1953 FA Cup Final – Blackpool vs Bolton Wanderers
Stanely Matthews beating the Bolton full back to set up winning goal
Stanley Matthews was the greatest player of his generation, a man Pele proclaimed “taught us the way football should be played.” Nicknamed the Wizard of Dribble this was to be his finest display of football magic in what many consider as the greatest FA Cup Final of all time.
The 1953 FA Cup Final played on 2nd May featured seven goals, the only hat trick in cup final history and a very special guest. It was the first football match attended by the reigning monarch Elizabeth II.
Yet this particular match was all about one man.
Stanley Matthews was 38 years old but produced a display of a man and foootballer at the peak of his powers.
Matthews Blackpool faced Bolton Wanderers in an all Lancashire affair. The Trotters had their own colossus of the age, the newly crowned Footballer of the Year, Nat Lofthouse in their starting line up. It was the recently dubbed ‘Lion of Vienna’, who opened the scoring. Lofthouse hit a tame shot to give Bolton the lead after 75 seconds.
Blackpool were behind for just over half an hour when Stan Mortenson scored the first of his three with a deflected cross shot which hit Bolton striker Harold Hassall and flew into the opposition net.
The reprieve was to last all of five minutes as Bobby Langton lobbed Blackpool keeper George Farm to give Bolton a 2-1 half time advantage.
Ten minutes into the second half Bolton defender Eric Bell who was playing despite suffering from a torn hamstring put his side further ahead with a header. The score would remain 3-1 for 13 more minutes by which time many felt Blackpool were facing the prospect of a third cup final defeat in six years having lost in 1948 and 1951.
In desperate need of inspiration it was Matthews who stepped up to put his stamp on the game. On 68 minutes he sent a swinging cross to the far post for Stan Mortenson to head the Seasiders back into the match.
Matthews tormented the Bolton defence exposing Bell and the tiring Ralph Banks down the right. Blackpool fed Matthews at every opportunity as he dribbled through at will yet chances went begging as the clock ticked towards full time.
With two minutes remaining Blackpool got the all elusive equaliser through a Stan Mortenson free kick. In doing so the striker made his own piece of history by scoring the first and so far only hat trick in Englands showpiece final.
With the game heading into extra time Matthews received the ball on the right wing and ran towards the Bolton defence. He went inside of the full back and sprinted towards the by-line. Just as the ball was heading out of play Matthews cut back a diagonal pass which went behind the on rushing Stan Mortenson at the nearest post. Luckily for Blackpool South African winger Bill Perry was on hand to slam home the winner.
A thrilling end to a pulsating game, reminiscent of a Roy of the Rovers comic book. Stan of Blackpool was the hero as Captain Harry Johnston lifted the cup.
It was such a great performance that even Nat Lofthouse a man not known for accepting defeat graciously, stood and applauded as Matthews was paraded around the field by his teammates. For Lofthouse it was a bitter pill to swallow as he had scored in every round of the Cup. For his team mates the result was somewhat ironic as they had overcome Everton by the same 4-3 score line in the semi final.
Brian Clough said of Matthews, “he was a god to those of us who aspired to play the game.” 100,000 fans who packed into Wembley at ‘Matthews Final’ shared Clough’s sentiments.
Faisal Hanif
I was on leave from the Royal Navy when I had permission from the Landlord of a local pub to watch the game on his set in the bar, closing time was 2p.m. in those days. It was one of if not the most exciting games I have had the privilege to watch.There was something special about 1953 because not only was it Stan’s fisrt and only Cup Winners Medal it was also the Queens coronation, Gordon Richards first and only Derby win on Pinza and Edmund Hillary’s ascent of Mnt. Everest. A very good year indeed.
It’s a great shame that websites like this that perform such a valuable service to (in this case) football fans, produce work that – again in this case – merely reproduces a record of an important match that is steeped in myth rather than one based on fact and more realistic and empirically based views.
Firsly, Stan Mortensen emphatically did not score the first and only FA Cup Final hat-trick. The opening Blackpool goal was an own goal, as your writer clearly suggests in his article. A viewing of the DVD of the final reveals that in all likelihood goalkeeper Hanson would have saved Mortensen’s shot towards the far post (though judging by the overall standard of goalkeeping on the day, I would agree that this is far from certain). The attribution of this first goal to Mortensen is part of the re-construction of the event by subsequent media outlets to mythologise the final.
Secondly, though there is clear evidence in the videotape of the game that Matthews was an absolutely outstanding footballer in his time – his pass completion rate was over 90% in a match where overall the rate was barely 60%, a dismal statistic given the slowness of the pace relative to today, the wide open spaces of a flawlessly flat Wembley pitch and the ’stretched’ nature of the play from early in the match – the standard of play overall can be safely summarised as being somewhere between painfully mediocre and downright abysmal (a view corroborated by The Guardian’s David Lacey in an article in the early 1990s where he expresses disillusionment with the fare when finally getting his hands on a tape of a game that in his youth he believed had epitomised everything that was great about English football).
Thirdly, Matthews’ contribution to his team’s second goal was to provide a highish cross which goalie Hanson made a dreadful hash of, dropping it in front of him to enable Mortensen to slide the ball into the net from a yard.
Fourthly, the final goal is mis-described above on at least 3 counts: one, Matthews beat defender Banks on the outside before crossing low for Perry to score; two, the ball was not heading out of play by the bye-line, it was totally under Matthews’ control throughout the movement and three, it was not remotely luck that Perry was on hand to complete the pass.
A key factor in the final result is also the extraordinarily benevolent refereeing of one Mr Griffiths. Mortenen was allowed to score with a spectacular looking free kick around the 89th minute of the match only because the Griffiths imagined he saw a foul where none existed: a Blackpool forward trying to run through with the ball is dispossessed, but there is no sign whatsoever of more than the slightest brush of bodily contact with his opponent.
One final point about the reality of ‘53: striking though Matthews’ talent is during the game (notwithstanding the flat mediocrity of much of his crossing), a more likely man of the match is his inside-right, Ernie Taylor. The diminutive Taylor demonstrated a prodigious talent as a ball-playing inside forward mould beloved of the traditionalists. He constantly carried the ball threateningly towards the Bolton goal and combined beautifully with the veritable Stanley, feeding his frequently with perfectly measured passing almost without error. Fittingly, it was Taylor who gave Matthews a pass of stunning accuracy and weight from which he created Perry’s opening with that outside-foot touch and glide.
The term, ‘The Matthews Final’ has become a canopy of falsehood, then, obscuring the reality of a game of football that was as stupendous in errors as it was intense in drama. And one final pin in the myth of the heroic tragedy of the Bolton Wanderers team: the DVD shows many of them in close up, smiling in defeat. Did they really take football as seriously as we think back then?
I am trying to do some research on a relative, Perct Thirkell, who played for Bolton Wanderers maybe in the 30/40s – do you have any info on him at all? Did Bolton Wanderers get to Wembley prior to 1953?
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