M. Chelsea History (1905-1962)

Chelsea History (1905-1962)

Written by Dorset in May 2007

Why do I support Chelsea? A simple enough question that has been asked of me more in the last few years than at any time during the five decades that have gone before. It has become more than a polite enquiry since the arrival of Roman Abramovich and now, by implication, carries with it the corollary - is it because they are a rich and successful club? I am pleased to say that I am one of the lucky fans who can deny this belittlement rather easily through the respected channels of being a Londoner old enough to remember when Chelsea were a musical hall joke and by having a family history on my father’s side that has left it’s Chelsea mark indelibly on my soul. Yes, contrary to current crass comment, my football club has a history and it is linked to my family history through a grandfather who supported the team during the dim and distant 1920 Division 2 days and the 1930s, when his favourite player, Hughie Gallacher, lit up the scene in more ways than one.

By the end of the decade two inside forwards had established themselves as the best in the land, Jimmy Greaves and a blond Scot called Dennis Law, who became the costliest footballer of the day when he transferred to Man City. Our home game with them in 1960 was hyped as the battle for supremacy between the two, but in the event it turned out to be a complete mismatch as Chelsea were 5-1 up before halftime and Jimmy completed a hat-trick to give him his 100th League goal. We went on to a 6-3 win and the newspapers were full of headlines confirming the fact that Law, who scored a consolation goal (I think, but who cares), had been made to look ordinary when compared to such a prodigious talent.

Tommy Docherty, Chelsea Manager 1962-1967

It seems unbelievable, thinking back on it now, that both these players were destined for Italy and only a few months after watching this game I was in denial and despair over rumours that my hero was on his way to Milan to earn something like £5000 a year! When Jimmy Greaves left it was to be the one and only time that I cried over a Chelsea player’s departure and if the experience taught me one thing it was that the cult of the individual, aligned as it often is to hero worship, should never supersede support of the team as a whole, even when that player is the prize jewel in the crown. Indeed, over the years that followed our crown was to be studded with the Doc’s little diamonds and the Sixties proved to be a fantastic time to be a Chelsea supporter, despite the fact that real success still remained tantalisingly beyond our reach….

The crowd at the Bridge in the mid 60s

Highs and lows? It was a rollercoaster ride of passion on the pitch under Tommy Docherty, only matched, around about 64/65, by the birth of its ugly twin ’aggro’ off it. Not that I was ever involved in any capacity other than as an observer of incidents from the Stand, you understand, and even then they would only be viewed as a welcome distraction from a father insisting on telling his teenage son that he had told him it would be like this one day, hadn’t he, hadn’t he?

Others will no doubt give first hand accounts from Shed to Sheffield (or, more precisely, Leicester) and back again, but I can’t, although I would say that on occasions the undercurrent of violence was tangible and it meant that many older fans, like my father, never really took to the Doc’s bravado approach to management, in some strange way directly associating it with the emergence of the off field violence.

None of this affected me, though, as the team ethic was something I was ready to embrace wholeheartedly and the Doc gave us that in spades. Home grown players arrived on the scene, Bonetti, Venables, Murray, Shellito, to supplement the goal scoring of Bobby Tambling, with the defence being galvanised by Chopper Harris and strengthened by the purchase of Eddie McCreadie, who was virtually unknown when we signed him in 1962. Seemingly destined for the drop when the Doc arrived, it somehow didn’t matter because there was this belief that we’d come straight back up - and we did!