is on holiday in the Union, contained a three-column photograph of the 20-year-old exile playing for Blackpool in the Fulham quarter-final and splash headlines about his winning goal against Birmingham City in the Goodison Park semi-final.
As the first South African ever to qualify for a Cup Final at Wembley, Bill Perry these days makes big news.
Writes Mr. Airey above one of the flaring banners in "The Argus": "This is nice publicity."
You bet it is.
The red carpet will be out for Bill when he lands in South Africa this summer for a short vacation with his even younger compatriot, Bernard Levy.
Blackpool have given the two of them leave of absence during the close season. They sail from England on May 10.
***
She's been watching Blackpool football for 65 years
Who has the longest record as a spectator of Blackpool football? A woman may qualify for it.
I learn from Mr. A. V. Darwent, who was himself a referee for 29 years and until recent times intimately associated with junior football in the Fylde, that his sister-in-law, Miss M. E. Fenton, has been watching Blackpool football teams for nearly 65 years.
She could not have been watching them a lot longer, for they have not been playing, even counting the South Shore club as a Blackpool club, for much longer.
Miss Fenton's uncle, Mr. Bob Eaves, was one of the club's first trainers.
Over half a century is a long time to be watching one team. It is Miss Fenton's proud record that she has been watching football matches in Blackpool - and Blackpool teams in every part of the land - since before the dawn of the century.
***
CONGRATULATIONS to Blackpool players Harry Johnston, Stan Matthews and Stan Mortensen on their selection yesterday for the England team against Scotland at Wembley next Saturday, to Allan Brown, who will be Scotland's left half-back, and to George Farm, reserve for Scotland.
***
I had news the other day of a player about whom I had not heard for many years.
Hugh McMahon, a red-haired Scot, was one of Blackpool's first signings after the first promotion in 1930, came as a wing-half, but is, I think, chiefly recalled as a centre-half.
From Blackpool he went to Stoke, and he will tell you that he was at the Victoria Ground when a boy was working on the City's staff who was later to achieve fame in the game. The boy's name was Stanley Matthews.
Hugh is these days living in Stevenston, Ayrshire, where a Poulton resident met him the other day. He is married, with two sons, has a greater interest in golf than in football nowadays, but when the visitor from the Fylde met him he talked with affection of his days in this part of the world.
***
They are still at it - still selecting teams of former Blackpool players to meet the present team. "South Stand's" selection is:
City); Lewis, Kennedy (Bolton Wanderers); Buchan, T. (Wigan Athletic), Robinson (Hull City), Kennedy (Norwich City), Suart (Blackburn Rovers), Blair, D. (Cardiff City); Buchan, W. (Gateshead), Blair, J. (Leyton Orient), Dodds (Lincoln City), Doherty (Doncaster Rovers), and Rickett (Sheffield Wednesday), McIntosh, J. (Everton).
Not a bad team at that. Yet I would still fancy the boys of the present-day brigade. Too many of the others, good as they were, are not today, by the laws of nature, as good as they used to be.
***
MAY DAYS
I hear that Strasbourg, visitors to Blackpool in a Festival of Britain match on Whit Monday, are already contemplating the institution of the fixture as an annual event similar to the Arsenal-Paris series.
And why not?
From all I hear, Strasbourg will send to Blackpool a team that has already reached the semi-finals of the tournament which in France is equivalent to the FA Cup in this country, and there is every prospect of a match which will be something other than an exhibition.
The famous Belgian team, Anderlecht, come to town for the first of the Festival matches on May 12, two days earlier.
There will, in fact, be plenty of football in Blackpool during May's first two weeks.
After the Final at Wembley on April 28, Arsenal will be in town for the postponed League match on May 2 - unless there is a draw at Wembley and a midweek replay - with Manchester United completing the season on May
***
Gordon Kennedy in light training
In Bolton the other day I met Gordon Kennedy, the full-back from Blackpool who never missed a match in the Wanderers' defence after his September transfer last year until he hurt a knee and had to enter a nursing home for an operation.
He is walking again, and with scarcely a limp. "But," he said, "I don't suppose I'll play a lot of football again this season. It'll be another two or three weeks before I'm fit."
Still, it was good to know that the operation had been a complete success and that he was back in light training again.
There were too many people in this part of the kingdom who used to think - and a few of them to say - that this full-back would never make the grade in the First Division.
He never had the chance to make it at Blackpool. But at Burnden Park they think his signing at a fee in the region of £7,500 was a bargain - and events have proved that it was.
***
New role for Mortensen
Stanley Mortensen's big days do not end with next Saturday's England-Scotland international at Wembley and the Cup Final a fortnight later.
On May 7 he switches to another sphere. As the proprietor of three shops in Blackpool, he welcomes to Blackpool delegates to the annual conference of the National Union of Small Shopkeepers.
He will be guest of honour at the conference. "It's certainly a big honour," he said today, "just as big an honour, in fact, in its own way, as leading the England attack next week."
***
Blackpool unlikely to accept tour
Blackpool FC are to be invited to tour Argentina next month, but the possibility of their accepting is very remote, writes Frank Mellor.
Blackpool chairman, Mr. Harry Evans, said today that he was definitely opposed to such a tour.
But, of course, an official refusal to make the tour would have to come from a meeting of the directors.
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