Edited June 14, 20233 yr by erskblue

Hey Ersk.. really appreciate your superb pictures and info on our past .

I love the Vintage site and this particular one. Cheers mate 

15 hours ago, The Rising Sun said:

Hey Ersk.. really appreciate your superb pictures and info on our past .

I love the Vintage site and this particular one. Cheers mate 

The Rising Sun: Cheers.

As I’ve said before, I like history in general and enjoy finding and posting articles about this great club of ours.

Glad you enjoy it.

Edited June 17, 20233 yr by erskblue

The captains of Chelsea (left) and Bradford (Park Avenue)  before the start of their FA Cup fourth round match at Stamford Bridge. 6th March 1920. With them is referee, Joe Davies. Chelsea won the match 4-1. (Photo by Arthur R. Coster/Topical Press Agency/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

 

Caption simply states this photo was taken in April 1929.

23rd February 1924: Everton goalkeeper Harland can’t stop this equaliser by Andy Wilson during the 1-1 draw League match at The Bridge. (Photo by Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)

Edited June 19, 20233 yr by erskblue

Chelsea players signing an autograph book. February 1921. 

 

Alex Jackson and Hughie Gallacher. 

1922 FA Cup Final. The last held at The Bridge.

Late 1920s photo. 

 

 

 

 

36 signatures of players and trainers from the 1909/10 squad.

www.thenationalfootballcollection.org.uk

 

Edited June 22, 20233 yr by erskblue

Chelsea in the First World War

A review of how the 1914-1918 conflict affected Chelsea Football Club and the sport in general...C

 

Chelsea F.C. In The First World War.

The ultimatum to withdraw from Belgium ignored, Britain declared a state of war with Germany at 11pm on 4 August 1914. No aspect of life in England would ever be the same and football neither enjoyed nor offered sanctuary from the horrors that followed. 

Four days later the Defence of the Realm Act made it illegal, amongst other things, to buy binoculars, light fireworks, use invisible ink when writing abroad or buy strong alcohol in a railway refreshment room. 

In August 1914 many British ex-footballers had training jobs based in the heart of the conflict, in Germany, Austria and Belgium. A former coach at the Bridge, Harry Ransom, was in Budapest, ‘but managed to reach London safely after being twice stopped on suspicion of being a foreign spy.’ 

At first football attempted to carry on regardless, but a ferocious attack by the media and parliament on so-called shirkers among the playing staff and supporters knocked the game back on its heels. 

In many walks of life hordes of workmates were going off to fight in ‘pals regiments’. But recruitment drives at London grounds were unsuccessful. Notoriously, not a single volunteer joined up at Stamford Bridge, where a Colonel Burn had lectured a crowd of 16,000. (Perhaps announcing that his own son had already been killed in France was not the cleverest enticement.)

Chelsea had responded regularly in the matchday programme with contempt for the ‘mud-slingers’, publishing a photograph of a crowd comprising almost entirely of men in uniform and therefore ‘doing their bit’ for King and country (pictured below). They also printed dozens of letters from fighting men craving to hear how their beloved Pensioners were faring, particularly as they progressed to the FA Cup final for the first time ever in 1914/15.

 

Supporters in uniform at Stamford Bridge

Exiled Belgians were handed tickets to games, including a 2-2 draw with Oldham. They were ‘Chelsea partisans to a man – and woman,’ cheered the Chelsea goals and ‘seemed almost to forget their own terrible sufferings.’

The club was also quick to collect money in a ‘Footballs for Tommies’ scheme to dispatch 50 top-quality footballs off to servicemen on the frontline who applied for one at Stamford Bridge (see programme extract right). They were sent in November 1914. One of them may even have been used in the legendary Christmas truce match a month later.

‘The Southdown Battalion of the Sussex Regiment are proud in the possession of the ball used in our match v Liverpool,’ it was announced. Two representatives from that battalion, Lieutenants Clifford Whitley and Ernest Wenden helped establish a ‘Chelsea Supporters’ Company’ with a recruitment drive at the Bridge. (Perhaps as a result, both went on to marry Maie and Julia, daughters of Chelsea director Fred Parker.)

The Chelsea hierarchy also supported the grand initiative of a Footballer’s Battalion, the 17th Middlesex, created on 14 December 1914. Not only did several current and former players sign up, but club secretary Bert Palmer became ‘Honorary Recruiting Officer’ for the 17th, prompting the attestations of 60-70 soldiers. One of the first was Chelsea’s star winger Teddy Foord.

An odd memento of the club’s closeness to this fabled battalion lies in a unique engraved silver plate on display in the Chelsea FC Museum. The inscription reads: ‘In Honour of the Khaki Recruits – Our Chelsea Diehards. Presented to the Earl of Lonsdale by the men of the 17th Battalion Middlesex Regt. and Chelsea Football and Athletic Company Limited, Feb 12 1916.’

By then the Football League had been suspended and regionalised. The Pensioners had lost the FA Cup final at Old Trafford 0-3 to Sheffield United and, disastrously, finished in a relegation slot. However it later emerged that players from Liverpool and Manchester United had colluded to fix a match, saving the latter from the drop and condemning Chelsea. The football community was scandalised, and when the war was over the League made sure the Pensioners were reinstated in the top flight.

 

The crowd at the 1915 final at Old Trafford

In the meantime the small-scale football served up 1915 to 1918 offered little succour from the bad news hitting nearly every family.

Among the Chelsea-related, past and present, Max Seeberg was interned simply because of his German surname; Vivian ‘Jack’ Woodward was wounded in action but recovered; George Hilsdon was gassed; coach Harry Brown and board members Parker, Palmer and Mears all lost immediate family; while Bob ‘Pom-Pom’ Whiting, Arthur Wileman, Bob Atherton, George Kennedy, Philip Smith and George Lake all died of wounds suffered in the conflict.

 

Four of the serving or former Chelsea footballer lost during the 1914-1918 War.

Kennedy, a half-back during the 1908/09 season who emigrated in 1914 and was a company sergeant-major in the 42nd Canadian Highlanders, died during the capture of Passchendaele on 16 November 1917. He was Chelsea’s most decorated former player, receiving the Military Medal and Distinguished Conduct Medal earlier that year (his attestation paper is shown on the right).

Most poignantly, Lake died just a four days before the armistice of 11 November 1918. He was the only serving first team Chelsea player claimed by this most brutal of conflicts.

1914 Matchday Programme Cover

 

Roll of honour

Serving and former Chelsea footballers who were killed during World War One. 

Robert 'Bob' Atherton 
Died 19 October 1917 

George Kennedy 
Died 16 November 1917 

George Lake 
Died 6 November 1918 

Francis ‘Frank’ O’Hara 
Died 12 July 1915 

Philip Smith 
Died 29 September 1918 

Robert 'Pom-Pom' Whiting 
Died 28 April 1917 

Arthur Wileman 
Died 28 April 1918

Thomas Wilson
Died 21 March 1918

Norman Wood 
Died 28 July 1916

Key matches

CHELSEA 0 SHEFFIELD UNITED 3 - FA Cup final - 24 April 1915

It took 10 seasons to reach Chelsea’s first FA Cup Final, but it was a far from joyous occasion. 

 

 

The 1914/15 season had continued despite the outbreak of World War One and with casualties rising, the football authorities were coming under increasing pressure to abandon professional football. 

Nevertheless, a crowd of 50,000 attended the final at Old Trafford, many of them soldiers on leave from the front and still dressed in their uniforms. 

It was a dark, dismal, overcast day and the majority of the crowd cheered for our opponents. Our captain, the England international Vivian Woodward had been granted leave from the war and travelled back for the game but, despite pressure from the directors, refused to play, stating that Bob Thomson who had played in the earlier rounds deserved his place in the team, this despite Thomson not having fully recovered from a dislocated shoulder. 

Yet it probably made little difference to the result. Chelsea were poor and managed just two attacks on the United goal. Mistakes by the normally reliable Jack Harrow and keeper Jim Molyneux gifted United a first-half goal. As fog enveloped the ground United added two further goals and the game was over long before the final whistle. 

To make matters worse the team stayed north to finish the League season but managed one point in fixtures against Everton and Notts County and were subsequently relegated for the second time in our history.


CHELSEA 3 FULHAM 0 - London Combination Victory Cup final - 26 April 1919
From summer 1915 and for the duration of the war, professional football was broken down into regions. 

 

Clubs in the capital and south-east, no longer under Football League jurisdiction, formed the London Combination, and in December 1918 its committee created the Victory Cup.

By the spring the finalists were decided: west London neighbours Fulham and Chelsea, who would play at the recently reopened Highbury on Saturday 26 April 1919.

Despite heavy rain a crowd of 36,000 came to celebrate peace, normality and Chelsea’s second cup final in five years. It had been the nature of Great War football that guest players might appear in team line-ups and this was no exception. Chelsea’s key man on the day was borrowed from Arsenal’s books: Jock Rutherford.

Behind him the ‘Great Dane’, midfielder Nils Middelboe, was magisterial, with his intelligence and raking stride, and inside-right Ben Whitehouse had a hand in all three of the Pensioners’ goals.

Two were scored by Gunner Rutherford, the other by regular royal blue Harry Wilding, and all came in the last 20 minutes of an engaging contest. The trophy, presented by Arsenal chairman Henry Norris’s wife Edith, was never contested again, although the London Combination morphed into a competition for reserve teams.

The Cup marked the end of Great War restrictions. Chelsea rejoined Football League Division One a few months later and would set a new record average home attendance in the English game of 42,860 in 1919/20. Football was back – thankfully without the bangs.

www.chelseafc.com

 

Edited June 22, 20233 yr by erskblue

 

Ron Burgess scoring our sixth goal against Liverpool at The Bridge as we hammered them 6-1.

This sixth goal was scored in the 53rd minute!!    28th Aug 1937.  The opening day of the new 1937/38 season.

Rudolf Hiden, the Racing Club de Paris Austrian goalkeeper, in action. A midweek friendly against Racing Clube de Paris, 7th Oct 1936.

Edited June 25, 20233 yr by erskblue

Early 1930s The Bridge athletics was a popular venue for athletics meetings. 
 

 

The great Finnish distance runner Paavo Nurmi competing.

Edited June 28, 20233 yr by erskblue

 

 

 

 

 

Goalkeepers during matches in 1936 and 1938.

The Austrian ‘Wunderteam’  coming onto the pitch before the match between England and Austria at The Bridge on 7th December 1932.

 

 

Edited July 4, 20233 yr by erskblue

Nils Middelboe in action for Denmark v Great Britain: The Final of the football tournament at the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm.

Edited July 4, 20233 yr by erskblue

Villa at The Bridge in 1936.

 

 

21st August 1919: Sergeant Major Miller doing the high jump during the Royal Air Force Sports Day The Bridge. 

R A Beaver narrowly fails in the Pole Vault competition at the British Games at The Bridge in 1930
No soft landing pads for the high jumpers or pole vaulters in those days!

Edited July 8, 20233 yr by erskblue

After 1937 as can make out the D on the edge of the penalty areas.

Edited July 12, 20233 yr by erskblue

 

8th March 1934: Alex Cheyne being greeted at The Bridge by Hughes Gallacher and other members of the Chelsea team.He’d just re-signed for us after playing for the French club, Nimes

Edited July 12, 20233 yr by erskblue

15th January 1935: Some players ‘training’ at The Bridge in preparation for the FA Cup replay the next day with Luton Town. We went down 2-0.