Memory Match: Stan Mortensen comes to Blackpool's rescue in snowy draw against Arsenal

Arsenal 1-1 Blackpool – February 8, 1947

Highbury resembled a Christmas card which had been delayed a month and a half in the post.

Snow was thick everywhere. There was an inch and a half of it on a playing area which had not been cleared for the second successive week but had merely had a heavy roller on it.

There was, I hear, no question about the match being cancelled. As soon as the referee saw the white pitch and its yellow lines he said, “The game is on.”

A broadcast asked the spectators to call a truce on snowball games. For a few minutes there was a “cease fire.’’ Then they began all over again.

Arsenal took the field a few minutes early for ball practice in continental training suits. Blackpool played in white, and seemed to blend into the strange winter landscape.

In the first minute it was as near 1-0 as it could be without a goal actually being scored.

Blackpool advanced from the kick-off. Munro released a short pass and the ball came to a standstill in the snow. Mortensen swooped on it, lost it. retrieved it and shot it so fast at Swindin that the goalkeeper lost it on the line, and clutched it back as it was passing him.

Afterwards, Blackpool’s football was all style and polish, Johnston opening one raid with a picture pass out to Nelson.

Then Rooke lashed madly at a ball which had come unexpectedly to rest, and slid half a dozen yards to the frozen earth as the shot slid by a post, with Wallace skidding on his chest as he dived to it.

It was a crazy sort of football. It could not be anything else.

Arsenal had a lot of it for a minute or two. Twice the Blackpool defence had to resort to back passes to their goalkeeper, which was a hazardous sort of policy.

In another raid the offside whistle halted McPherson as he stood alone in front of the unprotected Wallace.

The ball was moving so slowly on the thick carpet of snow that six minutes actually passed before there was a throw-in. Each goal was under pressure.

Immediately the Blackpool goal was twice near downfall. The first time there was a hullabaloo for a penalty as Shimwell cleared the ball on the edge of the area.

That raid had not been repulsed before Johnston hurled himself into the path of one of Ronnie Rooke’s thunderbolts, clearing it anywhere as the ball seemed to be rising away from Wallace.

Blackpool were completely outplayed with 15 minutes gone. Logie shot one ball which passed inches wide of a post as Wallace galloped across too late to intercept it.

All the time Arsenal had the ball crossing from wing to wing. It was the only game to play. It was constantly opening Blackpool’s defence.

Yet in a Blackpool breakaway Swindin had to make an acrobatic leap to reach the second of two high centres lobbed into the goal area by Eastham.

Away raced Arsenal, McPherson shooting at a great pace across the face of Blackpool’s goal before, in the next minute, Blair retreated nearly to the corner flag to the aid of Blackpool’s left flank of defence and repelled a raid all on his own.

Another fine interception by Johnston halted another tearaway attack by this progressive Arsenal right wing, and then Sibley gave a corner in the face of another.

After an opening of great promise the Blackpool forward line was scarcely in the game. After 20 minutes, Swindin had not taken one goal kick.

Blackpool’s game was too close and complex. Every minute the ball was coming back on an oppressed defence, with the Blackpool forwards unable to make a yard of progress.

Repeatedly, too. the ball was being passed back to Wallace, which I still think was a suicidal move.

Yet in a brief reply Blackpool won their first corner in the 25th minute as Nelson crossed a square centre to Munro, whose pass to the waiting Mortensen was slashed anywhere over the line by the tall Leslie Compton.

Afterwards, there was a new purpose in Blackpool’s front line.

Immediately after Hayward had made a grand clearance, Nelson took the ball away from a hesitating full-back and opened a raid which ended in Mortensen forcing Compton to concede his team’s second corner.

With the interval approaching, raid followed raid, nearly all of them on the Arsenal’s hell-for-leather right wing.

Hayward and Shimwell in rapid succession repelled two of them before Munro was so unceremoniously swept to earth in a sudden Blackpool breakaway created by the elusive Eastham that Mr. Law gave a disputed free-kick a yard or two outside the Arsenal penalty area.

Farrow shot this free-kick wide. Mortensen made a gallant lone bid for a goal seconds before the whistle went. Unexpectedly, Blackpool finished the half attacking fiat out.

In the first minute of the second half Arsenal went in front. It was a goal almost direct from the kickoff. It was the Arsenal right wing which built the scoring raid.

A long pass reached McPherson, who raced 20 yards unchallenged before crossing one of those centres which centre-forwards dream about.

ROOKE was waiting for it almost under the bar, and headed a goal which looked as simple as a goal could look.

In the next three minutes Blackpool’s goal was under constant fire. Wallace held one ball shot at him from 20 yards out by Rooke.

In the fourth minute a goal was even nearer, Rooke and Logie creating positions for the unmarked Rudkin, whose fast rising shot was headed away almost beneath the bar by Johnston.

Afterwards Blackpool built half a dozen raids before making it 1-1 in the 10th minute of the half.

Munro opened the move in the inside-left position, and released a short forward pass to Eastham across the Arsenal goal.

As the inside-left crossed a copybook centre, MORTENSEN leaped at it, and with three men almost on top of him headed the flying ball down out of Swindin’s reach into the back of the net.

Swindin then made a flying dive at Eastham’s foot when it seemed to be certain to be 2-1 after a perfect interchange of passes between the inside-left and Mortensen.

In the next minute, under Mortensen’s challenge, Swindin lost a ball which in the end was clear anywhere with the Arsenal defence in confusion.

This was a grand fighting second half comeback by Blackpool, who continued to advance for minutes on end.

Arsenal conceded two corners in a minute, with 20 minutes remaining for play.

From the second of these corners, too, Swindin diving into a ruck of men battling for possession of a bouncing ball, was laid out, and there was an ugly scene before the referee arrived to restore peace.

Blackpool raided to the end. The official attendance was 36,000.

TEAMS

Arsenal: Swindin, Male, Barnes, Sloan, Compton, Mercer, McPherson, Logie, Hooke, Curtis, Rudkin

Blackpool: Wallace, Shimwell, Sibley, Farrow, Hayward, Johnston, Nelson, Munro, Mortensen, Eastham, Blair