22 September 1951 Derby County 1 Blackpool 1
Neither side deserved more than a point from aimless football
ATTACKS MAROONED
Derby County 1, Blackpool 0
By “Clifford Greenwood”
THE DERBY NEWSPAPER HEADLINES ANNOUNCED TODAY THAT BLACKPOOL WERE PLAYING ON A HOODOO GROUND. AS IF WE DIDN’T KNOW.
It was on this ground, so small that it makes Bloomfield-road almost capacious, that Jacky Stamps had his greatest triumph last season, scoring all the goals for the County in a 4-1 match which was Blackpool’s biggest defeat of 1950-51.
It is a fact, too, that once only since the war had a Blackpool team won here, and that was five years ago.
The County, whose football fortunes have been down in the doldrums recently, made a big team shuffle.
Jack Parry, on leave from the Army and with 30 goals to his name in the County’s second team last season, was introduced at centre-forward.
Johnny Morris, the ex-Manchester United forward, who played against Blackpool in the 1948 Final was in the unfamiliar position of wing half for the second successive week.
HARD GROUND
From the stands the pitch had a deceptive billiards-table appearance, but it was as firm as if under frost, rutted and obviously requiring a lot of rain to make it the sort of surface footballers prefer.
I would question if 25,000 were inside the gates when the teams appeared.
Teams:
DERBY COUNTY: Middleton; Mozley, Barrowcliffe; Morris, Oliver, Mays; Harrison, Stamps, Parry, Powell, Revell.
BLACKPOOL: Farm; Shimwell, Wright (J); Fenton, Hayward, Kelly; Matthews, Mudie, Mortensen, W. J. Slater, Perry.
Referee: Mr. R. Wood (Sunderland).
THE GAME
First half
Eric Hayward won the toss for Blackpool. It left Mr. Ray Middleton, JP, facing the sun - the little there was of it - in the County’s goal. It was of no greater consequence than that.
A lot of the early football was of no great consequence, either.
It was fast, but the bounce of ball on the scarred surface had men constantly running the wrong way and sometimes left them standing.
Jack Stamps headed far away from goal in the County’s first raid, and Farm raced out to the edge of his penalty area to snatch the ball away from two pursuing forwards in another.
Then Shimwell was adjudged guilty of obstruction against Revell.
That led to one of those little debates which preface an indirect free-kick in the penalty area, but it led to nothing else, with the County’s half-backs and forwards losing the ball to a packed defence.
GOALS NEAR
Twice Mortensen put Matthews into the game with long, low passes, and the second time a goal was as near as it had been since the kick-off.
Matthews, after outwitting his full-back, crossed a fast, bouncing ball which Mortensen lashed at and half-hit and which Bill Slater missed as it skidded across him in a shooting position.
In the next minute a goal was even nearer in another right-wing raid which ended in Slater gliding forward a pass which bounced such a lot that Mortensen lost it within range of a deserted goalkeeper.
When a raid opened on the County’s right wing, Jacky Wright decided to pass back on an oblique course 30 yards from Farm.
Parry darted fast on to it before the unprepared goalkeeper could move, reached it, shot it, and hit the outside of the near post.
Afterwards the football was scarcely classic, but it was thunderous and earnest.
I saw Fenton make one great clearance, and before the raid had been repelled Farm fell to his right brilliantly to intercept and punch out a shot by Harrison which was passing him fast and low.
BLACKPOOL AHEAD
The Blackpool defence, under this sudden unexpected pressure, appeared firmer than I have seen it in recent weeks. It stood firm and built a raid which gave Blackpool the lead in the 19th minute.
It was a raid which had apparently been repulsed until the ball ran loose to Jackie Mudie. The little inside-right saw his partner all alone on a wing which the County’s defence were too often leaving open.
Matthews, all on his own, crossed one of those centres which are his speciality, fast and inches below the bar.
Ray Middleton leaped at it from a pack of men, punched at it and missed it, and left W.
J. SLATER to head it far away from him as he fell.
In further raids by the Blackpool front line, Middleton was called into action when Mortensen shot fast and low at him from 30 yards.
MATTHEWS NEAR
Blackpool nearly made it 2-0 in the 27th minute, and this, too, would have been a goal for the headlines - another goal for Stanley Matthews.
Actually I think it should have been one, for as the wing forward closed in on an open course, three men moved out of his path instead of tackling him and left him in the end almost brushing the near post before shooting a ball low against the crouching Middleton.
The County’s raids were comparatively few, but they had plenty of fury in them. In one of them Ewan Fenton headed out magnificently a fast flying centre crossed from the right wing.
Twice afterwards this young wing-half closed the path to a forward racing in on goal, and within another minute Hayward, at close range, had closed another.
There were not many gaps in this Blackpool defence. There were several in the County almost every time the Blackpool front line raided on it.
PERRY’S SHOT
Morris created one by dilly-dallying with a ball which Perry hit fast away from him, chased, and in the end shot barely wide of the far post, with not a man ever crossing his path.
It was left to full-back Geoff Barrowcliffe to give Farm his first test for nearly 15 minutes with 10 minutes of the half left, the goalkeeper taking a ball volleyed at him from 30 yards.
Yet, two minutes later, the curious deceptive bounce of the ball almost lost Blackpool a goal.
Full-back Wright moved to this ball, misjudged its pace, and for the second time left Harrison to cut in fast from the wing before volleying his shot high over the angle of post and bar.
BIG ESCAPE
The County were pressing as the interval approached and shooting, too, but there was little plan in this raiding team’s football, and half the shots finished nearer corner flags than the goal.
Yet the Blackpool goal had one escape before half-time came.
There was another blood and thunder raid on this goal, a high, hit-anywhere centre from the right.
One shot was launched, another and another into a packed defence, before Parry raced in to hit a ball which cannoned away off Hayward as the Blackpool centre-half hurled himself desperately in front of him.
Another minute; and with less than 60 seconds of the half left Ewan Fenton showed how he can shoot a ball - and a few forwards in this half required the lesson.
He shot from 30 yards out and forced Middleton to a flying leap to his left to beat the ball out for a corner.
Half-time: Derby C. 0, Blackpool 1.
Second half
They had everything, in position for the second half - the teams, the linesmen and the referee - until they found that there was no ball.
When it was at last produced both teams continued to boot it hard and often, but seldom took any discernible plan.
Neither goalkeeper was in the game at all for five minutes, chiefly, in George Farm’s case, because the County wing forwards hooked or sliced their centres away into a “ No man’s land ” where there were no inside men.
Later the Blackpool goalkeeper retrieved a few of these centres or raced out to snatch up passes too fast for the forwards racing after them.
PASSES TOO STRONG
Otherwise it was just a case of the County galloping en masse within reasonable distance of the Blackpool goal and being repulsed.
If the forwards of both teams had been greyhounds they might have made something of all the far-flung passes apparently destined for them.
The result was that there was not a shooting position for a forward at all until Stamps was offered one and lost it under Hugh Kelly’s brilliant tackle.
One could write that the County were outplaying Blackpool. Little else could be written of a game which still had plenty of pace in it and plenty of grim, earnest football but few of football’s refinements.
MORRIS THROUGH
Then loses shooting position
Once, with 15 minutes gone, Morris in despair, went racing among his own forwards, made a shooting position for himself, and lost it as Bill Slater moved last across him.
The clearance cost a corner and the corner would probably have cost a goal if Wright on the line, had not cleared a ball which had passed his goalkeeper as Farm leaped at it out of a pack of men.
Blackpool were still retreating. Another corner came as Hayward hooked away a pass from Stamps in front of an almost open goal. And before the corner was cleared Farm had to leap and hold a ball headed high into his hands by Powell.
In breakaways Perry and Mortensen in partnership twice almost forced gaps in a County defence which except for Ken Oliver was not all that impressive under pressure
BOUNCE BEAT HIM
Again Johnny Morris decided to become a forward, but the bounce of the ball and Kelly’s forthright tackle beat him in the end.
With the half 23 minutes old Blackpool were still holding out and, in fact, in one breakaway won their fourth corner of the match - a corner which ended in Mortensen heading wide in a dive at a flying ball.
The County goal was menaced every time the Blackpool wing forwards were given a pass.
Slater gave Perry a perfect one, and from it a corner was won.
On the other flank, too, Matthews left his full-back in his wake again before crossing to his partner a squared pass which Mudie shot wide of the far post.
HEADED OUT
Clearances by Shimwell and Hayward
The storm of the County’s pressure was beginning to abate with the game in its last quarter-hour.
Yet it required a great headed clearance by Shimwell to repel a right-wing centre and another by Hayward to cut out one flying in from the other wing.
And while these raids continued, Morris, a great player in this half, gave Harrison all the space he wanted with a perfect pass - all the space to cross a centre which Stamps thundered over the bar.
And these raids still continued as Farm and Hayward lost between them a ball which in the end ran loose out of the danger zone.
BREAKAWAYS
Blackpool made breakaways.
In one of them, built by Slater, Mortensen headed down a right-wing centre so fast that Middleton had to be alert to reach it and clear at the foot of a post.
Yet a goal to make it 1-1 was always threatening.
It came at last, delayed until the fourth minute from time. A Johnny Morris pass made the raid, and a crippled inside forward, Tommy Powell, playing out on the left wing, continued it.
Up to this limping forward’s high centre CHARLIE REVELL hurled himself, watched the ball - and it all seemed to be in slow motion - rise off his head and fall under the bar, with George Farm surprised by the strange curl of its flight.
Result:
DERBY COUNTY 1 (Revell 86)
BLACKPOOL 1 (Slater 19)
COMMENTS ON THE GAME
THIS is not a match which will be quoted in the text books.
Blackpool made a draw of it, and in fact until four minutes from time were winning it. As a result, they have a remarkable sequence of seven points out of a possible 10 in the season’s first five away matches.
At this rate Blackpool will soon have to play all their games outside Blackpool !
It was, admittedly, no classic, this game from which neither team deserved anything more than a point. On a day when both forward lines seemed always to be in almost complete isolation from their half-backs one had the impression that Blackpool possessed a trump card out on the wing. It was never sufficiently exploited.
W. J. Slater, without being brilliant, was still the only inside forward in the game to make studied passes.
Derby’s chief armament seemed to be merely the pursuit of a ball given plenty of air and no little boot.
GRIM DEFENCE
The Blackpool defence had a lot of hard labour in this match.
There were times when it was almost stampeded out of it, but to be fair there was always a grim resolution in it.
It was probably unfortunate to lose a goal so near time. Yet a division of the spoils was, I think, a fair result.
The attendance was 26,655.
By Clifford Greenwood
TWO Lancashire teams in combat - the Lights o’ Blackpool on - yes, there could be another capacity attendance when Manchester City come to town next weekend, writes Clifford Greenwood.
Jacks-in-the-box have had nothing on the City since the war. The Maine-road club began down in the Second Division, went up into the First in 1946, went down into the Second in 1950, and now they are up again this year.
How long they will remain in this present eminence is
still a matter of conjecture, for it is too early yet to assess football form, even if there are as yet few signs that this present City are destined to repeat for Maine-road the glories of yesteryear.
Yet, however variable the fortunes of Manchester City may have been in postwar football, they have been strangely stable at Blackpool.
For the records reveal that in the three games played on the scene of next week’s match a draw has been the result every time.
They have been drawn games, too, obviously dominated by the defences, for in the first two only four goals were scored - it was 1-1 in each case - and in the last, two years ago, there was not a goal at all.
Not great games, any of them, as I remember them.
One can only hope, therefore, that it will not be the Lights alone that will be glittering in Blackpool next Saturday.
A little sparkle on the football field as well would be acceptable.
NEW MEN, YES, BUT WHERE?
BY "CLIFFORD GREENWOOD" 22 September 1951
WRITE THAT IT IS TOO EARLY IN THE SEASON TO PRONOUNCE A VERDICT ON THE PRESENT BLACKPOOL TEAM AND YOU ARE ACCUSED OF COMPLACENCY,
Write that drastic ills demand drastic remedies, thereby enlisting with the “ Sack the lot ” school which today is so vehemently proclaiming its creed in the town, and you are accused of going into a panic.
The middle of the road, the medium between the two, is, I think, the only sensible course to pursue at this present time of disillusionment.
For disillusioned, with or without good reason, the Blackpool football public are after the two successive 3-0 defeats in home games inside a week.
Before the season opened I wrote, commenting on the apparently general opinion that Blackpool would win everything within view except the Waterloo Cup and the Boat Race: “ This Blackpool team should have a good season. It probably will have one. But, like all other teams, it is still at the mercy of a character called Dame Fortune. “ Come back at the end of September if you want from me a horoscope on Blackpool’s destinies in 1951-52. By that time you will know how the ball’s rolling for them.”
A few gremlins
"WELL, it’s nearly the end of September now.
And while nobody in his senses could pretend that it has been merely because the ball has not been running for Blackpool that the team are in the lower half of the First Division table, it is a fact, nevertheless, that there have been a few gremlins about.
I am making no excuses for a home record which has left Blackpool with only three points out of 10.
The defence has forfeited 10 goals in those five home games - and a defence which surrenders an average of two goals every home match during a month condemns itself.
Offside trap
IT has, as I am tired of writing, often invited its own discomfiture, too, by its obsession with an offside trap which not only lost Wembley last April, but which in itself is now being interpreted in a few quarters as a sign of an inferiority complex.
The exploiting of this trap is, I know, not being encouraged, and never has been advocated, by Manager Joe Smith, who is of my opinion that it too often leaves open shooting positions which can cost a crop of goals.
It has cost a few this season, even if this alone cannot account entirely for the defence being as vulnerable as it has been this season.
Nor can the forwards and the wing half-backs escape criticism.
Goals, but-
THE front line has scored exactly as many goals as it scored in the first nine matches of last season - it is the defence’s concession of 16 against seven which is the chief reason for Blackpool’s present little crisis - and yet nobody can pretend that this line has ever played in such fluent partnerships with its wing half-backs as it should play.
No, it would be living in the famous fool’s paradise to pretend that Blackpool’s football has not betrayed a few signs of a decline during the season’s first month.
Yet there are extenuating circumstances which in justice cannot be ignored.
My record book reveals, that such have been the shuffles demanded almost entirely by minor and major casualties that already Blackpool have had to call on 20 players for the first team in the season’s first month. Only 24 were required all last season.
Captain missed
AGAIN, too, the absence of Harry Johnston has deprived the team not only of an attacking half-back who has few peers in the game today, but of a captain whose fighting qualities might have retrieved a few positions which have been surrendered during the last week or two.
That Allan Brown has yet to take the field in the First Division as a completely fit man has scarcely contributed, either, to building the attack into the cohesive force which it so seldom has been.
These facts have to be conceded without at all minimising the gravity of the position which could be created if certain present problems are not soon resolved.
Point a game
THE position is not all that grave yet. The team entered this afternoon’s match at Derby with an average of a point a game, an average which, at least, is an insurance against relegation.
And those nine points, too, are actually only one point fewer than the total for the corresponding period of last season and two more than were won in the first month of the season which immediately followed the 1948 Cup Final.
The moral appears to be that even if it could all be a lot better it could also be a lot worse.
New players, I know, are being demanded by a public whose loyalty is not strictly in question but whose patience sometimes may be.
Not parting
“I KNOW all about it,” comments Manager Joe Smith, “As if we need to be told that we want a good inside forward ! Or that one or two other positions require strengthening, too. “ Can anybody tell us where they are to be found ? Never have I known a time when there was such a scarcity of class players. The clubs who have them will not part with them.
You come up against a brick wall every time.” Blackpool, I know, would spend if the manager and his directorate could be persuaded that the money would be spent to good purpose.
Another considerable contribution has been made to the exchequer by the recent transfers of Willie McIntosh and Billy Wardle.
Fees received
THE exact amount of the fees has not and probably never will be disclosed, but I estimate that it will approach three times the £6,000 which Blackpool made out of this year’s Cup Final.
Whatever the current prices, Blackpool, I am assured, would pay them for the men they want.
The truth is that the clubs already possessing the signatures of those men want them, too, and will not release them. Can you wonder at that ? What would you do, chum ?
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NO fewer than six of the 11 players who appeared for Blackpool against Sunderland and at Bloomfield-road against Preston last weekend graduated in the club’s nursery teams.
And there would have been a seventh if Tommy Garrett had played. There were full-back Jack Wright and half-backs Ewan Fenton and Hugh Kelly and forwards Stanley Mortensen, Alan Withers and Bill Perry.
According to the signatories to one petition in this writer’s mail there should have been a seventh - and it should have been Tom Garrett.
“ We demand,” wrote these not-at-all-humble petitioners, “ that this future international should be reinstated.” And as a postscript they added, “ Send Tommy by plane to Sunderland.”
Every player has his admirers and his critics. The number of Tom Garrett’s critics is a lot fewer than his admirers, among whom I am numbered.
He will come again, back into the first team, back into the front rank of football to make a big name for himself.
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I WILL not disclose his name, but there was a certain player who went the other day to the ground of a club in whose jersey he played not so long ago.
He had a ticket for the match, but the ground was so packed that in the paddock to which his ticket admitted him there was nothing visible to him - for he is not so tall - except the sky above.
So he went to the office and asked politely if they could find him a square yard somewhere inside where he could see. They said it was impossible, and so he went out and stood in the street and listened to the cheers and never saw the match at all.
And there was never a player more loyal to his club than this man when he played for this particular club. Now I suppose he’s asking, “What price, loyalty?“
By Clifford Greenwood
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IT is a long, long time since a Blackpool team lost 3-0 in successive games within a week at Bloomfield-road.
The last time, in fact, that a visiting team won by such a score at Blackpool was on December 18, 1948, in a match with Sheffield United. Yet there have been worse Blackpool disasters in home fixtures since the war. ’Way back in the first of the postwar seasons, 1946-47, Middlesbrough won 5-0 on December 14, 1946, only a month before Sunderland took the points 5-0 in a match in which Jack Robinson scored four times almost as fast as you could say “ Jack Robinson.” Blackpool’s biggest home defeat in history - biggest in the number of goals conceded - was the 7-3 massacre by Leeds United on September 20, 1930.
A week later Blackpool went to Sunderland and won 4-2.
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Lancashire lad
I AM told that several clubs have expressed an interest in Jimmy McIntosh, the centre-forward who went from Blackpool to Everton, and was last season the Goodison Park club’s leading marksman.
He is these days on Everton’s transfer list, but, according to my information, should not be on it long.
He would, I think, prefer his destination to be another Lancashire club. If it should be it would be his fourth inside the borders of the county, for he began at Blackpool - he was the youngest professional ever to play for the club when he had his Second Division baptism at Swansea on September 14, 1935; when he was only 17 - went to Preston, returned to Blackpool and is now at Liverpool.
As he was signed as a boy from Droylsden he can obviously be called an all-Lancashire product.
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