18 August 1951 Blackpool 1 Chelsea 2
Fighting finish after losing lead, but Chelsea grab points
SHOCK RESULT
Blackpool 1, Chelsea 2
By “Clifford Greenwood”
THOSE practice matches can be expensive luxuries.
Blackpool played only one this season, but it nearly cost the team its captain for the Chelsea match which opened the football year at Blackpool this afternoon.
Harry Johnston had to have a test this morning before he could be passed as fit. It ended without the half-back limping, a pulled calf muscle apparently healed, but, as he said when I saw him before the game, "I might have been out."
So Blackpool were at full strength. That was a good fortune denied the London team, who, without a win at Bloomfield-road since the war, entered the match without John Harris, Roy Bentley and one or two others who have been lured into non-League football.
George McKnight was standing by in case he should be required.
He was not required, and yet, by a strange coincidence, there was a man of his name in the match - a young Scot, Phil McKnight - and, to make it even stranger, it was at right-half that he was fielded at the last minute.
It was not so warm as it so often is on a season’s first day, and rain, according to the weather bulletins, was approaching from the Atlantic.
But it was still fine in the early afternoon, and under a fitful sun the grass has never at Blackpool looked so fresh or green.
"NEW LOOK" GROUND
Nor had Spion Kop towered so high or the ground itself, with its new shale cinder track, its latticed gates in the south-east corner and all the other refinements, approached so close to First Division status.
Half an hour before the kick-off the gangways on the embankment were closing, and with the paddocks filling, too, and the stands booked to the last seat there was every prospect of a 35,000 attendance which would create a record for Blackpool football.
Teams:
BLACKPOOL: Farm; Shimwell, Garrett; Johnston, Hayward, Kelly; Matthews, Mudie, Mortensen, Brown, Perry.
CHELSEA: Robertson; Bathgate, Tickridge; McKnight (P.), Saunders, Dickson; Parsons, Campbell, Smith, Armstrong, Gray.
Referee: Mr. H. Beacock (Scunthorpe).
THE GAME
First half
Blackpool lost the toss and George Farm went into the north goal in front of the new embankment.
The first few minutes were a hotchpotch of straying passes.
Yet in Blackpool’s first raid the speed and the persistence of Perry forced a labouring Chelsea defence to concede a corner. Before it was cleared a high ball was twice crossed in front of a packed Chelsea goal area, and twice was headed away from a Blackpool forward.
Yet within another minute Chelsea were as close to the lead, even in fact closer.
Chelsea's young centre-forward Bob Smith raced after a long bouncing ball down the centre, glided it away from Hayward, passed Blackpool’s centre-half as he was falling, darted to a ball still bouncing awkwardly, and shot it low at the crouching Farm.
HIGH AND WIDE
Whereupon, by way of retaliation, a pass reached Stanley Matthews for the first time, and his full-back settled for a corner.
From the corner Mudie hurled himself at the crossing ball, and from above knee-height lashed it high and wide away from the Chelsea goal.
In another raid Mortensen, fast to a forward pass, shot fast barely wide of a post.
The football was not all that elegant, but both forward lines were introducing the direct pass into every move.
It was 50-50 during the first eight minutes.
Billy Gray shot a rising ball fast into Farm’s hands after a pass had escaped the Blackpool defence, and a minute later the Blackpool goalkeeper had to dive at Smith’s feet as the centre-forward went full tilt after a long forward pass.
NEARLY A GOAL
Chelsea were not outplayed. It continued, in fact, to be Chelsea’s game for the next few minutes and in one of them the Blackpool goal was perilously near downfall.
Again a pass was crossed from right wing to left by the Chelsea forward line.
Gray was moving fast on to it all alone as Farm came out to him, hooked despairingly at a ball which appeared to hit the Chelsea wing forward and run loose away from him before Farm, still prostrate, scooped it up out of the raider’s path. Exactly 12 and a half minutes had passed when that little duel ended.
BLACKPOOL AHEAD
Fine Mortensen goal in 13th minute
Half a minute later, Blackpool were in front - and in front with a goal which had the Mortensen autograph written all over it.
A random forward pass fell into Chelsea’s half of the field 50 yards from goal.
Fast after it went STANLEY MORTENSEN -
reached it, lost it as it bounced, retrieved it as his centre-half went into a despairing tackle, ran on, mastered it at last, and shot into the roof of the net as the young Bill Robertson in the Chelsea goal hurled himself at it.
Seldom have I seen a game of such hurricane pace, even on a first day when the pace is often the sort that kills.
Within a minute of this 13th-minute goal Chelsea were near to making it 1-1 as Campbell shot a low ball which Farm beat out but could not hold but which Shimwell hooked out desperately for a corner.
Incidents came thick and fast afterwards.
PERRY’S PACE
Perry by his speed - he appeared yards faster than he was a year ago - and Matthews by his own exclusive brand of magic won corners.
The Blackpool forward line was constantly in the game at this time, and won another corner in the 20th minute which might have produced a goal if Mudie’s fast hooked shot direct from his partner’s pass had not hit Mortensen as the centre-forward raced into position.
It was still not one-way traffic but the punch was in the Blackpool attack.
Came the 23rd minute and another little sensation.
Again two men stood in the path of the swerving zig-zagging Matthews. When at last the wing forward made the pass it appeared from the Press box that the ball hit left-half Dickson’s hands.
PENALTY MISS
Allan Brown's shot hits goalkeeper
Blackpool, to a man, appealed for a penalty for an intentional offence. Mr. Beacock without hesitation gave a penalty which Chelsea did not dispute.
Brown took it, shot a ball which rose into Robertson’s hands, escaped them, and rolled away out wide of a post.
In the end, after Mortensen, ever alert, had darted to it and crossed it in front of an open goal, the ball was cleared.
Shimwell’s terrier tackling halted Chelsea’s left wing repeatedly, but on the other flank the other Chelsea wing forward was often finding open positions, cutting into them and shooting. Yet it was out on the other flank that the position was created from which Chelsea’s threatened goal came at last at the end of 35 minutes.
CHELSEA SCORE
It was a position open, I think, to suspicion. Bob Smith went after a long forward clearance. From the Press box he gave the impression that he was a couple of yards offside. But on he went, as Mr.
Beacock glanced in vain to the right wing for a linesman’s signal, until in the end there was the spectacle of two Chelsea forwards all alone in front of the deserted Farm, where Smith put backwards a pass which BOBBY CAMPBELL almost walked over the line.
The Blackpool forwards came into the game again afterwards, and on the wings revealed sufficient resource to win a couple of corners.
It was not a half which had gone according to Blackpool expectations.
Chelsea, in fact, might have snatched the lead in the last minute of the half if Johnston had not cast himself in front of Smith, with the centre-forward running into a scoring position.
Half-time: Blackpool 1, Chelsea 1.
Second half
Tom Garrett outwitted his wing forward neatly to end Chelsea’s first attack of the second half.
It was the only one for the time, for in continuous Blackpool pressure Perry and Mortensen shot fast over the bar and out by the far post.
Another minute, and Matthews varied his routine with a high-flighted centre which in a big leap Mortensen headed barely over the bar.
Yet after all this - and it had been good, direct attacking football - one crisp, fast move by the Chelsea front line was as near a goal, Smith taking the last pass and shooting a ball which sprang out of Farm’s clutching hands and was retrieved by the goalkeeper as he jerked sideways at it.
BUSY GOALKEEPER
Constantly afterwards, Robertson was in action, revealing himself as a young goalkeeper of no little resource.
Chelsea were going back and back as they had never retreated in the first half, conceded three free-kicks in as many minutes, a couple of corners, and twice nearly a goal.
The first time, Mortensen shot from 30 yards a free-kick which Robertson fielded magnificently, and the second time he leaped at the last of the free-kicks and headed it so close that it brushed the bar as it flew over.
With nearly 15 minutes of the half gone Blackpool were in almost complete possession of a game out of which Chelsea were beginning to fade.
LONG RUN
Allan Brown was coming definitely into the game at this time, revealing in one run of over 50 yards the master of footcraft he can be and his deceptive pace, too.
And still Blackpool attacked, still Mortensen was taking everything in the air, once heading it again almost out of the leaping Robertson’s hands.
Another corner, Blackpool’s fifth of the half, was conceded with only 20 minutes of the half gone and a sixth was surrendered in the repelling of it.
And that had been cleared less than half a minute when the ball was back again in Chelsea’s congested goal area for Brown to be summarily brushed away in a scoring position.
Yet Chelsea were close to snatching the lead in a breakaway, Campbell racing into the path of a fast pass from Smith and losing it with the Blackpool goal half open in front of him.
A minute later Blackpool should have been in front. Away went Mortensen from the halfway line, eluded one man, and swerved away from another.
Robertson came out to meet the centre, was beaten by the crossed ball, and was still out of position as Perry lashed it wide of an open goal.
DRAMATIC GOAL
With only 15 minutes left Chelsea took the lead with a strange and yet dramatic goal.
The raid was opened on the left, and a fast low centre was crossed from this quarter.
George Farm went out to meet it, held it, and fell under the full-tilt challenge of the Chelsea centre-forward.
Out of his clutch the ball rolled as the goalkeeper still sprawled. Young BOB SMITH,
with the ball at his feet, hooked it over the empty line and celebrated with a jubilant leap in the air.
Then the dauntless Mortensen stormed all alone into the game again, retrieved a ball which should have been the Chelsea centre-half’s, cut inside with it, and lost it under a tackle which released a clamour for a penalty that Mr. Beacock refused.
Another two minutes passed and a free-kick was awarded for a tackle on Matthews. As the ball was crossed, a Chelsea full-back cleared on the line as the ball sailed out of his goalkeeper’s hands.
HIT FULL-BACK
Another minute and it happened again as Mortensen shot a low ball which escaped Robertson and hit another full-back under the bar.
It was all out for Blackpool in these closing tempestuous minutes, but a goal would not come.
Away went Perry, revealing that unsuspected speed of his before half hitting a centre which Robertson in a lurch at it misjudged and parried out anywhere for a corner.
The corner was cleared, but back stormed Blackpool in this late desperate assault.
Result:
BLACKPOOL 1 (Mortensen 13)
CHELSEA 2 (Campbell 35, Smith 75)
COMMENTS ON THE GAME
So this was the game that Blackpool could not lose. Why was it lost?
The reasons were:
(1) A Chelsea defence which revealed greater resource than was ever expected.
(2) A great goalkeeper, young Bill Robertson, who had admittedly a bit of luck but deserved it.
(3) A Blackpool defence that was never too stable under pressure, and
(4) A Blackpool line which again had only one man in it - the tireless, aggressive Stanley Mortensen - with goals in him.
NONSTOP RAIDS
On the credit page of the ledger for Blackpool there was the nonstop assault which raged for minutes on end in the second half, awaking into furious action a front line which had faded a lot in the last 20 minutes of the first half.
The pace was there, but there was too little punch, too few raids moving fluently on a day when fewer and fewer passes came from the inside forwards to the wingmen.
Chelsea’s football after the interval shed nearly all its qualities except a dogged will to resist, but this London team, under strength and given not even a dog’s chance of winning, won in the end against all the odds.
This is one of those inevitable first day of the season upsets. It may mean nothing at all or something serious. I incline to the former theory.
RELUCTANT DUCK
BLACKPOOL’S new duck, gift of film star Douglas Fairbanks, made a reluctant bow to the Blackpool football public as Blackpool were taking the field against Chelsea.
For half a minute he declined to leave his box, and when he left it, the smaller and paler edition of the famous Donald was so mutinous that he had immediately to be put back into it again.
Obviously, Douglas will have to go into special training!
By Clifford Greenwood
IF IT IS A FACT THAT THERE IS NO REST FOR THE WICKED, PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALLERS AT THE PRESENT TIME MUST BE STEEPED IN INIQUITY
Consider the case of Blackpool, who, in common with most teams in the League, have 11 matches to play before the end of September. Not, I think, that these £14-a-week men are complaining about it. But it keeps them on the move.
And nobody will have
further to go than Blackpool next week.
For the team take the London train on Tuesday, will be quartered at Southsea until Wednesday evening and the match at Fratton Park, return by sleeping coach to Blackpool early on Thursday, and will be off at the weekend for a game at Huddersfield.
Blackpool should at least embark on these pilgrimages with a little faith in their capacity to make some sort of profit out of them.
Blackpool played four matches in succession in postwar football at Portsmouth before losing in the fifth last season. And that fifth match was lost only in the last 10 minutes.
There seems to be something in the South coast air which suits Blackpool.
Similarly, at Huddersfield, Blackpool teams have not toiled and laboured in vain.
Of the five games played at Leeds-road since the war two have been won and three lost, and defeat came last year only after Allan Brown had been disabled in the accident which had such melancholy consequences for him and on a day, too, when Blackpool had a second reserve in the half-back line.
Three men will require special attention by the Blackpool defence next week. There are others, but these three will suffice.
One is Gordon Dale, Portsmouth’s new outside-left from Chesterfield, who, if he is able to repeat in the First Division the football which he has been playing in the Second, may become one of the game’s new stars.
The other two are the men, Vic Metcalfe and Harold Hassall, who make Huddersfield’s left wing. If Blackpool played against a better wing all last season I must have forgotten it.
NOW THE PESSIMISTS
ARE ALL THE OPTIMISTS
BY "CLIFFORD GREENWOOD" 18 August 1951
Wanted - a sense of proportion
COME folk will never learn.
They sit themselves down, preferably in that
snug corner of the bar where present-day major prophets seem always to congregate, and solemnly forecast exactly what a team will do during the next eight months.
They are nearly always wrong - but they won't learn.
A YEAR AGO—
LAST season they were such Jeremiahs that Manager Joe Smith lost patience with them, I recall, at Blackpool's annual meeting, and with that famous jaw, joy of the cartoonists, jutting aggressively, said:
"Why, to hear some people talk, we’re in the Second Division already."
That remark had a parallel as long ago as 1946.
Then, when League football began again at the end of the war, Harry Johnston, unexpectedly made captain of Blackpool, said at a time when everybody was giving his team as little chance in the First Division as a flyweight would have in a ring with Randolph Turpin:
"We’ll show ’em. Just let them wait a week or two."
That season Blackpool led the First Division table at the end of September and did not lose one home point until nearly Christmas.
And last season the team that, according to the more depressing of the citizens, was doomed to relegation qualified for the Cup Final, finished third in the League, and fielded a forward line - and it was the forward line which caused all the depression - that finished the season with a higher aggregate of the goals than any other attack except the Spurs.
Other extreme
I KNOW nothing about prophets being without honour in their own country. But I do know that most football prophets seem to be without any sense at all.
This time, to give a little variety to the formula, they have gone to the other extreme.
Now, wherever I go, I am told that Blackpool will win nearly everything which was so nearly won last season, and the theme song instead of one of the grimmer dead marches is "See the Conquering Heroes Come" before ever they have conquered anybody.
All of which is as arrant nonsense as all the rest was in the years that have past.
Confidence
OF course, there is cause for confidence. There must be with Blackpool able to enlist again all the men who won last season's triumphs.
Stanley Matthews has re-signed, after all the tittle-tattle which had prematurely put him in the red jersey with the chaste white collar and cuffs of Arsenal.
If I am told, as I probably shall be, that this is of no material consequence as the maestro is in the autumn of his career, I shall be compelled to recite his achievements of last season.
Allan Brown is fit again. Nobody will dispute that is of great consequence, for all that the Scot meant to Blackpool football is revealed by a glance at the records after Blackpool signed him at a fee which ranks as the third highest in the game.
Silenced
BILL PERRY, too, has silenced all those reports about his intention of fading off the English scene at the end of the season which opens today.
Jackie Mudie, who was, in my opinion, the Blackpool player whose game made the greatest advance last season - his 17 First Division goals were a remarkable achievement for a player so young in the game - is in the RAF and will be in it for another two years.
Yet present indications are that he will not be lost to Blackpool, and if he is eventually stationed in the North-West, as he may be, he may be in the Blackpool team more often than he is out of it.
Strong reserves
THERE is a half-back line which was showing no signs at the end of last season of the inexorable march of time, and a line, too, buttressed by such reserves as George McKnight, happily in active circulation again, Johnny Crosland and Ewan Fenton.
And when such a full-back as Jackie Wright has to play as an understudy there cannot be a lot wrong, and I am persuaded that there is little wrong, with the principals in his particular department.
In such circumstances, therefore, there can be little reason to be anything except confident about Blackpool’s immediate future.
Bright, but—
YET, as Mr. Smith said in a sublime understatement the other evening in an address to the club’s contented shareholders, "Football is a funny game."
He (they might have retorted) is telling us, and gone all caustic about it. But not a bit of it.
Most of the shareholders, and most of the Blackpool football public, are apparently today convinced that in Blackpool football all things are bright and beautiful.
But there it is - there are those unexpected elements in this game which make it the game of a million people every weekend. Casualties can beset a team - a cycle of them as they always seem to come in cycles.
By Clifford Greenwood
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Those 1950-51 goals
JUST to remind you. The players who scored the First Division goals for Blackpool last season were: S. Mortensen 31, J. Mudie 17, H. Johnston 7, A. Withers 5, W. J. Slater 4, G. McKnight, W. Perry and A. Brown (1 penalty) 3 each, H. Kelly, L. Stephenson and W. McIntosh 1 each. And the marksmen in the FA Cup were: S. Mortensen 5, J. Mudie 3, W. Perry and A. Brown (1 penalty) 2 each.
The Central League scorers were: W. McIntosh 13, A. Withers 10, L. Stephenson and K. Smith 7 each, R. Adams 6, A. McCall 5, E. Fenton 4 (3 penalties), A. Hobson and W. Wright 2 each, J. Mudie, W. Perry, T. Garrett (penalty), D. Proctor, C. Robinson, G. McKnight, and J. Crosland 1 each.
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Record in danger
GEORGE FARM made his 135th appearance in successive League matches and Cup ties for Blackpool this afternoon.
It is a sequence unequalled in Blackpool football - except by one man who still lives in the town and seldom misses a Blackpool match.
Little George Mee created the record which the present goalkeeper is now challenging at Blackpool.
The wing forward played 222 consecutive games for Blackpool in one period between the two world wars.
The magnitude of this exploit can be appreciated when it is realised that to equal it George Farm will have to play for about another couple of seasons and not miss one match during it.
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