Being a Fan - the Chelsea years

Being a fan means different things to different people. When speaking to people for whom a particular club is their whole life I often feel a fraud. I don’t have tattoos of a club badge on my back, my bedroom wall was never festooned with posters of Ian Hutchinson or Stan Bowles, there are no embarrassing tales of drunken coach trips up the M1 and I’ve never possessed a season ticket. There. I’ve admitted it.

However, for more than fifty years I have followed a few teams along the way; perhaps not with the primeval passion of the super-supporter but nonetheless with a degree of pride. I share the despair, laced with occasional bursts of euphoria, but never wearing blinkers that might shield my eyes from the wider world of football.

My first memory of choosing a team to support dates back to the weekend before the 1967-68 season. I can be that specific because I remember vividly perusing the 1966-67 table in the Daily Express and picking out clubs such as Chelsea, Queens Park Rangers (they had won Division Three) and even Scottish teams Dunfermline, Morton and Ayr Utd. There was no science involved, no study of form, no geographical allegiance; I just “liked the names”.

The photo above might suggest I was a West Ham supporter. Pictures can be deceptive! By my eighth birthday I hadn’t plumped for one special club so I suppose the maternal, East London-originating branch of my family decided to make their move. I remember the pleasure at receiving my first real football kit, and felt pride at posing for this photo. However, deep down I knew my heart wasn’t totally devoted to the Hammers cause. Dad had long ago been resigned to my rejecting the Southampton colours – the thought horrified me! – but what to do?

Most of my football-loving friends favoured either West Ham (the nearest big club to Brentwood, which was home to many East End exiles) or Manchester United, with a few junior Gunners or Chelsea Blues. The origin of my decision is lost in the swirling mists of time but I decide to support the latter club. Chelsea were quite fashionable, in a Swinging Sixties sense, but they hadn’t won the League in my lifetime nor the FA Cup ever, so nobody could ever accuse me of glory-hunting. I also requested, and received, a coveted all-blue kit. Sorry, Uncle David!

Chelsea’s side included Peter ‘The Cat’ Bonetti in goal, the long-throw virtuoso Ian Hutchinson and Scottish winger Charlie Cooke, who was my first genuine ‘Favourite Player’. In addition, Peter Osgood was one of the best forwards (they weren’t called ‘strikers’ in those days) in the league, so I had plenty on which to focus my attention.

In the event, my timing proved fortuitous as Chelsea surged past QPR 4-2 and Watford 5-1 (at White Hart Lane-on-Mud) to the FA Cup Final in 1970. They were to play Leeds, for whom I also had a soft spot, especially Peter Lorimer, so at first I was slightly torn. However, come the 11^th April (scheduled very early, presumably because of the World Cup that summer) I was 100% a Blue. I recall that game extremely clearly and I don’t need to use Google to name the Chelsea XI: Bonetti, Webb, McCreadie, Hollins, Dempsey, Harris, Baldwin (in for the injured Hudson), Houseman, Osgood, Hutchinson, Cooke.

It was an exciting match, played on an awful Wembley pitch, cut up by the previous week’s Horse of the Year Show. The Leeds left-winger Eddie Gray was superb but I remember going nuts when Hutchinson fired in an equaliser with five minutes left, For me, that was almost as good as football could get – apart from Chelsea not winning, of course. However, a few weeks later, they triumphed in a replay at Old Trafford. It was another classic of end-to-end football but probably the dirtiest game you’ll ever see. It had punch-ups, head-butts, flying kicks to the head, wild hacks, Bonetti bundled into the net (leaving him injured for most of the game) which, ref David Elleray concluded many years later, would have generated twenty yellow cards and six reds had the Nineties rules been in operation! Instead, Hutchinson was the only man booked. Most importantly, the match featured Webb’s winning header. We’d only gone and won the FA Cup!

The following season Chelsea won more silverware, this time the European Cup-Winners’ Cup. That, too, went to a replay, just two days after the first was drawn 1-1. We subsequently reached the 1972 League Cup Final, losing to Stoke, but by then my loyalty to the Blues was becoming looser. A few years later I recall a conversation in the school hall in which a friend asked me to sign a petition calling for Dave Sexton to be sacked for falling out with Osgood. I declined, feeling that the manager was more important than a whingeing centre-forward. And, in any case, I had already transferred my allegiance to West London rivals Queens Park Rangers.

Just as well, because Chelsea began to fall apart and QPR were on the rise. Rangers were promoted to Division One for the ‘73/74 season and a year later, their illustrious neighbours dropped out of the top tier, given a helpful nudge by a 3-0 home defeat by – er - QPR. Sexton was given the boot and a few months later returned to management – with QPR! 

I never got to see Chelsea play live, although I did toddle along to Billericay’s little New Lodge ground in August 1986 for a charity match involving the ‘Chelsea 1970 FA Cup XI’. It wasn’t, strictly speaking, the actual side which had won so memorably in my childhood. However, a grey-haired but still slender Bonetti (right, who actually saved a penalty), and slightly chubbier ‘Chopper’ Harris, John Dempsey and Peter Osgood were amongst those taking part and signing autographs for the kids (and dads) afterwards. Not all members of that team were strictly speaking of 1970 vintage. Indeed, Frank Lampard Snr, unlike his son, never played for Chelsea at all but happened to live nearby. As for QPR, I would enjoy numerous happy Hoops performances in subsequent decades, of which more later.