THE CHELSEA CRÈCHE

(6 votes, average: 4.83 out of 5)

Growing up is a terrible thing. You have all the freedom in the world to go to all the Chelsea matches you like then your Mrs is waving a little stick in front of you with two pink stripes that means you carefree days are ove …

Well, it’s not quite that bad but when this happened to me one of the first thoughts I had was “what about the footie?” Particularly as the Mrs comes to all the games with me.

Lucky I was then clued in to the fact that Chelsea runs a match day crèche. Most surprising of all is that it is free! As long as you have a valid match day ticket you can drop the nipper off with them an hour before the game!

I’ve now been using their services for 3 and a half years and my daughter absolutely loves coming to matches with us because she enjoys the crèche so much. Basically, I can’t speak highly enough of the service.

So it has been a bit of a surprise that over the past couple of months that numbers have been dwindling. While the credit crunch will no doubt mean that many fans with kids are having to turn their backs on the Bridge until things improve, I can’t help but feel that it’s more likely that fans don’t know the service is available.

They will take children aged between 1-5 years old and accept them from an hour before the kick off (so still enough time to nip down the pub!). They entertain them with all sorts of crafts (painting, plasticize etc) and have many different toys, books and games. Basically, kiddy heaven!

All the carers are fully qualified and vetted and are naturally gifted with children so you can fell confident in the care they give.

So what do you do if you want to take advantage of this service? You can book the kids in from the Monday before a match (only weekend games covered) by phoning 0871 984 1955 and wait to be put through to customer services.

It is first come first served as there are limited numbers available so booking sooner rather than later is advised.

If nothing else it’s a great way of indoctrinating the kids into being the next generation of Blues so they won’t be swayed by the glory hunters at school into supporting Utd.