It's that time of year again, Mark Worral's excellent CFCnet piece from a couple of years ago serves as a fitting tribute to one of our greatest benefactors.

 

 

The Man Who Loved Life

 

My alarm clock-radio clicked on at 5.55am, the same as it always did. A couple of hours sleep hadn’t done me too many favours, I rubbed my eyes and lay in the darkness waiting for the 6am news bulletin whilst questioning the sanity of my trip to Burnden Park the previous evening to watch Premier League Chelsea play Bolton Wanderers of what was then referred to as the First Division in a League Cup tie.

 

The Blues had lost the match 2-1 in a pulsating encounter, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory after Scott Minto had given travelling fans some early cheer with a fabulous 2^nd minute goal. Player-manager Ruud Gullit, making his first appearance of the season, had been Chelsea’s best player, but the enterprising Trotters had dispatched their illustrious visitors with a gung-ho performance which had left those who’d bothered making the trip from London cursing the same-old-same-old. As maddening as mercury, that was Chelsea for you.

 

‘Where were you when you were sh*t?’ is a popular taunt levied at 21^st Century Blues fans. ‘How much time have you got?’ I am prone to reply. The League Cup ha ha ha. Any Chelsea masochist of a certain age will regale you with tales of woe involving calamitous defeats at footballing outposts such as Crewe, Sc**thorpe, Scarborough and Wigan … losing a days wages and a nights sleep following the Blues on the road to nowhere was a character-forming part of my life.

 

6am, I’m bolt upright, turning up the volume on the radio … shocked by the lead item on the news which is confirming an earlier report that Chelsea Football Club vice-chairman, Matthew Harding had been killed in a helicopter crash. Multi-millionaire Mr Harding, 42, pilot Michael Goss, 38, businessmen Tony Burridge, 39, and Raymond Deane, 43, and magazine journalist John Bauldie, 47, died instantly when the Twin Squirrel aircraft crashed into farmland near Middlewich, Cheshire, and burst into flames as it was carrying the party home from a Chelsea v Bolton cup tie.

 

I was stunned.

 

It wasn’t as if Matthew was a personal friend or anything like that. I’d met him several times, but this had been well before he’d answered Ken Bates’ plea for financial assistance. An ex-girlfriend had been in charge of the directors’ dining room at Benfield’s, the city-based re-insurance group of which Matthew was chairman and as such I used to get to go to various company knees-ups. As we all know a shared love of Chelsea transcends traditional barriers of class, not that Matthew had any airs and graces. Office-boy made good, rags to riches and all that … good luck to him. Matthew welcomed a chin-wag with a like minded Chelsea individual, and here was a man who’d first stood on the Shed as an eight-year old boy and followed them ever since … home and away.

 

When the phone calls started as word got around that Matthew Harding had been tragically killed, I couldn’t help thinking that if he hadn’t been the millionaire businessman that he was, then he would still have been alive having journeyed to and from Burnden Park by more conventional means than helicopter. Come the end of the day, flowers, scarves, and notes of condolence festooned the Stamford Bridge gates as supporters gathered to share in their grief. The uninformed passerby might have thought a famous Chelsea footballer from yesteryear had died as opposed to the Club vice-chairman. But then the uninformed passerby could never have known just what Matthew Harding had come to mean to the supporters of Chelsea Football Club … and that was the reason I’d been stunned by the news at my waking hour.

 

Ken Bates famously bought Chelsea for £1, and some fans are of the opinion that by the time he sold out to Roman Abramovich he’d transformed the club into one of the biggest names in European football. Others have suggested that old Greybeard took over a club with debts of £600,000 and increased them so spectacularly that it became a case of selling Chelsea to the Russian billionaire or watching them go to the wall in cataclysmic fashion. Bates’ obsession with creating Chelsea Village almost bankrupted the club long before Mr A came on the scene and this precipitated Matthew Harding’s formal involvement during the 1993-94 season. Ken Bates later recalled the telephone conversation which launched their unlikely and some might say unholy alliance. “Ken Bates here,†he said. “I understand you’re richer than I am, so we’d better get together.â€

 

Harding, immediately weighed Chelsea in with £5million to fund the construction of a new North Stand, and also lent the club more than twice that amount to purchase players. But there was no question of the younger man adopting the traditional boardroom values so beloved of Mr Bates. To the best of my knowledge I never saw Ken Bates wearing a Chelsea replica kit, or drinking with supporters in The Imperial public house on the Kings Road before a game. Who can forget Matthew turning up at the unveiling of Gianluca Vialli as a Blues player clutching a brand new home shirt already emblazoned with his name and number? “I’m just a fan who’s done rather well,†he once said, and the Chelsea massive took him to their hearts.

 

Bates’ priority was to build a futuristic stadium, Harding wanted a swashbuckling team to match the heroes of his youth. The two men were on a collision course which eventually resulted in Bates banning Harding from the directors’ box, citing “behaviour related to your heavy drinking both home and awayâ€. The letter sent to Harding contained a P.S. which read: “Please ensure that your `Bates Out’ banner in the Main Stand does not obscure the valuable advertisement panelsâ€. “Never mind,†replied Matthew, “I’ll go and sit in the North Stand. I presume that’s alright with you. After all, I did pay for it.â€

 

The ban galvanised popular support for Harding and by now a large majority of fans wanted him to take over. A well-known spokesman for the Chelsea Independent Supporters’ Association crystalised opinion at the time saying, “Bates appears to think it is his club, while Harding’s attitude is that it is our club.†(The current market-leading Chelsea fanzine, cfcuk whose origins can be traced back to the CISA, originally came to life as Matthew Harding’s Blue and White Army and to this very day it still carries the strap-line published in memory of Matthew Harding on every single page.)

 

The bitter public feud rumbled on with Harding pledging that Chelsea fans would be given a vote in the future of the club if he won his power battle with Bates. “If I become chairman I intend to break some moulds, and one plan I have is to give club members the right to re-elect me as chairman. Chelsea have more than 25,000 members and they are the emotional shareholders of the club. I would go to them every summer and I’ll promise you this now. If there was a majority voting against me I would stand down instantly.†Harding’s words stirred the True Blue soul … ‘Matthew Harding’s Blue and White Army’, the chant would echo around the Bridge on match-days a testament to the faith supporters had in him.

 

In December 1995, the club announced after a board meeting that the pair would lunch and sit together at the home Premiership match against Newcastle. That implied Bates had agreed to lift the ban on Harding taking his seat in the directors’ box and using the boardroom facilities, though at the time both men refused to comment. By October 1996, Matthew Harding had committed £26.5 million to Chelsea Football Club and the irony was that both he and Bates were on the way to realising their own idealistic dreams.

 

Had he lived, Matthew would have seen the Blues win the FA Cup at the end of the season and his journey to glory would have been complete.

 

Saturday October 26th 1996

 

Chelsea are at home to arch-rivals Spurs. The game itself was destined to be a sideshow from the minute Ken Bates took the decision was taken not to postpone it and, as wakes go, it turned into quite a knees-up-mother-Brown party. Wreaths from both clubs were laid in the centre circle before the match, with a pint of Guinness for Harding standing on the centre spot; Dennis Wise and Steve Clarke, team captain and club captain respectively, carried out a floral message reading “Matthew RIP†and presented it in front of the newly-named Matthew Harding Stand.

 

As the Chelsea players linked hands and stood, like the rest of us in the ground, waiting for referee Roger Dilkes to blow his whistle to signal the start of a minutes silence I wondered if this moment of reflection would be tarnished by ignorant morons as they usually were. Chelsea v Tottenham? It’s never been a marriage made in heaven now has it? From the first second to the last, you could have heard a pin drop. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. That Chelsea fans stood silent was not unexpected, that Spurs fans followed suite only added to Matthew Harding’s legend. Every supporter inside Stamford Bridge no matter what their allegiance recognised a part of themselves in Matthew … a supporter first and foremost … one of us.

 

Matthew Harding’s favourite expression was “Enjoy the game!†and boy would he have enjoyed this one. Chelsea took Spurs apart with a 3-1 victory, the goals coming from Ruud Gullit, David Lee and Roberto Di Matteo. “Everyone in the stadium today participated in a special way,†Gullit said in his post-match interview, “including the Tottenham supporters, and on behalf of the team and the staff I want to thank them. Everybody’s just happy about the way they played, and it was a perfect tribute to Matthew.â€

 

Matthew Harding was only involved in the running of Chelsea Football Club for three years or so which makes it all the more remarkable that he could have made such an impression on Blues fans in such a short space of time. That he did is a testimony to the man and his principals. Chelsea supporter first and foremost, businessman second … a true man of the people, born on the Shed.

 

Matthew Charles Harding … born Haywards Heath, Sussex 26 December 1953 …Vice-Chairman, Chelsea Football Club 1995- 96 … died 22 October 1996 … we salute you.

 

 

 

Gone but never forgotten, we didn't let his dream die.

 

Matthew Harding, 26 December 1953 – 22 October 1996.

 

Requiescat in pace.

Edited October 22, 201312 yr by Charles Ryder

A club legend, RIP mate.

Rip, a great blue and a big loss.

RIP Matthew a true blue.

RIP Matthew Harding. Without you we would never have achieved the Impossible Dream. Chelsea til i die..

A great loss. RIP

Such a sad loss to our Chelsea family.

Was at the spurs game very emotional. Thanks for posting its people posting stuff like that keeping his memory alive. RIP

Brilliant post and tribute

RIP

was also at the spurs game, what a day that was, the guy carrying the pint of guinness out to the centre spot choked me up!

 

rip mathew

Beautifully written article.  I wish I had met Matthew Harding, but I know his spirit is there at the Bridge.

Met him once Bournemouth away and humble as us all RIP Matthew.

Me and my dad met him in the imperial before and I met him in around the tunnel I got a picture but I haven't come across it in years I'd like to find it again.

Respect and thoughts for Matty Harding, a Chelsea fan who should never be forgotten. But the piece offers a particularly jaundiced and derogatory view of Ken Bates which I for one do not hold with at all.

 

I have personally seen Ken Bates stop and chat to a long line of Chelsea fans queuing up to get into the away end at Loftus Road. I have been personally served by Ken Bates for match day tickets out of the window of the old portakabin ticket office. By chance I got to speak with Ken on the staircase at Bluebells the night of our first ever Champions League game against AC Milan at home, the man was as excited as I was and was bubbling with emotion.

 

Without the actions of Ken Bates taking the club from the Mears family and fighting the developers so doggedly, there would have been no Chelsea Football Club for Matthew Harding to invest in

 

I never ceased to be amazed by how many old school Chelsea fans seem to forget that.

No Chelsea fan should ever forget what ken did for us, its a shame his good actions are sometimes forgotten because of certain things he did.

Proper legend!

RIP brother.

A true blue in every sense. Never forgotten.

 

Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam dílis.

Gone so young.  Bet he'd be as shocked and awed as some of us are about where his Club has managed to go

Every year I say 'Where have the years gone?' 

 

A lot has changed, but a true blue legend who's memory will live on.

It makes me wonder just how many True Blues there are on this forum. I go through alot of the threads that have multiple pages and normally see the same old names bashing people and their views on this club we all say we love. Then i come back to this thread that is about the man who helped us to make our dream come true and see that in 24 hours it only manages one page.

People support the club in their own way, it doesnt make them any less of a fan/supporter than the next guy. Its human nature to have different opinions. But just because you dont agree with someone it doesnt make them any less of a fan than you are.

When i had my season ticket i sat in front of a guy who had been going to the bridge since before i was born. Some would say he was proper Chels but he did nothing but moan from the first whistle to the last. One game we were 2-0 up at half time and he was moaning so much i turned around and said to him "you do realise we are the ones in Blue, the team that are 2-0 up dont you?". He laughed it off and said thats just the way he is.

He's the true Mr Chelsea