13 October 1951 Blackpool 1 Charlton Athletic 2
Taylor peps up attack, but defence wavers
BRIGHT START, THEN -
Blackpool 1, Charlton Athletic 2
By “Clifford Greenwood”
AN autumn day and Ernest Taylor came together into Blackpool football this afternoon for the Charlton Athletic match.
The day, which expressed itself in grey skies and a mist of rain after days of sunshine, took a few thousands off the attendance.
The United forward, from Newcastle, put another three-thousand on it. In the end, about a 35,000, average for this time of the year, was promised.
Not since the glittering war-years have Blackpool fielded a forward line with so many expensive personalities in it.
The Athletic, who have been winning almost as fast as Charlton teams have won them during recent years had Charlie Vaughan, who has now been taken off the transfer list, leading an attack which had at outside-left Chris Duffy, the man whose goal defeated Burnley in the 1947 Cup final.
Teams:
BLACKPOOL: Farm; Garrett, Wright (J.); Fenton (E.), Hayward, Kelly; Matthews, Taylor, Mortensen, Brown, Perry.
CHARLTON ATHLETIC: Bartram; Hewie, Lock; Fenton (B.), Utton, Johnson; Hurst, Evans, Vaughan, Kiernan, Duffy.
Referee: Mr. B. J. Flanagan (Sheffield).
I was told as the teams took the field that there were hundreds of people on the wrong side of the Kop and that police were marshalling them up to investigate.
All the paddock entrances were choked, and later reports reached the Score Box that there were 2,000 or 3,000 people outside the gates.
THE GAME
First half
Blackpool, losing the toss, defended the south goal.
One Charlton player appeared
to protest about the ball before the kick-off, but the referee called a cursory examination, ignored it.
It was a ball which during the first few minutes was moving all the time on the Blackpool goal line, in fact, as early as the second minute, might have been resting in the Blackpool net.
In the second of two raids on the Blackpool goal there was a fast pass off to the wing.
A centre burst forward to it, so fast that he appeared to leave Brown standing before shooting wide of the post from an uncharacteristically awkward angle.
These Charlton raids continued on a Blackpool defence which seemed a shade laboured until Charlie Taylor's first movement of the ball for the first time, made a neat, adroit pass to Perry which opened Blackpool's first attack and revitalised it.
It came to a premature end, but it was followed by another, and this one, too, Taylor's pass, this time from the Blackpool left wing, created.
PRESSURE WANES
Ewan Fenton ended this raid with the sort of shot in which he specialises, but once Charlton's back line was held, a neat Blackpool's star-spangled attack was in the game a lot without playing star-spangled football but through typical fast footwork. A forward pass and then a squared pass were a half yard too late for Taylor to run on to them quick as the little man obviously seemed to be to move into the open space.
The first 10 minutes could
have been nearly divided into two parts. The first was Charlton's, the second was Blackpool's.
In neither was a goal all that close, though Hayward once raced back pell-mell after a long forward pass which had split the Blackpool defence open.
In the end, the centre-half stabbed a bouncing ball back to Farm, a shot which the centre-forward tobogganed after it.
PERRY SHOOTS
Later, Matthews, roaming about at inside-left, made a pass that beat a full-back, and Perry, taking it, shot so fast and at such a short range it was a miss that the ball hit Bartram's leg-o-mutton fists and cannoned off them as the goalkeeper fell at it.
Twice afterwards, Blackpool's goal was in peril.
The first time Ewan Fenton, made a great flying headed clearance as the ball was crossed from the flag in the game's first corner.
The second time Farm impeded by a pack of men leaped high to clutch a flying ball under the bar and came out with it with the swarm still thick about him.
Another minute and Ernest Taylor seemed to have made a perfectly-timed pass sent Matthews away on the right wing. The return pass came back to
TAYLOR - MARKSMAN
Taylor darted on to it, pretended to move one way, veered the other, and shot a ball which hit some woodwork on the right, leapt to his right.
It was good, efficient football - just fantastic, too, brilliant, but with no sort of menace about it.
Stanley Mortensen had one open pass in the first 10 minutes but was unable to beat the goalkeeper and thundered the ball over the bar, with the giant Sam Bartram leaping at it time as a featherweight.
That for a time was the only raid with the threat of a goal in it. Then twice in a minute, Charlton were off at full cry and each time near to goal.
DESPERATE MOMENTS
In the first raid Hurst raced away from Jackie Wright and was a fraction to which Farm sent in a heap.
In the second, Hayward's desperate tackle braked Vaughan with the centre-forward full tilt after a long forward pass.
Repeatedly afterwards this Blackpool attack was stamped and at times almost stamped.
Once, in fact, it was perilously near Charlton, as a ball appeared to ricochet off one man as Farm dived the other way.
There was a free-kick too, close to the finished penalty area, and from that, too, something material might have happened if Billy Kiernan had not lashed the ball high, over the bar. Later Hurst had given him a shooting position.
THEN DRAMA
Drama came thick and fast afterwards.
Twenty-six minutes had gone, and in the Blackpool half Mortensen repeated Taylor's famous back-heel pass at Wembley, and gave the ball to the unprepared Brown, who could only head it slowly wide of a post, with the Charlton goalkeeper at his mercy.
Two minutes later came a goal and within another 60 seconds another goal.
The first gave Blackpool the lead. Allan Brown built it, took a bouncing ball, killed it, stone dead, and ran it past someone crossed it far out to the right wing.
There Matthews took it, beat one man, and had nowhere left after being half-halted took it away from his full-back again.
That left him on the dead-line. He seemed almost to stabilise the ball against Blackpool a ball which from the Press box appeared to cannon back off Hurst, as he had it at his feet.
TENSEN who shot it fast into the net as two men closed a split second too late on him.
Within a minute it was 2-1 and the fans were still clam-threatening all the afternoon to cut through the Blackpool defence across the goal.
The attack opened on the other wing. The ball flew over from this left flank. Eric Hayward leaped at it, but could only head it down to an open space.
In the space GORDON HURST was waiting, darted to it, and shot it fast into the far wall of the net as his full-back crossed his path a half-second late.
That was a goal - the losing of a lead within a minute of taking it - which might have put a team of the calibre of the Athletic to football which all this season's attack has equalled all this season.
No goals came, but the quality of the football - its speed and purpose - was everywhere revealed.
Repeatedly at this time Allan Brown was playing football recognisable as the game he played last season.
Half-time: Blackpool 1 Charlton 1.
Second half
Blackpool opened the half with a first-half-minute corner which was worth nothing and a shooting position for Brown from Mortensen's neat square pass which the Scot lost as the ball bounced in front of him.
It was still very direct football by Blackpool. It was not outplaying Charlton for long, but at least it had the promise of goals in it such as Blackpool's recent football has never contained.
No, the Athletic were not outplayed. The Charlton forwards, in fact, won a corner and built half a dozen raids in pressure which followed Blackpool's fast opening of the half.
The game was still fast and the football relatively good.
MORTENSEN'S PACE
There were, however, for a time, few big episodes until Mortensen showed such pace that a forward pass to Fenton was content to settle for a corner to half time.
Twice in rapid succession the old offside trap ensnared Charlton's front line.
Fifteen minutes of the half had gone before another goal chance offered itself. Then, immediately after Kelly had retired into the full-back line with Wright limping out on the wing, a free-kick was conceded.
It was crossed high in front of a packed goal. Mortensen leaped at it and headed it inside to Taylor, who lost the ball as it bounced near him, with Bartram unprotected within a couple of yards of the unmarked forward.
ESCAPE
The Charlton goal had a similar escape two minutes later as a ball came in with it standing and half-hit away again by Taylor, who was at least putting a little into shooting positions.
Another minute, too, and there was a hullabaloo for a penalty as a right wing cross hit Ben Fenton's outstretched left arm.
The long-legged South African full-back Jack Hewie made one superb overhead clearance as Mortensen chased a long forward pass from Perry.
TAYLOR MOVE
It was fast, but not as fast as it had been. The quality of the football, too, was beginning to decline.
Yet with the game entering its last 20 minutes, Taylor revealed what a master of footcraft he is.
Outwitting a couple of men in the space of the proverbial sixpence he served a pass to Matthews which found the wing forward in an offside position, even if a few people except Mr. Flanagan seemed to think so.
Charlton won a free-kick out on the left wing, and before it was cleared Hurst released a fervoured demand for a penalty as his shot hit a Blackpool man. Not that it made any difference, but before this raid had been beaten back the Athletic took the lead.
The penalty was refused. The ball eventually rolled out of play out on Charlton's right wing. From the throw-in taken in slow motion. Afterward, there was another exhibition of slow-motion play.
CHARLTON GOAL
For Kiernan, out of position at inside-right, took a loose ball, lurched a yard outside the penalty area where a tackle for which the Athletic, to a man, demanded a free-kick.
A free-kick I think it should have been, Mr. Flanagan, as the inside forward staggered erect again, properly declined to give it.
Whereupon, as I saw it, two or three men in the Blackpool defence stood still waiting for the whistle and with one still standing as the half back pass across the face of an open goal where JOHN EVANS, in splendid isolation merely had to hook the ball into the roof of the net.
That made it 2-1, and in spite of furious retaliation by Blackpool it would have been 3-1 five minutes later if Farm had not brilliantly held a ball which flew in fast and wide of him off the left Evans' head.
ATHLETIC RAIDS
Afterwards, in fact, the Athletic raided almost continuously on a Blackpool defence obviously disturbed and leaving too many open spaces.
With five minutes left it was Charlton's game by one goal and the tie was lost.
Yet in the end it was a match which nearly had a story-book ending.
Two minutes only were left. Blackpool stormed the Charlton goal in a last desperate raid.
Jackie Wright, the crippled full-back, lurched at a loose ball, and as the ball came to Bartram with it as the goalkeeper, almost rocked off his feet under the impact, beat it out instinctively.
Result:
BLACKPOOL 1 (Mortensen 28)
CHARLTON ATHLETIC 2 (Hurst 29 Evans 75)
COMMENTS ON THE GAME
Blackpool will soon have the unenviable reputation of one of those teams that cannot win at home. Only one of seven home matches has been won this season.
Charlton Athletic took this game in spite of the presence of a forward line which was an all-star cast on paper and during which all the first half resembled one on the field. Then Ernest Taylor had a game which revealed his class - his unmistakable class - and there were signs until he became an understanding half-back that Allan Brown was coming back to his last season's game.
Yet, even at its best, this line made singularly few shooting positions and the second half with its left wing a flank in name only its progress was reduced to spurting forays.
Chiefly, I think, a defence which has now forfeited 13 goals in its last five games must take the blame again for this defeat.
NEVER MASTERED
Its left flank could never master that fast and direct raider, Gordon Hurst, and once Jackie Wright limped out on the wing, bigger gaps than ever appeared on this flank.
All the one had the impression that this defence elsewhere, too, was often making unnecessarily heavy weather of this task.
Blackpool can't afford to lose points at home or anywhere else at this rate.
Ten out of the last 12 have now been surrendered. Obviously this simply will not do.
Attendance 35,724.
By Clifford Greenwood
BLACKPOOL play in London next weekend for the first time this season writes Clifford Greenwood.
Blackpool for years have made a habit of playing only the best football in front of the capital's public.
They think, in fact, down in London - bless their innocence - that Blackpool seldom play any other sort of football. It would be good if they could be confirmed in this opinion next Saturday. Down at Craven Cottage on the banks of the Thames, Blackpool, at least, should go into the fray with a little confidence.
Fulham have scarcely set the Thames on fire, or even made it smoother, this season, and, in fact, there is little intimidation to the visitor in this London club's home record. It has not been a bad ground for Blackpool, either, since the war.
It was there in 1948 that won, and it was there last season that a 2-2 draw was played after a special plea had been lost early in the match. Fulham won the 1949-50 game by the only goal, but, as I recall it, this was a game played with only a skeleton Blackpool team three days after the famous Wolverhampton Wanderers Cup replay at Bloomfield-road.
A win - a draw - a defeat in these games is therefore Blackpool's record at Fulham in postwar football. Nothing new on this ground can obviously happen to Blackpool in a week's time. But there must be a reasonable chance of making some profit out of the visit.
TAYLOR TRANSFER A MODEL OF ITS KIND
United could have got £3,000 more
BY "CLIFFORD GREENWOOD" 13 October 1951
IF THERE HAVE TO BE THESE FIVE-FIGURE TRANSFERS - AND, I SUPPOSE, IN THE TURBULENT STATE OF FOOTBALL ECONOMICS THERE HAVE TO BE - THE ERNEST TAYLOR TRANSFER TO BLACKPOOL COULD BE QUOTED IN THE GAME'S HISTORY BOOKS AS A MODEL.
So many of these transfers become, by force of circumstances, sordid auction sales. One club bids against another, and is encouraged to bid.
The player has the last word - and usually the more people never seem to realise - but the atmosphere of the old naïve mart seems to be a little less conventional in these transactions.
Now, at least, that was not the case when this week Blackpool paid a fee which, though admittedly, as I know, it was not - the reputed £27,000, but which was still a record sum - could have loomed at one time over the Blackpool finances as formidably as the National Debt.
So the transfer, the capital price of Blackpool's inside forward trinity of Ernest Taylor, Stanley Mortensen and Brian Brown, reading from right to left as probably these names will soon be appearing in the First Division programmes is now not less than £75,000, which is, I agree, a fantastic figure for three footballers, whatever their gifts.
Swift action
YET this latest transfer had about it whatever dignity such an event could achieve.
The story itself is simple. In May it was thought that Blackpool's reaction to the Newcastle open-to-offers circular was to spend their allocation - and at once to the top of the queue.
That, at least, should be interesting information for all those commentators who have been writing to this column in recent weeks complaining that Blackpool were playing up the money-bags, in spite of all the club's protestations and my own reports that Blackpool were prepared to pay money - for an accomplished inside forward.
Yesterday, Blackpool were on the telephone to St. James's Park within half an hour of the circular's delivery in the morning post.
Appointment
WITHIN another hour and twenty minutes an appointment was made with a Newcastle delegation at a Liverpool hotel shortly before nine on the first of the three League match at Goodison Park. All that happened afterwards was almost a classic in its simplicity and brevity.
The hotel was packed with newspaper reporters and the manager was expected to inform clubs in the market for one of the smallest inside-forwards in football today.
Mr. Harry Evans, the Blackpool chairman, and Mr. Joe Smith walked in unnoticed, took the lift to an unoccupied floor where, awaiting them - their presence in the hotel common knowledge but the number of the suite at once given - were the Newcastle delegates.
Round the table
MR. STANLEY SEYMOUR, the United's roving ambassador and honorary manager, was there. There were also Mr. Harry Evans, the new manager, Robert Rutherford, another name famous in football, and the United's secretary, Mr. Ernest Hill.
The five men sat round a table, exchanged the customary courtesies. The Newcastle player remained. The Blackpool delegates said it was too high, and quoted a lower figure.
The difference was split - and, except for the player's consent and signature, it was all over.
It was a new deal just like that it takes to smoke a cigarette, less than a quarter of an hour - and there was no vulgar altercation, fantastic about it.
If, I repeat, there have to be these big-scale transfers, it is perhaps best that at least one of them has been negotiated with a decent concern for the proprieties.
Good friends
IT could now, and probably would not have happened for years there had not been such an intimate and amicable relationship between the two clubs who last season played a Cup Final, which, whatever else was wrong with it - and as I pointed out at the time, the result was played without one bitter exchange from the first to the last of the 90 minutes.
Moreover, Smith has gone on record with the observation that it was the fastest and the most decent transfer in which he has ever been concerned.
And Mr. Harry Evans has permitted himself at least this comment: "These personal friendships still mean a lot in football. Not all sentiment has gone out of the game."
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Lower price
BLACKPOOL know - and the football world should know, too - that Newcastle United expected to get about £25,000 or £30,000 more than half a dozen other clubs were avowedly prepared to pay.
And, viewed in its correct perspective, it has not cost Blackpool such a lot.
The value - the last month Blackpool have collected from the Billy Wearde and the Willie McIntosh transfers amounts to over between £15,000 and £16,000 of this week's bill.
And, in fact, I should think the figure was £9, although, if the new forward, making the deduction for these two earlier transfers, our work out at less than £6,000.
And that in these days is almost a bargain basement price.
And now -
WELL, what happens now?
If Blackpool's return for the player nor at all sensible on any other count to expect the worst. Blackpool always seem to be revolutionised by his arrival.
The forward line will never be in correct balance until Allan Brown learns to play against the football he played last season.
All that is wrong with this side is that he has lost the confidence which so often deserts a player after such an operation as he had during the summer.
The fact that after all, football a couple of generations or longer said this week when we were discussing the new forward, that age operations are one of the curses of the game. The effect is often psychological rather than physical.
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Brown's test
IT is good to be assured by Trainer John Lynas that Allan Brown only two days ago has got through a test run of several in recent weeks, which established beyond dispute that he is as fit as a 24-year-old. And if the new forward has been to a few people, still nearly the fastest man on the track on the Liverpool club.
It is a match-play confidence that has gone. A public which has never been anything except sympathetic to Brown, appreciated that he played as a player and his loyalty as a club man can give him the encouragement which will turn it back.
I think they will, too. Then in truth, the sparks may begin to fly.
HERE FOUR REASONS ARE LISTED
By Clifford Greenwood
The news soon began to circulate, followed by not a few offers. The latest was from the new Third Division club, Workington. Now a transfer has been negotiated.
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THEY were talking during the weekend about the youngest player ever to be fielded in first-class football in peacetime. Albert Geldard, the Everton forward, who had games for England in 1935 and 1938, was less than 15 when he played his first game for Millwall in September, 1929.
Few people know it, by the way, but Albert is the cousin of Harry Geldard, the actor who a few weeks ago because of illness had to take his last bow in front of the footlights after several distinguished seasons with the Jack Rose Repertory team in Blackpool.
Blackpool’s youngest professional was Jim McIntosh, who made his bow in Second Division football at Swansea on September 14, 1935, when he was only 17.
The distinction for Blackpool in the First Division is Harry Johnston's. He was not many months older than McIntosh when he had his first match at Preston on November 20, 1938. In postwar football Blackpool's youngest has been South African Bill Perry.
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