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A brief history of Chester City FC
By Nathan Jackson
July 16 2008
Chester City FC have had serious problems for the majority of the last 15 or so years. Several relegation battles and just the odd successful season every now and then have summed up Chester in recent years, but they did have a reasonable amount of success in the period before that.
Not a lot of people know this, but Chester City originally played in a red and white kit. Infact, they have a long history of changing the colour of their kit on a regular basis, home kits including red, green, blue and black, amongst others.

Founded as Chester FC, they changed their name to Chester City FC in 1983. They were founded in 1885 when Chester Rovers and Old King's Scholars FC amalgamated into one side and played their games at Faulkner Street. They joined the Combination League in 1890 and they moved to the Old Showground in 1898. They left that ground a year later when the club disbanded and that ground was destroyed to make way for housing.

Whipcord Lane was the location for the re-emergence but that was only their home for another 5 season, moving to Sealand Road. It was the scene of their first ever success, winning the Combination League in 1909, a year before they moved to the Lancashire Combination League.

They become founding members of the Cheshire County League. They replaced Nelson FC in the Football League in 1931 and they had a relatively successful period. They didn't finish outside of the Top 10 in the thirties. They also recorded their highest ever League win in this time, a 12-0 thumping of York City. 1933 also saw Chester win the Welsh Cup before successive Division Three North Cup wins.

However, the good times were over for a while. They failed to record another top ten finish after 1947 until the merging of the lower leagues in 1958. They were placed in Division Four but would have to wait another six seasons before finishing in the top half of the table. Fortunes because to change again though and all five of their strikers scored 20 or more goals in the 1964/5 season, the team scoring 119 overall.

They continued to miss out on promotion and by the 1974/5 season, they were the only team in the Football League to have never won promotion. However, as Lincoln City fans know all to well, Chester finally achieved that in aforementioned 1974/5 season, beating the Imps to promotion on goal average. Ken Roberts was the first Chester manager to win promotion for the men from the Deva Stadium. They also qualified for the League Cup Semi Finals that season, eventually going out 5-4 to Aston Villa at Villa Park.

A period of stability followed before record their best finish since the League's merged, finishing fifth place in 1978. Chester won the Debenhams Cup, only one of two teams to ever do so. It was that day's equivalent to the Johnstone's Paint Trophy. The later seventies saw them sell Ian Rush to Liverpool for a massive £300,000 (an extremely large transfer fee in those days).

Chester couldn't score goals without Rush and they quickly returned to the bottom division, only avoiding relegation out of the Football League due to being re-elected. It was at this point that Chester FC changed to Chester City FC. This changed the luck of the team, winning promotion back to the Third Division in 1986 before they left Sealand Road and they had to share with Macclesfield Town at the Moss Rose ground.

They moved to the Deva Stadium in 1992, just in time for the newly renamed Division 2 (the modern day League One). A relegation was followed by an immediate promotion before a barebones squad was relegated again in 1995.

Chester City entered administration in 1998 before they lost their Football League status in 1999/2000. They spent several years in the Conference and barely escaped relegation again in 2002, losing in the Playoffs to Doncaster a year later in the first ever Conference Playoffs. However, they did return to the League a year later as they stormed the Conference to win promotion.

Mark Wright resigned just 24 hours before their first game back in the League. Ian Rush was brought back to the club to replace him, but he could only see Chester slowly slip down the table and battle relegation. To this day, Chester City are the only Conference Champions to finish above the team that won the Conference Playoffs in the season following promotion, finishing one place above Shrewsbury Town.

Chester have struggled against relegation in every season since.

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