Football clubs often have nicknames associated with them. Whether it is a nice nickname or a derogatory one will depend on whether or not it is the supporters of their rivals that have come up with it. In the case of Chelsea, the club’s nickname has actually changed over the years, meaning that the one that is used today is not the same as the one that was used originally. You might not think that a nickname can be changed once it has been bestowed upon a football club, but Chelsea are proof that it very much can be if there is a desire to do so from someone important enough.
Chelsea Pensioners
In 1682, King Charles II founded the Royal Hospital. It was designed to be a retreat for veterans, with the idea being that former soldiers would be given a hostel in which to base themselves, rather than a pension. By the time that King William III and Queen Mary II took to the throne, the Royal Hospital had yet to be constructed entirely, so an army pension was indeed given to those that were no longer in the forces and had either been in service for more than 20 years or else had been injured whilst active. By the time the Hospital opened, there were more pensioners than there were places for them.
As a result, a decision was made to have both In-Pensioners and Out-Pensioners, with the latter being those who received their pension from the hospital but weren’t guests of it. Those that stayed in the hospital, meanwhile, would forgo their pension in exchange for what was effectively somewhere to live. The Royal Hospital remained in charge of the distribution of army pensions until 1955, at which point the phrase ‘Chelsea Pensioner’ became used more regularly to describe those that were In-Pensioners, whilst Out-Pensioners all but ceased to be used as an expression.
The Links to Chelsea
You might well be wondering what, exactly, the assignation of pensions to former army personnel has to do with Chelsea Football Club. The answer comes in the form of the location of the Royal Hospital, which could be found in the London district of Chelsea. The Royal Hospital is located less than two miles from Stamford Bridge, Chelsea’s home ground. As a result, when the football club was formed in 1905, it was known as ‘The Pensioners’. In fact, an exploration of the history of the Chelsea badge shows that it had a Chelsea Pensioner on it during the early years.
Even now you will find more than a few older football fans who call the club ‘the Pensioners’, in spite of the fact that there has been no official link between them and the Chelsea Pensioners for several decades. That being said, there have still been a few references made by the club to their history in the more modern era. When they won the Premier League title at the end of the 2004-2005 season, for example, a group of Chelsea Pensioners formed a guard of honour for the players and staff to come out through when they went to lift the trophy, with the same thing being done in 2010.
The Foundation of the Blues
It was thanks to the appointment of Ted Drake as Chelsea manager that the club abandoned its use of the Chelsea Pensioners nickname. He was a young and dynamic manager who wanted to rid the club of its association with a decidedly less exciting image. One of the first things that he did was to change the club crest, getting rid of the Chelsea Pensioner from it and replacing it with a lion. Obviously, some wanted to take on the nickname of the Lions, but that was a nickname that had already been taken by Millwall, another club that plays its games in the Greater London area.
As a result, Drake decided to keep things much more simple. The club played its matches in a blue kit, first doing so in the 1910-1911 season when a blue top was married to white shorts and black socks. It made complete sense to Drake, therefore, for Chelsea to become known as the Blues rather than the pensioners. It cemented the association of the club with the colour, which has remained the case ever since. Chelsea aren’t the only side known for their colour, with the likes of Everton also being called ‘the Blues’ by their supporters, but it has been their nickname since Drake made it one.
Chelsea & Playing in Blue
It might seem odd to think of it now, but Chelsea haven’t always played in blue kits. In fact, when the club was first formed, the home kit worn by the players was more of a lime green. It was matched with white shorts and black socks, whilst the away kit kept the shorts and socks but introduced a maroon top. Blue was first introduced into the home kit in 1910, with the away top becoming white the year after and married up to white shorts and blue socks. The away top became red in the 1933-1934 season, whilst the socks returned to black at the same time.
The white away kit returned in the wake of the Second World War, then in the 1960-1961 campaign the home kit introduced white socks. It took until the 1966-1967 division for Chelsea’s home kit to go virtually all blue, with the only exception being the white stripes that were found on the shorts. Finally, the nickname introduced by Ted Drake more than a decade before finally began to make complete sense. In the decades that followed, the club experimented with the colour of the socks, but the shorts and shirt remained largely the same, justifying their nickname as ‘the Blues’ forever more.