From over-the-top tackles and predatory paedophiles to a club in such financial crisis that players had to chip in to pay the coach driver, life at Chelsea FC in the 1970s was not for the faint-hearted. Yet for lifelong Chelsea fan Steve Wicks, it was a dream come true. Having arrived as an apprentice during the club’s most glamorous era, it wasn’t long before things started to fall apart; the sales of Alan Hudson and Peter Osgood and the resignation of manager Dave Sexton led to relegation and to make matters worse chairman Brian Mears had started to build a new East Stand at Stamford Bridge in the middle of a recession. One morning, Steve and his team-mates in the reserves turned up to find their kit was in the first team dressing room and, like a scene from The Dirty Dozen, Chelsea chairman Brian Mears announced that they had just two seasons to save the club and gain promotion. Thrown into the man’s world of the Second Division it was a case of sink or swim. Ray Wilkins was made captain at the age of 18 and they embarked on one of the most remarkable few seasons in Chelsea history, winning promotion in 1977 in the nick of time and holding their own in the First Division. In January 1979 Steve was forced to move with the club’s administrator telling him, “If you don’t move we cannot fulfil our fixtures.” Spells under wise-cracking Tommy Docherty at Derby and QPR followed before the arrival of Terry Venables at Loftus Road transformed both the club and the English game, while a second spell at Chelsea under new owner Ken Bates saw the club in crisis yet again, Steve played his last game in the infamous promotion play-off defeat to Middlesbrough. Then he retired rather than go along with Bates’ plan to hoodwink Spurs into signing him despite a career-ending back injury. This is the unvarnished truth of life behind the scenes at one of the biggest clubs in English football.
