May 2, 1953: The Matthews Final

Stanley Matthews

May 2, 1953: The Football Association Cup Final is held at the old Wembley Stadium in West London. It remains the only FA Cup Final in which a single player scored 3 goals. And yet, it is better remembered for another player.

Stanley Matthews was a native of Stoke-on-Trent, in Staffordshire, in the West Midlands of England. He played outside right, or right wing as the position would be known today, thus wearing uniform Number 7. He debuted with hometown team Stoke City in 1932, at age 19.

In 1934, he had already impressed the FA enough to have them select him for the England side that would play World Cup winners Italy at Highbury, the North London home of Arsenal Football Club, for an unofficial world championship. England won, 3-2, in pouring rain and in a very rough game that became known as the Battle of Highbury.

Stoke City (or just "Stoke" for short) are one of the oldest teams in world "football," having played since 1863. But they are not a successful team, having won just 1 major trophy in all that time, the 1972 Football League Cup. Their best league finish, in either the old Football League Division One (1888-1992) or the Premier League (the 1992-93 season onward) is 4th, in 1936, with Matthews leading the way.

He served in the British Army during World War II, and played in benefit games. He was in the Stoke lineup for the 1946 FA Cup Quarterfinal against Manchester area team Bolton Wanderers when Bolton's stadium, Burnden Park, caught fire, resulting in 33 deaths. English footballers didn't make much money in those days, but he gave £30 to the Burnden Park disaster fund. (That's about £1,452 in 2022 money. With the current U.K.-U.S. exchange rate, about $1,748.)

In 1947, the man already known as "The Wizard of Dribble" accepted a transfer to Lancashire team Blackpool FC. There, he became a teammate of Stan Mortensen. A native of South Shields, across the River Tyne from Newcastle, he was already one of the top forwards in the game.

All 4 British "Home Nations" had been in a dispute with FIFA, the governing body for world soccer, before World War II, and so none of them made themselves eligible for the World Cup until the qualifying for the one in 1950. Both Stans were selected for England, and Mortensen became both the 1st player for England to score in a World Cup qualifier and the 1st to do so in a World Cup game. But England were shocked by the U.S. in a Group Stage game in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Mortensen was selected for that game; oddly, Matthews was not.

The window for glory was closing, or so it seemed. Going into the 1952-53 season, Matthews was 37 years old, Mortensen 31, and neither had ever won a major trophy, or had international success. (Founded in 1887, Blackpool have traditionally been in England's 2nd and 3rd divisions. Their best top-flight finish ever to that point was 3rd, in 1951. That year, they reached the FA Cup Final, but lost to Newcastle United. They had reached 1 other Final, also with the two Stans, in 1948, losing to Manchester United.)

But in 1952-53, it seemed to come together. Their League finish wasn't great, except perhaps by their standards: 7th. But in the FA Cup, they beat Yorkshire team Sheffield Wednesday in the 3rd Round (like all 1st division teams, they got a bye into the 3rd Round); another Yorkshire team, Huddersfield Town, in the 4th Round; drew with Hampshire team Southampton in the 5th Round, then beating them in a replay; eliminated Arsenal in the Quarterfinal, and eliminated the other North London team, Tottenham Hotspur, in the Semifinal.

This earned them a Final berth against Bolton Wanderers, with their own star looking for his 1st trophy, forward Nat Lofthouse. It was May 2, 1953, 1 month before the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, and many people in struggling postwar Britain had bought television sets just to watch the Coronation festivities. This made this Final the 1st major British sporting event to be widely seen on TV. 

The day before, Arsenal had beaten Lancashire team Burnley, to clinch the Football League title, beating another Lancashire team, Preston North End, in the closest finish in League history: Level on points, and, in the tiebreaker in use at the time, ahead on goal average by 0.099 per game.

In the Final, Lofthouse got Bolton on the board in only the 2nd minute. Morton scored an equalizer in the 35th minute. Just 4 minutes later, Bolton took the lead on a goal by Willie Moir. In the 55th minute, Eric Bell made it 3-1 Bolton. It looked like Lofthouse, rather than Matthews and Mortensen, would be the hero finally getting his long-awaited major trophy.

But in the 68th minute, a Matthews cross found Mortensen, who scored, to make it 3-2. Bolton held onto their lead until the 89th minute, when Mortensen scored again, tying the game. He thus became the 1st player ever to score a "hat trick" in an FA Cup Final.

Extra time loomed, but in the 2nd minute of stoppage time, Matthews came down the right wing, and sent one more cross in toward Mortensen. But it went behind Mortensen. Instead, it was retrieved by Blackpool's Bill Perry, who fired home for the winner. Blackpool 4, Bolton 3. Even Lofthouse had to applaud the turnaround.

Mortensen remains the only player ever to score 3 goals in a Final. And yet, because of his skill in setting everything up, the game was immediately, and is still, known as "The Matthews Final." It was Matthews -- not Mortensen, and not team Captain Harry Johnston -- that the Blackpool players carried off on their shoulders at the end.

Matthews, Mortensen and Lofthouse were all members of an England team that subsequently toured the Western Hemisphere, including beating the U.S. team, 6-3 at Yankee Stadium in New York on June 13.

Blackpool finished 2nd in the League in 1956. It remains their greatest finish ever. Since 1971, they have spent only 1 season in the top flight, 2010-11, and were immediately relegated.

Lofthouse finally got his trophy in 1958, captaining Bolton and scoring both of their goals in a 2-0 win over Manchester United in the FA Cup Final. He managed Bolton from 1968 to 1971, and again briefly as "caretaker manager" in 1985. He died in 2011. Two years later, a statue of him was dedicated at Bolton's new stadium, now named the University of Bolton Stadium.

Mortensen remained with Blackpool until 1955, continued playing until 1962, managed Blackpool in the 1967-68 and 1968-69 seasons, and died in 1991, at the age of 69. In 2005, a statue of him was dedicated outside Blackpool's stadium, Bloomfield Road.

Matthews kept going and going, staying at a high level far beyond what would be expected, becoming English soccer's equivalent to baseball's Nolan Ryan, hockey's Gordie Howe, or boxing's Archie Moore. In 1961, he left Blackpool, and returned to Stoke City, playing his last game in 1965. On New Year's Day, January 1, 1965, he became the 1st player ever to be knighted while still playing.

In the film version of Nick Hornby's memoir Fever Pitch, the characters of Paul (played by Colin Firth) and Steve (Mark Strong) are musing about Steve's brother, having given up a tryout with a lower-division London team to open his own business, now making a fortune and playing for a "non-league" side:

Paul: Gets to have it both ways, doesn't he? Makes fifty thousand quid a year, and plays at a place with floodlights.

Steve: Floodlights and a tea bar. I'd love to play at a place with a tea bar.

Paul: Bit late now, though, huh?

Steve: Don't know. Stanley Matthews was playing first division football 'til he was 50.

Paul: I'll bet you any money you like, you're not playing first division football when you're 50.

Steve: Well, it's the smoking.

Paul: It's not the smoking, Steve. It's the crapness.

Clearly, "Sir Stan" wasn't smoking. In the 1967-68 season, he managed Port Vale, the other, even less successful team in Stoke-on-Trent -- the team he had grown up supporting. He did so to save them from bankruptcy. That would be his only season as a manager, anywhere, after 33 seasons as as player: The experience "left a sour taste" in his mouth, and was enough to convince him never to try his hand as management in English football again.

He gave up his Summers every year between 1953 and 1978 to coach poor children in South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda and Tanzania, all former British colonies. In South Africa in 1975, he ignored apartheid to form a team of black schoolboys in the township of Soweto called "Stan's Men." "Men," not "Boys."

The members of his team told him that it was their dream to play in Brazil, so Matthews organized a trip there, becoming the 1st black sports team from South Africa ever to tour outside of it. He did not have the money to fund the trip himself, though used his connections (for the only time other than when he used them to save Port Vale in 1968) to arrange sponsorship from Coca-Cola and a newspaper, the Johannesburg Sunday Times.

He played his final football game for an England Veterans XI against a Brazil Veterans XI, in a charity match in Brazil in 1985, at the age of 70. Brazil won, 6-1. Matthews hurt his knee during the match. In his autobiography, he said, "a promising career cut tragically short."

He died in 2000, at the age of 85. He was cremated, and his ashes were buried under the center circle of Stoke City's new home, currently named the Bet365 Stadium. As with Lofthouse and Mortensen, there is a statue of him outside the stadium, and another in Hanley, the neighborhood in Stoke where he grew up.

*

May 2, 1953 was a Saturday. Basketball Hall-of-Famer Jamaal Wilkes was born on this day.

Football was out of season. The NBA and NHL seasons had ended a few days earlier, won by the Minneapolis Lakers and the Montreal Canadiens, respectively.

The Kentucky Derby was run, and Dark Star beat Northern Dancer. It was the only loss of Northern Dancer's career: I have a separate entry for this event.

These baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Yankees lost to the Chicago White Sox, 8-7 at Comiskey Park in Chicago. Mickey Mantle went 2-for-4, but Eddie Lopat did not have a good start, and 3 Yankee pitchers blew a 7-4 lead in the bottom of the 9th, including allowing a home run by Ferris Fain to tie the game, and a sacrifice fly by Jim Rivera to win it.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Cincinnati Reds, 12-4 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. Ralph Kiner and Danny O'Connell hit home runs for the Bucs.

* The Boston Red Sox beat the Cleveland Indians, 5-1 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Hal Brown outpitched Bob Feller, despite Ted Williams being unavailable, due to serving in the Korean War.

* The Philadelphia Athletics beat the Detroit Tigers, 4-1 at Briggs Stadium (later renamed Tiger Stadium) in Detroit.

* The Washington Senators beat the St. Louis Browns, 5-4 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis.

* The Brooklyn Dodgers and the Chicago Cubs were rained out at Ebbets Field. The game was made up as part of a doubleheader on June 14. The Dodgers won the opener, 6-3. Billy Loes was the winning pitcher. By this point, the Pirates had traded Ralph Kiner to the Cubs, and he went 1-for-3 with a walk for them.

The nightcap was called due to rain, with the teams tied 6-6 after 9 innings. Kiner tied it with a grand slam off Carl Erskine in the top of the 9th. Over the 2 games, Jackie Robinson went 4-for-8 with a walk and 2 RBIs.

* The New York Giants and the St. Louis Cardinals were rained out at the Polo Grounds. The game was made up on June 15. The Giants won, 3-2, despite Willie Mays not being available, due to serving in the Korean War. Alvin Dark went 3-for-4 with an RBI, in support of Jim Hearn. Stan Musial went 1-for-2 with 2 walks.

* And the Milwaukee Braves and the Philadelphia Phillies were rained out at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia. The game was made up as part of a doubleheader on July 21. The Phillies won the 1st game, 10-0. The Braves won the 2nd game, 7-3.