As 2014 was drawing to a close, Millie Bright, for the second time that year, had a big decision to make.

She had already turned Chelsea down once, but following a season of outstanding performances for Doncaster Rovers in WSL 2, the Blues refused to go away.

This time, with Christmas around the corner, Bright’s answer was different. The 21-year-old said yes to Emma Hayes and Paul Green, and in doing so formed a bond with Chelsea that today is stronger than ever.

We know Bright now as captain of the all-conquering Blues team of the modern era - and a seasoned international who recently retired from Lionesses duty. But the Bright of 2015 was an altogether different person, and player. She remembers as well as anyone.

‘I was like a deer in headlights during my first training session at Chelsea,’ says Bright. ‘Everything was so fast paced and I was just trying to be a sponge in a professional environment.

'I had all these amazing players around me: Katie Chapman, Gilly Flaherty, Gemma Davison, Claire Rafferty, Ji-So Yun. I was in awe of those big names and the level that they were at. And comparing where I was at, I had some work to do.

‘But it was also a challenge. Everyone knows me, I'm super competitive. Even walking down the street, I want to get somewhere before someone else.

‘I was just energetic and wanted to win. I was learning about the club and what it's like to be pro, and learning about the opposition, and what having a football career could look like. I was like a baby; it was very new to me.’

Bright signed as a midfielder who could play in defence, but it soon became apparent that her future lay as part of the backline. She vividly recalls her first few games for Hayes’ side, ‘just tackling and running around and playing in different positions and trying to be whatever the team needed me to be’.

That selflessness has been a constant in the decade since, and epitomises the footballer and the leader Bright has become. Where she learned from the likes of Chapman, now Bright likes to think she is playing her part in passing on knowledge and helping the younger players establish themselves at Chelsea, just as she did in 2015.

‘I’ve not only evolved as a player – technically, reading the game - but as a person as well. Chelsea's been a massive part of my life, not just my career. The lessons that I've learned off the pitch and the things that I've gone through, they've shaped me into the person I am today.’

Chelsea Women’s growth in the past ten years has mirrored that of Bright’s. We had yet to win major silverware when she joined, but that had all changed by the end of her first season with victory in the FA Cup final followed by a maiden WSL triumph. Bright was voted the Chelsea Players’ Player of the Year.

Those successes came in spite rather than because of elite facilities behind the scenes. Change was afoot at Cobham, accelerated by Hayes, but, as Bright explains, there was still a long way to go.

‘When I first came, there was no canteen. We got our lunch in a little brown bag. You had a little sandwich and I remember I was buzzing! I rang my mum and I was like, “look what I got for lunch!” I had a little sandwich – I call it bread cake, Northerners will understand! - and a Milky Way, as well as an apple. That was lunch.

‘Our gym used to be where the kitman is now, in the shed, and we used to fit 23, 24 players in there. It wasn't great; you'd chuck a raincoat and do your sled pushes outside. Time goes so quickly, though, you probably forget how much changes. We've definitely come a long way, but I'm not ashamed to say that for a large period we didn't have everything.

‘So credit to all the people that have been involved over the years. I always mention Emma because she's the one who shaped this team from virtually nothing. She created the women's department. Everything that we have now is because of Em and the team that came before. That should never be forgotten. I got to witness what she fought for and the boundaries she broke.’

For Bright, it is a source of enormous pride that the team was able to achieve so much while having to deal with these very obvious limitations.

‘From the outside, everyone expects Chelsea to have everything. And for a large period of my time here, we didn't. We had the bare minimum, and we were still successful.

'That's credit to us as a group of players and a group of staff and especially the ones that came before. That’s what we were about. Whatever was in our way, we'd move it and we'd keep going and we'd do whatever it takes to win. That's a massive part of being a Chelsea player.

‘We’ve never needed everything to win and to be successful. That's a big lesson that I'll always carry with me. You don't need the fancy, the glitz and the glamour. And that's my background, where I come from and my childhood – you make do with what you've got and you never use excuses.

‘Thanks to Em, we're now in a place where we have an amazing gym, we have a wonderful building, we have better changing rooms. We have a meeting room with a nice big screen that's completely separate to where we eat our food. We're blessed with the things that we have, but we've not always had those things. It’s like day and night.’

Bright is determined to keep standards and expectations high. She hopes to keep having an impact at the club long after she has retired. ‘We've done all the hard work to get to where we are,’ she says. ‘We can't stop now.’

Part of the reason standing still is not an option is because of the increasingly high standards in the women’s game in this country. It is no longer the case that Chelsea can expect to win a hefty percentage of league fixtures comfortably – just look at how tight many of our games have been this season.

‘The quality of everything in the women’s game – be it the analysis, the pitches, the style of play – is what has improved the most. The speed of the game and the quality of the game have been constantly climbing and climbing.

'It's the highest that it's ever been, and that's the beauty of the women's game. It's always going to get better, because we're always pushing for more.

‘As everyone else around you improves, you have to keep moving with the times,’ adds Bright.

‘That's something we've done really, really well. The proof's in the pudding that we've won so many trophies and six leagues in a row. The winning mentality, doing whatever it takes to win, has been here from my very first season to now. That's something that I don't think we will ever lose.

‘It's down to bringing in new players to raise the bar, making it competitive, to the coaches that we travel on, the overnight stays before games so that we're fully prepared, the chefs, the quality of the food. It’s all those things that add up and that we've been chipping away at and ticked off. We’re always adapting and evolving.’

Nobody embodies the huge strides taken in the women’s game more than Bright, a beacon of consistency and quality at the top level for more than a decade. Her decision to sign for Chelsea all those years ago turned out to be a transformative one – for everyone involved.

In part two of our interview with Bright, which will be published on our channels on Monday, she chooses those matches of the 300 that, for different reasons, stand out above the rest...