MelbourneBlue

Magnificent photos Garry, but did you have to subject us to images of Pannucci and Bogarde ;) And are three of the Silletts triplets? ;)

Not only that, the Champions recoded only 3 away wins!

I've done 57, many of which don't exist anymore.

Just a warning, we set up a Facebook site for Chelsea fans in Melbourne which made me finally sign up (with nickname too). Trouble is people who know your email address can then ask you to be their friend.....in fact I think the computer even tells them your on facebook.....rude not to accept....you end up inundated with f*ckin photos of their kids etc.!!!

My field of dreams - cheers backbiter for posting

Never mind the 9,000 and the 7,000, we got a couple of 6,000s in about 82 - Cambridge and Orient IIRC. I couldn't even be arsed to go to most homes after a couple of years back in Div 1 although I went to a lot more of the aways. As others said, our away support was right up there even though we were in Div 2. There is a video posted somewhere from the 80s with Ken Lacey of the Guardian saying our away support is only behind Man U and Liverpool........take away their 'locals' at most games and we probably took more than them, even though much of our support was home counties rather than London. I always felt that us, Newcy, Sunlan and Spurs had the best real away support. I quite clearly remember WHU and the Arse having only one pen at OT for daytime league games, but we would have the whole end. A couple of occasions I remember very well in the Div 2 days were us going to Leeds and Arse going to Boro from Kings Cross at (supposedly) the same time. Lets just say there were a couple of thousand Chelsea at the station and no Arse whatsoever.......then we went to Sheffield and they were at Forest (I think) and just one of them got off the train at Nottingham!!!!! We had hundreds on it.

My next is another festival, with Royksopp, Kasabian, Soundgarden and KanYe the main 4 for me. May leave KanYe a little early to catch a bit of Noel Gallagher's band who are on at the same time.

How was the show? I saw Sultans of Ping FC twice back in the early 90s. Remember having a p1ss at The Venue in New Cross after their gig and the lead singer was p1ssing right next to me. A great laugh they were.

sebastian mate there's this marvellous invention called Youtube and if you have a look on there at some of our old matches you will see that we did indeed take quite a lot more than 50 to those other London grounds!

I remember him too - don't remember seeing him on the train up to the away games but he went everywhere.

Just had a moment the other night when I remembered coming into the ground at that turnstyle.....always a p1ss at the urinals on the left after a skinful, then up the stairs to my beautiful Stamford Bridge. Remember a good group of lads who went up there from South London somewhere I think. A bloke called Slobby Barry was one of them.

I'm an old bloke, but the 2007 FA Cup was my favourite Chelsea moment. We had a depleted squad at the end of that season and were facing ManU. We scored the only goal just about at the end of ET. It took me about 4 days to come down from that one. THe FA Cup means alot to us old'uns. The league titles, we had them sown up before the game or still had games to go, so the actual game itself did not have a defining moment likes Drogs winner vs ManU.

Hi all, miss being in London and decent bands playing any night of the week. My next gig is a festival here in Melbourne, with Portishead, Flaming Lips, The National, TV on the Radio and Mogwai headlining. I'm going to a couple of other good festivals too over the next few months.

Talking of getting pissed at Members Cup Finals, anyone remember the pub up by Hanger Lane or Park Royal (memory fading badly) that was open at 9am on the morning of the match. Rammed full, and many of our top chaps in there for that lengthy session before the game :-)

That was exactly what happened on the 0-3 day (dunno if thats the same game as in the photo). I was in the seats on the side and saw it all. On the train home we speculated that it would be all over the Sunday press and we'd end up being banned from away games. But there was hardly a mention. One small report somewhere said that the sister of Blackburn striker Simon Garner (?) had been hurt in the crush. Going into the home end 5 minutes before the end was common in those days......Those who now chant "Where were you when you were shyte" (Geordies for starters) clearly weren't around then and should chant that song at themselves!!!!

We sing this every Sat night in Melbourne while watching the Chels....also "We'll be running round Tottenham with our willys hanging out".....goes even better when there are some of them in the pub.

I walked round their ground before KO just behind Hickey and he had his arm bandaged (not from that morning's events). Someone said "Why'd you run Stephen?" and he said "I wanted to give them confidence". He always had a funny come back.

He might have been referring to amother game at Palace after he had joined us, because I think PC was still being booed in 84. Great article and I'm glad he pointed out that Celtic fans are at least as bad as Rangers when it comes to sectarianism. Too often the lefty press singles out the blue half of Glasgow, forgetting far worse crimes like not observing the minutes silence..

I think there's a lot of Totts in Hayes too. On the Cardiff mention, I remember on the same day Chelsea had it with Millwall who were playing at Slough and Cardiff who were playing at Wokingham.......and as usual my memory is not what it was, but we might have even been at home that day, with a poor crowd and a sizeable number of Berkshire Blues having something better to do at the time ;)

Alot of Chelsea get on with a lot of Arsenal. Having a mutual enemy contributes to this. Doesn't mean it didn't used to get willing when the two teams played. Same with Chelsea and Millwall (different mutual enemy).

Anyone go the night game up there league cup I presume. Was at the back of their end with one of the blokes who got sent down recently (his nickname was an inner London suburb on the way to Wembley) and his chaps......the whole end parted and we scattered them everywhere. I suppose like everyone else they'll chant "Where were you..." when we draw them in the cup this season !

We used to play the same team in the Cross-Channel Cup or something like that. The Chelsea Independent declared in one edition "...and the draw has been made for this year's Cross-Channel Cup - it's Le Harvre vs Chelsea" which was quite funny as it was only us and them ever in it.

Just remembering another prominent black supporter we had, JB from up Wood Green way. Was always bumping into him as I lived in north London for a long time. A few sandwiches short of a picnic he was. My memories not what it was but one story goes that he pointed out a Spurs fan to the Herd....or vice-versa.....and the bloke and his mates got retribution in a Wood Green pub.

I can't comment first hand about today, but in the old days Chelsea's support was very racist......but so were other clubs. My memory is very poor though becasue I thought it really was just a lot of skins on the terraces and NF material sold outside, don't remember too much abuse of black players.......then I watched my video of 6 Memorable Matches (or something like that) and whenever Viv Anderson went near the ball the monkey noises were very pronounced (and don't forget at Chelsea the TV mic was on a crane above the North Stand a couple of hundred yards from the Shed and quite hard to hear our vocal support on telly sometimes).......I really could not remember the monkey noises, despite having been at the match.....but it all came back to me after seeing the video. As for our firm I didn't notice the racism at all.......B*** a prominent Chelsea leader in the 60s was half caste, and I used to go walkabout with BW after games in the 80s and heard he was still at it in the late 00s. There was at least one other prominent black fan in the 80s who delighted in chasing the local blacks in other towns on the way back to the station. As for black players at the Bridge, well the two who gave away penalties in the 94 cup final were the most cheered the next day on the commiseration tour. People slag Chelsea for the racism, but what about the way our crowd changed for the better in this regard over the past 2 decades? Other clubs are far worse.

Think it was the first leg away and I think he gave away two penners. May have been 2-0 to them but my memory is fuzzy. Went walkabout with SR and his boys after that game, and one of them confronted the biggest Makem you'd ever seen. The bloke totally shat himself, and was clearly not a combetant. I was actually glad everyone just let him past. This was typical of our chaps, we often did that, whereas the other London firms, the scousers and Mancs would turn over the scarfers and blokes on their own without a second thought. You can add the likes of Preston to that. So back to the title of the thread - nothing to report.