Sometimes it can seem very unfair to criticise our national team when they gain a convincing win on some foreign field, but this win against mediocre opposition was one of England's worst performances for a long time. True, the standard of opponents can drag any team down to their level, but there was no excuse for this inept display. The game, in all honesty, was awful!

To be fair, England were never stretched and long before the end it became little more than a training exercise. After a scrappy opening 20 minutes, England took the lead. A long through-ball by Duncan Edwards found the speedy Dennis Wilshaw and the Wolves player continued his excellent England scoring record with a fierce cross shot which flew past Hurri in the Finland goal. Two minutes later it was Edwards again, this time setting up Johnny Haynes who scored with another good shot.

Before the half-hour was up, England scored a third goal, the bets of the match. A flowing move involving Billy Wright, Colin Grainger, Edwards, Tommy Taylor and Haynes ended with Gordon Astall cutting in to meet the pass from Haynes and shooting home from the narrowest of angles.

After this flurry of activity Taylor collided with Hurri and the goalkeeper was replaced by Klinga. Then, before the break, Finland pulled a goal back when sloppiness in England's defence allowed Forsgren a header past the previously unemployed Ray Woods.

In the second half the game slipped more and more into mediocrity. The lead which England had built up had taken the urgency from their game and only a few moments of the half were worth recording. Taylor also had to leave the field injured, he had damaged his stomach muscles, and he was replaced by Nat Lofthouse.

It was Lofthouse who scored England's other two goals, the first of which equalled Steve Bloomer's long-standing total and the second equaling Vivian Woodward's record of 29 goals for England. [ed-Woodward has since lost credit to one of these goals]

The goal  which finally put Lofthouse into the record books was a scrappy one to say the least. It came eight minutes from time when Grainger's corner was headed on by Lofthouse. Wilshaw swung a boot at it and missed, and then two defenders on the line left the clearance to each other before watching horrified as the ball crept between them and over the line for a bizarre goal.

The goal was not really worthy of such stature but definitely summed up this particular game. Astall, Grainger, Haynes and Edwards, could be pleased with their efforts but Taylor and Jeff Hall, who dislocated a shoulder, looked doubtful for England's next match.
    

Nat Lofthouse came on as a substitute for the injured Tommy Taylor a minute before half-time, and for the twelfth time in an England shirt he scored two goals. It lifted his haul to twenty-nine goals, one more than the previous England record set by the great Steve Bloomer before the First World War. Gordon Astall, playing in place of the unavailable Stanley Matthews, scored on his debut. England were leading 3-0 when Taylor limped off following a collision with the Finnish goalkeeper. The record-breaking goal by Lotfhouse in the eighty-second minute was a freak effort, the ball rolling gently over the goal-line between two defenders who left the clearance duties to each other.
  

In a game played in the Olympic Stadium at Helsinki on May 20th England won the second match of this end-of-season tour as comfortably as the score of 5-1 suggests. Before 21,000 spectators the tourists built up a 3-goal lead within half-an-hour of the kick-off, but after that the game was rather colourless. Wilshaw, Haynes, Astall and Lofthouse (2) were the scorers, the last-named coming on as substitute for the injured Taylor just before half-time.