Monday March 10, 1905.
Okay, so it’s a date that probably won’t mean much to you. But that was the fateful day that Chelsea FC was formed.
Fast forward 120 years and much has changed, with the club boasting a billionaire American owner and a trophy cabinet that is fit to bursting with major silverware.
But back in March 1905… well, things were a lot different.
Chelsea will unveil a full celebration marking the anniversary later this year, but for now here’s your quick guide to the how, why and where Chelsea FC was formed 120 years ago.
The Formation of Chelsea FC
There are countless individuals that have played their part in turning Chelsea FC into the bastion of English football that it is today.
But without Gus Mears, well, there wouldn’t even be a Chelsea Football Club.
He was the businessman and entrepreneur who, after enjoying success in a number of different ventures, had enough capital to purchase the Stamford Bridge Athletics Ground.
A football lover, Mears wanted to turn Stamford Bridge into the epicentre of the beautiful game in England. But first, he needed a team to play there.
In one of the game’s great butterfly effect moments, Mears tried to persuade the owner of Fulham FC, Henry Norris, to relocate to the stadium. Imagine if the Cottagers had gone ahead with the move… English football would have been sent on a different course entirely.
In the end, Norris refused to move Fulham, and with no other existing London-based club willing to relocate, Mears was left in something of a bind.
Fed up, he tried to sell the Stamford Bridge site to the Great Western Railway, but others – including his brother, Jeremy, convinced him to instead establish his own football club to play at the venue.
And, in that moment, Chelsea FC was born and took up residence at the Bridge… where they have remained for more than a century since.
The Naming of Chelsea FC
Given the club’s close proximity to the borough of Chelsea, you might think that naming London’s newest football team would have been a breeze.
But Mears was seduced by other ideas. So much so, the club we know and love today could have in fact been called Kensington FC or even the rather more generic London FC.
Thankfully, Chelsea FC won out, with a meeting held at the Rising Sun pub just five minutes from Stamford Bridge – modern day supporters have no doubt frequented The Butcher’s Hook, as it’s known today – to confirm the establishment of the new club.
Why Do Chelsea Play In Blue?
With the club officially formed, Mears set about getting a team of players together, appointing a manager and designing a kit to be worn in their first season.
He was a big fan of Lord Chelsea, better known as Henry Cadogan, who served in the British Army and two terms as the MP for Bury St Edmonds. Everything about Cadogan was blue, from his Etonian background to his Conservative Party membership, as well as his family’s racing colours.
And so Mears wanted his Chelsea team to play in blue; albeit a lighter shade of the colour, with the royal blue we know today adopted just a few years later in 1912.
Inspired by Eton Blue. A Chelsea original.
Our 2023/24 @nikefootball third kit pays homage to our first ever shirt, back in 1905. #ThePrideOfLondon
— Chelsea FC (@ChelseaFC) September 13, 2023
Originally, he wanted Chelsea to join the Southern League. But objections from Fulham and Tottenham – setting in place a rivalry that would last more than a century, meant that Mears had to enrol his new club into the Football League instead.
With its salubrious location and shiny new stadium, Chelsea FC was an intriguing new addition to the ranks of English football. John Robertson, a 28-year-old Scottish international, was signed as player-manager. He would score the club’s first goal in competitive play.
A number of players signed in these early years, including George Hilsdon and Jimmy Windridge, would go on to become Chelsea legends, while there was also the extraordinary sight of 6ft 2in, 22 stone goalkeeper William ‘Fatty’ Foulke, who would become a cult hero on account of his extraordinary agility for a man of his size.
By the end of the 1907 campaign, Chelsea had been promoted to the First Division for the first time, while recording the largest average attendance in English football that season and eight more times over the next decade.
A run to the 1915 FA Cup final confirmed the Blues’ status as one of the best teams in the land.
The Chelsea Family
Sadly, Gus Mears never got to see Chelsea really hit their stride: he passed away in March 1912 at the age of 39.
But the Mears name lived on for decades thereafter; synonymous with the rise and fall and rise again of Chelsea FC.
Joe Mears, Gus’ nephew, joined the club’s board of directors at the age of just 26 in 1931, before going on to become chairman. After a brief pause to work on Winston Churchill’s security detail in World War II, Mears would return as Chelsea chair – overseeing an era in which the Blues won their maiden First Division title.
He would later become the chairman of the Football Association, and it was Mears who would personally receive the ransom note when the World Cup trophy was stolen in 1966. What a claim to fame!
By the 1960s, Joe’s son Brian had become the new Chelsea chairman. The club won the FA Cup and the Cup Winners’ Cup on his watch, before a coup orchestrated by none other than Charles Cadogan, the Viscount Chelsea whose ancestors were so admired by Gus Mears, saw him removed from the position.
The Mears family name was vital to the first 120 years of Chelsea Football Club, and hopefully it will be celebrated and commemorated for the next 120, too.