In the first part yesterday, we told the tale of a Chelsea Ladies team forming for the 1992/93 season and promotion in the early years. Now we take the story on...

1996/97 was a year of consolidation but third place meant no promotion play-off spot. While the men were lifting their first FA Cup in a generation, the Ladies lost two local cup finals and failure to reach the National League meant losing the best players was a recurring theme.

Every year the management had to half re-build the team. Frustration! Five years in existence, there was still plenty of catching up to do before Chelsea could offer the rewards, the platform and the amount of training other clubs were able to.

There had, however, been the chance to show our skills at that men’s 1997 FA Cup final when Chelsea beat Middlesbrough, with the two clubs’ women’s teams playing an exhibition match on the Wembley turf beforehand.

A year earlier, in another exhibition game, this time at Stamford Bridge, Chelsea Ladies had taken on Manchester United as part of the club’s Eurofest, an event organised by then chairman Ken Bates to run alongside the end of Euro ‘96, which was being hosted in England.

The match took place the day before the final between Germany and Czech Republic. The female Blues side had also played Arsenal at the Bridge in May 1995 as part of a charity day.

Back in the world of competitive football in the second half of the 1990s, restructuring of the league pyramid threatened to take Chelsea even further away from the top tier but we successfully made it into a new South East Counties League for 1998/99, although a second-place finish was still not enough to climb into the elusive National League structure (the Blues were beaten to that by Wembley Mill Hill).

-We conclude the story tomorrow with the team picking up maiden titles, cups and caps...