chelsea in america vol3 issue1

8/7/2019 Chelsea in America Vol3 Issue1

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VOLUME 3, ISSUE 1 DEC '10/JAN '11

DEEP FROM THE HEARTNotes from the Chairwoman

First of all, I hope all of you had awonderful holiday full of family, friends,love and joy. And I hope that the NewYear brings you peace, abundance andall things good. And excuse the delay onthe first newsletter of the new year, lotsgoing on!

What a di! erence a month can make. Myoriginal letter spoke to the drought thatwas our results, and now the skys areBlue, new signings and a possibleregaining of form that has us allpinching ourselves. So how about thosetwo new signings? That brings to mindmany old sayings: It is always darkestbefore the dawn, every cloud has a silverlining, when the going gets tough thetough get going... you know them all Iam sure. But what it really makes methink is that you can’t win every match,

and that Chelsea is really about morethan just winning games. When I thinkback on this year, and I think about allthe other things that have happened forCIA, there isn’t one memory that iswinning a match. I hope win, lose ordraw this serves to remind us all that, asChris Axon wrote in a recent matchreport: “Chelsea isn’t really a footballclub at all – it’s a social club and wemeet up every weekend at a footballground.” I suspect that most of us are amember of CIA not just because of Chelsea, but because of the folks we

interact with in the club - the social partof the club, whether it is meeting up fora match, posting on the board orFacebook, texting or chatting tosomeone about a match, or meeting upwith someone from the club forwhatever reason. Chelsea is so muchmore than the first team, it is our youthteam (and they are tearing up the FAYouth Cup again!), our reserve team, butmost of all, the biggest part of Chelseais the 40,000 supporters that fill thestands every week, and the hundreds of thousands of supporters across the

world that give our club its characterheart, its history and its passion.

It is the same with CIA; we are a partthat huge family. But if you feel you anot getting enough out of yourmembership, what are you doing toinvolve yourself in what is going on?There is always someone “around” this there to share the joy and the paincelebrate and worry with, so takeadvantage of it. There is loads that chappen, so if you want to get involveall you have to do is... get involved!

That leads me to what has beenhappening in CIA... and it is A LOT!

Around the holidays saw the unveilinour banners at the Bridge! http://www.dropbox.com/gallery/

16606210/1/Banner%20Folders?h=7626a0 (more photos will be postas I get them). These banners represthe first batch and reflect nine chapteof CIA that met the challenge of recruiting a minimum number of members to qualify. If they had a cernumber of True Blue members then tcould opt for a bigger banner - a cernumber more and an even biggerbanner. CIA, of course, has the largesize banner. The nine clubs so far areBeltway, Boston, Charm City, ChicagoOrange County, North Texas, San Die

Southeast and Texas. There are sevemore to come as well. This is a HUGEproject, and your chapters heads havdone a wonderful job pulling it alltogether. Each club had to design thebanner, keeping in mind the rules anregulations Chelsea has for the bannI know most of the chapters made thvery community project and gotmembers involved. Behind the sceneCIA had to find a banner maker we coa! ord and make sure that the fabric

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Above: Our banners make it on TV! Screencap by Andy Wray.

• Deep From the

Heart

• Know YourChelsea

• Tales from the

CPO Luncheon

• The History of

Boxing Day



CONTRIBUTORS:

A big thanks to everyone who he

make the CIA Bluesletter possible

Editor: Jamie EdwardsChairwoman: Beth WildAssistant Ed: Allison KasicLogo and Graphics: Raciel Diaz

CIA Crest done in collaborationwith Who Are Ya Designs -www.whoareyadesigns.com

Want to contribute or make asuggestion? Send Jamie an email newsletter@

chelseainamerica.com!

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were using would meet the fire retardantrequirements Chelsea has to have.Thanks to Andy Wray, we found awonderful supplier that worked with usand made it pretty easy. Then the

designs had to be made into electronicfiles that would work, and any finedesign work had to be done... Raciel andChris to the rescue! They have put incountless hours designing, working withchapters and putting together ourproposal to Chelsea and then workingwith the banner supplier - what a greatjob they did! Once the banners wereapproved by the chapters, we sent theproposal to Chelsea and waited for thefinal approval. While I was in London Igot that approval. But during thatprocess the chapters had to make surethat they had the money to pay for thebanners, and again that goes back toyou the members, proving once againthat together we can all chip in a little tomake things happen. Funds weresecured, the banners were paid for andthen thanks to Andy Wray they werepicked up and put in UPS to jet to PaulPeltz to make his flight to London.Thanks to Paul and MaryAnne formaking room in their luggage andsqueezing all ten banners in and handcarrying them to Stamford Bridge! Withtheir help, just a few hours before amatch they were up and hanging and

waiting for the world to see! That is agreat example of what Chelsea/CIA is, agroup of people on a mission that worktogether, give of themselves for thegood of the group and make thingshappen. And as I sit here today we haveanother group of banners just approvedby Chelsea. They are in process to makenow and soon be on the lookout forbanners from Austin Blues, Bay AreaBlues, Georgia Blues, Midwest Blues,Motor City Blues, Pacific Coast Blues andSouth Bay Blues! SEVENTEEN BANNERSGRACING STAMFORD BRIDGE FROM CIA,

BRILLIANT! All accomplished because of the active participation of members!

That's not all! The workhorse Chris Blake(who worked on the banners) has madea dream come true for many of us. Thepast two months saw him take on aproject, something he wanted to have,and he made it happen. Chris wanted aCIA scarf, and when he came to me toask about it, I never realized how badlyhe did want one. I gave him all the stepsto make it happen, and he patiently andpassionately went through each one. He

had to first find out who might beinterested so that we knew we couldmeet the minimums. Then he had todesign it and get consensus on thedesign as well as meet the requirementswe have to abide by. He had to get all

the details on what it would cost, freightand all of that. We came up with a cost,created a shopping cart and put theword out. One hundred and thirty-onescarves were ordered in less than amonth. Chris and Paul put it all togetherand sent the order in. And then wewaited, but being Christmas the timewent slow. The scarves did finally arrivethe Tuesday before Christmas, and witha help from my o"ce assistant, Patsyand I got all 131 scarves in the post thatday, and a vast majority of them made itto their new owners before Christmas.

Again, see what happens when we worktogether and make a dream come true -that is what CIA is all about.

And now the dawn of a new year meanseven more folks working together. Asyou all should know, membership forthis season is closed, both CIA and ourability to add True Blue members. WEENDED THE MEMBERSHIP DRIVE WITH595 MEMBERS OF WHICH 181 WERE TRUEBLUE! That is one heck of a Blue Army.We saw CIA break from one club into 21chapters! And now your board is startingto plan for the next membership drive.

Yes, now is when we will meet to discussdues for next season, how it will work,what we might o! er for a member gift,and other things like that. We will alsobe discussing the chapters - which oneswill go forward and what new onesmight start up - and what new initiativeswe want to start to make CIA evenbetter.

If that wasn’t enough, have you been onFacebook recently? Be sure and go findthe Chelsea in America Facebook pageand friend it, post on it - the numbers

are growing daily and it is just anotherway you can keep in touch on all thelatest news, gossip and banter forChelsea and CIA. Thanks to Andy Wrayand Ian McNally for the face lift. Andspeaking of face lifts, the CIA website isalso in the midst of a redo, so keepchecking that out. Have you listened tothe podcast lately? A great way to sharea bit of banter and no reason why youshouldn’t be listening or calling in. Areyou following us on Twitter? You see, no

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In my long absence, I’ve been thinkinglong and hard on how to change this up,as there are so many fixtures in such a

short space of time. What I’ve decided todo is just pick a team, any team fromany division and take a look into ourhistory against them. First up is a teammost of us have a dislike for and that’sthe flat cap pigeon pie eaters fromYorkshire… dirty Leeds United.

Chelsea fans have a dislike for Leedsthat probably dates back to the mid-to-late-60’s when then-Leeds managerDon Revie said that Chelsea werenothing but a bunch of long-hairedflamboyant overpaid southern sissies.He had to have something to moan

about as we actually had a decent recordagainst them; not great, but consideringthey had a pretty outfit we had doneokay.

Our record against Leeds is as follows:Played 101 W 33 D 29 L 39. The oddamount of games was due to World WarII. Actually, we’ve played them 109 times- the first 8 they were known as LeedsCity. Our biggest win over “City” was a4-0 mauling in March 1906.

Good Days:

Apr 8th '33: W (H) 6-0, Goalscorers:Oakton, Mills, Gallagher, Gibson 2, ProutMar 16th '35: W (H) 7-1, Goalscorers:Spence 2, Bambrick 4, BurgessApr 28th '84: W (H) 5-0, Goalscorers:Dixon 3, Thomas, CanovilleAug 12th '72: W (H) 4-0, Goalscorers:Garland 2, Osgood, CookeMar 27th '71: W (H) 3-1, Goalscorers:Osgood, Houseman 2Highest Attendance against Leeds atHome: 58,452

Bad Days:

Dec 10th '27: L (A) 5-0Nov 3rd '34: L (A) 5-2, Goalscorers:Gallagher, MillsMar 28th '59: L (A) 4-0Oct 07th '67: L (A) 7-0Jan 10th '70: L (H) 2-5, Goalscorers:Hollins, Osgood

Played for both: Tony Dorigo, VinnieJones, David Hopkin, Jimmy FloydHasselbaink

The 300-game-plus club: The firstplayer I thought I would put in this

segment is our first captain to ever liftup a meaningful trophy: Roy Bentley. Heplayed a total of 367 games, scoring 150

goals. He made his Chelsea debut athome on Jan 17th, 1948 againstHuddersfield Town. We lost 2-4 and Roydidn’t put the ball in the old onion bag -in fact, Roy’s first goal didn’t come untilMarch 26th in a 2-2 draw withManchester City.

The following season Chelsea started tosee that their 12,500 pounds was wellspent as Roy banged in a total of 21goals in 40 games. Not bad consideringwe were nothing but a below mid-tableteam.

The 1949-50 season didn’t see such agreat return for Roy. He scored just 17in the league, but he did hit 5 in our runto an FA Cup semifinal. Again wefinished just below mid-table. 1950-51turned into a bit of a disaster forChelsea and Roy; we finished 20th andRoy only scored 8 in 38 games. Two of those were in the last games of theseason. If you think '50-'51 one wasbad, '51-'52 wasn’t much better as thatseason we finished 19th. Roycontributed 12 goals in 32 starts andnotched another 5 FA Cup goals on our

way to yet another semifinal. In '52-'53we finished in the same spot as theprevious season, but this time ourcaptain scored 12 in 37 games and yetagain bagged another 5 in our run to theFA Cup 5th round.

1953-54 saw us make a little progressup the league as we finished arespectable 8th, which was not badwhen you consider we were handed ourbiggest ever defeat, 8-1 away at Wolves.Roy managed to break the 20-goalbarrier for the first time since the

'48-'49 season with 21 in 41 games.

The 1954-55 season saw our captainraise our first League championship and,along with Parsons 11 and McNichol 14,Roy grabbed another 21 in 41 games tohelp us win that first elusive title.

After winning the title the previousseason, 1955-56 was a bit of a letdown.We finished 16th, and even got beat bySpurs 4-0. Roy did get most of ourgoals, scoring 14 in 38 games. 1956-57started to see what was left of our

championship-winning team fade awRoy only played in four games - his lagainst She"eld Wednesday in a 0-0

draw.

After 367 games and 150 goals, apercentage of a goal every 2.43 gamRoy moved on to our little brothersdown the road, Fulham, for 8,600pounds.

Roy was a very good header of the bacould play with both feet and could bused as a winger at times. He laterended up playing as a center half. Hewas top scorer in 8 of 10 seasons anwas also capped 12 times (not enougby England. He played in seven FA Cu

semifinals and never won one.

Today Roy is worshipped around theBridge as much today as he was whelifted up the Championship in the1950s .

Useless information:- Joe Bambrick, Kerry Dixon, and MaHughes are our only players to scoretricks against Leeds Utd.- Manchester City have scored the mhat tricks against us (6) than any othteam.

Five for Thought:David Webb played in every shirtpossible for Chelsea except one; whanumber was it?A) 1, B) 7, C) 4, D) 11

Kerry Dixon scored 193 for Chelsea, who was his first hat trick against?A) Leeds, B) Derby, C) Brighton, D)Grimsby

Frank Leboeuf missed one penalty foChelsea. Who was it against?

A) Arsenal, B) Blackburn, C) CharltonDerby

Who was Chelsea’s sub in the 1970 FCup Final?A) Baldwin, B) Dempsey, C) Hinton, DBoyle

Who scored the last ever goal in the 2century?A) Poyet, B) Morris, C) Terry, D)

Jokanovic

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KNOW YOUR CHELSEA: by Tel Stevens

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CHELSEA IN AMERICA INVADES THE CPO LUNCHEONStory and photos by Josh Winter

Friday was the big day we’d been waitingfor all week, as we were attending theChelsea Pitch Owners AssociationAnnual Lunch, a somewhat fancy a! airthat required a suit and tie for the gentsand dresses for the ladies. We met Bethin the lobby of the hotel and headedover to The Bridge to the Copthornehotel again. We milled around for a bittalking to everyone, then headed aroundto the Press Room and got another brief tour of the stadium as we headedaround to the entrance to the Museum,where the pre-lunch drinks were beingserved. After an hour or so we were toldto go into the hall and find our tables.

There were 41 ex-players in attendance,plus various other people associatedwith the club. Got to meet Bruce Buck,Clive Walker, Jason Cundy, Kerry Dixon,Bobby Tambling, Tore Andre Flo, PaulCanoville, Roy Bentley, Tommy Langley.

We also got to meet Lynne Osgood,Ossie’s widow. She was an absolutelylovely woman, very gracious about allthe attention she gets because of Ossie.Beth presented her with a CIA calendarand a check from the CIA for the Osgoodfoundation. Then she asked us to signher calendar, I was incredibly honoredby this. Just seemed so surreal that theKing of Stamford Bridge’s wife ask me tosign something!

The big highlight was getting to meetSteve Clarke. He seemed really happy to

be there and with the warm reception hegot from everyone in attendance. Theyhad a quick moment to honor everythinghe did for the club and then Steve wasnamed a Vice President of the CPO andgot a very nice round of applause forthis.

Jonny Gould was the MC for theafternoon and he was pretty funny,poking fun at a lot of the people there.They had an auction with four niceprizes, one of which was getting to gowith the team to a Champions League

away match, including riding on theteam plane, staying in the team hotel

and VIP tickets to the match. That wentfor a cool £10,000! They also auctionedo! an afternoon at Cobham watchingthe boys have a training session andgetting a nice tour of the facility. Overall,the auction raised about £20,000 for thePast Players Trust and the ChelseaFoundation, not too shabby!

A nice funny bit with Tim Lovejoy andOmid Djalili was done talk show stylewith Gould. The last entertainment bitfor the afternoon was when Gouldbrought up Bobby Tambling and KerryDixon, who as you know are the #1 and#2 goal scorers for Chelsea, respectively.They were chatting about their goalscoring e! orts, then talk turned toDidier Drogba and whether or not theythought he could surpass them. Thenthe crowd got a real surprise when Didihimself came out on stage to continuethe discussion! Drogs informed us thathe would like to finish his career as aChelsea Blue, which got a huge round of applause from the crowd.

Afterwards we went into Frankie’s Bar,attached to the Bridge for a bit, but aswe had to get up early to catch our train

to Newcastle the next day, Ed and I leftand packed up our stu! and crashed outearly.

I’m just going to go on record right nowand say that Beth is an absolute Legend!I know that the trip was made so muchbetter by being there with her. We got tomeet so many amazing people and getto see and do so much stu! that Iprobably wouldn’t have ever thought of.It’s amazing how many peopleassociated with the club she knows.

Everywhere we went around the Bridgwe were stopped by people she knew

that wanted to say hi. And all the locwe met were so amazing! Everyonewelcomed us with open arms and weso thrilled that we had traveled all thway just to see the team play and attthe CPO. I have to say, anyone who isthe fence about taking a trip over thedo whatever you can, save up whatevmoney you need to and take the trip,will be a truly memorable occasion! Ialready checking the calendar to seewhen I can make my next trip over!

This is merely a clip of Josh's

story from his trip to

London in November - for

the full tale, check out the

CIA message board!

Cup Exploits: FA Cup 1999-2000:Rd3, Hull City (A): W 6-1; Goalscore

Di Matteo, Wise, Poyet 3, SuttonRd4, Nottm Forest (H): W 2-0;Goalscorers: Leboeuf, WiseRd5, Leicester City (H): W 2-1;Goalscorers: Poyet, WeahRd6, Gillingham (H): W 5-0;Goalscorers: Terry*, Morris, Zola,Weah, FloSF, Newcastle (N): W 2-0; GoalscorePoyet 2Final, Aston Villa (N): W 1-0;Goalscorer: Di Matteo*John Terry’s first Chelsea goal

It's in the numbers:1117: Games David Calderhead, oufirst ever manager, was in charge970: Goals Peter Bonetti conceded30 Seconds: Probably the shortestChelsea career ever, by Joe Sherrinwho came on as sub for Zola in 19913: Hat tricks by Jimmy Greaves; stiChelsea record4/28/1877: The day Stamford Bridgopened as the home of The LondonAthletic Club

Quiz Answers: D, B, B, C, B

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This year Chelsea didn’t get a BoxingDay fixture, as we were instead

scheduled to play Arsenal in a Londonderby on December 27th. But more oftenthan not our Blues do get a traditionalBoxing Day fixture on December 26th. Infact, in the past seven seasons, Chelseahad a December 26th fixture every year,racking up a 3-3-1 record (with the onlyloss being a disappointing 4-2 result atCharlton Athletic in 2003 – ouch). Thetrouble for American fans is that BoxingDay isn’t a big holiday (let alone anobscure Hallmark card holiday). So, if you’re scratching your head saying,“What on earth is Boxing Day anyway?”

fret not. I’m here to help.

Boxing Day has been a national holidayin England since 1871. It’s alsocelebrated in Ireland (where it’s called StStephen's Day), Canada, and a slew of

other countries. The interwebs are full of stories claiming to tell the true origin of

the holiday (hint: it has nothing to dowith throwing out the boxes you usedfor Christmas gifts). But silly stories likethat aside, there is actually a fair amountof disagreement amongst historians asto how Boxing Day came about. Thedebate is divided into two camps.

The first camp maintains that theholiday arose out of the Anglicantradition of collecting donations for thepoor during Advent. On the day afterChristmas, the boxes containingdonations were opened and the contents

distributed to the poor. #The other camppoints to a non-church traditioninvolving boxes. Many servants to thearistocracy and other lower-classworkers used to have to work onChristmas. It was traditional for their

bosses to give them a present/bonusa box, obviously) on the day after

Christmas. #The servants then had thday o! and could enjoy the contents their boxes and have a belatedChristmas celebration. #Both of thesetraditions are historically documentebut it’s unclear on which actuallyinspired Boxing Day.

The history probably doesn’t mattermuch to modern Britons, who get a do! work and have loads of qualityfootball matches to watch. In moderntimes the holiday has also morphed ia big shopping day – a sort of English

equivalent to America’s Black Friday.So to recap: a day o! work, lots of football to watch, good shopping deaand presumably delicious Christmasdinner leftovers. Why don’t we celebrthis in America? It sounds fantastic.

THE HISTORY OF BOXING DAYby Allison Kasic

matter how you prefer to communicatewe are trying to cover you. And itdoesn’t end there. FSC has beenworking with us a lot this season, andtomorrow (as I write) will see the firstinstallment of a new concept for themof supporters in the studio, so I hopeyou got to see your fellow CIA membersfrom So Cal on TV, singing andrepresenting us in our finest tradition!

Thanks to all the organizers in So Cal,Cruz, Huby, Wray and Danny for all thehelp in working out the details andgetting this taken care of. So don’t sitback, get involved, there is no way oneperson or even 20 right now can doeverything. The more folks that getinvolved, the more things happen, andthat brings value to the membershipand rewards to the folks involved. Sofrom the bottom of my heart thank youto all those that are getting more and

more involved.

And lastly, each season we plan a springtrip to the Bridge. This year it was votedfor the trip to be around the West Hammatch (and if you are wondering whyyou didn’t get a voice in on that, it wason the bulletin board for weeks if notmonths). A group of us will be over thereat that time, so if you are interested in

joining us, all you have to do is let meknow and I can work with you as to a

solution. The group trip is always funand we try and pack as much stu! inseven days as is possible. It should be agreat time! And that is not all, we willget a chance to present our Player of theYear award on that day. If Carlo allows,two members will get the opportunity towalk onto the pitch at Stamford Bridgeand give the player the trophythemselves. So what will the trophy be,the discussion is on the board, as well asthe voting on the player. We havedecided to make this award for LAST

SEASON, so if you have not votedonline or on the board GO AND VOTEyour favorite players NEEDS YOURVOTE. It takes about one minute, jusgo to http://www.chelseainamerica.com/mem/poy/. If you have a family membershevery family member is entitled to onvote including the kids. Let them votBut please hurry - we need to finalizethe trophy and get it ready soon.

Now I give it back to you - what do ywant CIA to be? Do you have an idea,something you want to get involved iWhatever it is, contact your chapterhead and they will get the idea to theboard and bring even more goodthings to the club. Remember CIA isyou and everyone else working

together to make things happen. Andyou want your money’s worth fromyour dues, if you want to get more foyour money, get involved! If you donknow how, just ask your chapter heaor send me an [email protected]

Best wishes to you and yours. Keep tfaith!CAREFREE!Beth #

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