It began, as football matters often do, with Match Of The Day. Watching were author and ghostwriter Jo Lake and her husband, former Manchester City prodigy Paul.

This November 2014 episode was commemorating the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of World War One. The 11th day of the 11th month, which in 1918 brought to a close four years of appalling tragedy, futility and loss of life, is still marked in the UK and elsewhere as Remembrance Day, including at football grounds. In fact, since the adoption of applause to celebrate the life of a lost club favourite, it is often the only time each season that rival sets of supporters unite in silence.

It is a cliché to say the minute’s mute reflection is “impeccably observed” but nonetheless true. As Jo and Paul watched the BBC broadcast the respectful pauses around English stadiums, then showed the list of footballers from each club consumed by the Great War’s appetite for souls, one name broke their contemplation.

Under the list of dead connected to Chelsea was George Lake. The surname set Jo thinking. 'Did you have an ancestor who was a footballer?' she asked Paul. Not as far as he knew, no. Writers are nothing without research skills, though, and Jo pursued this stirring line of enquiry. Perhaps it would inspire Paul, whose struggles with mental ill-health following career-ending pain and suffering she had documented in his autobiography I’m Not Really Here, in his continued recovery.

Paul was at the height of his powers when knee troubles struck at the age of 22 in 1990, stealing the future from him when an England World Cup place was his. He battled back but had to call it quits in 1996. He fondly recalls great tussles with the Blues’ midfield and the likes of Johnny Bumstead or Pat Nevin from his heyday in the late Eighties.

Wife Jo wanted to find out more about this namesake who played for Chelsea so she contacted me, as official club historian and compiler of that solemn list for Match of the Day. As an experienced family history researcher, George had been on my radar since 2009, so it took just a few days to grow the extra branches of his family tree. Yes, I confirmed to her, he was the older brother of Paul’s grandfather Harold: George Andrew Lake was in fact Paul Andrew Lake’s great uncle. Yes, they even shared a middle name too. The news was a huge surprise to his surviving family, who had no idea of this lost relative and footballer’s existence.

'I’ve begun to fully understand the experiences that our ‘Tommies’ endured and in particular, my Great Uncle George,' wrote Paul a few days later. 'It’s been quite an emotional couple of days and thanks to your help, we as a family can come to terms with this news and look to celebrate George’s all too brief life.'

As if that was not poignant enough, as part of his community role with the Premier League, Paul worked at a Truce Tournament in Belgium, at which under-12 teams of European clubs commemorated the guns falling silent 100 years before. The youngsters played matches on ‘no-man’s land’ and learned about trench warfare. Chelsea’s team won the tournament – not that that was the point: it was very much about the taking part.

Paul’s own travails now applied a different perspective to the World War One story and the connection to his great-uncle brought an emotional profundity to a ceremony at the Menin Gate, where ‘The Last Post’ was played.

There are 36 people buried at Frasnoy Communal Cemetery, 10 miles south-east of Valenciennes in northeast France. All fell in or after a 4 November 1918 attack across the Sambre-Oise Canal towards the German stronghold of Le Quesnoy, the same battle at which the famous war poet, Wilfred Owen, was slain.

George, the only serving Chelsea first-teamer claimed by the conflict, is one of the 36, dying two days later from wounds sustained on 6 November – just five days before peace finally flowed across Europe. He was one of the very last fatalities of the 886,000 among the British forces.

Further research uncovered George’s great-niece, Mrs Jacqueline Selwood, who knew all about her footballing ancestor. She still has the letter of condolence (pictured below), dated 20 November 1918 and penned to George’s brother William by his manager at Stamford Bridge, David Calderhead, and proudly preserved by the family.

'Dear sir,' wrote the Chelsea tactician. 'I am in receipt of your note recording the Death of your brother George. All the people at Chelsea beg to express to you and your family there [sic] very sincere sympathy in your great sorrow, he was very greatly respected by both Players and Officials of the Club and we were in the hope that after the War he would again play for us. He is the only Chelsea player who has fallen. I again beg to express our Sympathy. Yours faithfully, D. Calderhead.'

The matchday programme, the Chelsea FC Chronicle, carried an obituary commending George as 'hard working, efficient and consistent'. He was just 29 – two years older than his great-nephew when he was forced to retire.

George’s route to the Pensioners’ first team had not been an easy one. Born in Eastham, on the Wirral, in 1889, the son of a Devon stonemason, he had actually joined Calderhead’s side from Manchester City reserves in September 1913 and shown promise, becoming a stalwart of the Chelsea second string.

He had to wait patiently for his first-team debut, in place of injured Sam Downing, at West Bromwich Albion on 14 April 1914, a few games before the season’s close. Although he evidently played well, it was not the goalscoring bow widely reported, an error arising from mistaken identity that must momentarily have thrilled his family back in Manchester. Lake had actually switched positions with Fred Taylor from the team printed in the programme, and it was the latter whose long shot had actually eluded the goalie.

George remained a regular in the reserves as the 1914/15 season began, despite war breaking out at the start of August 1914. On many occasions, such as the charity match in aid of the National Relief Fund against a Grenadier Guards XI at the Bridge on 12 November, the man in centre midfield alongside him was none other than Nils Middelboe, the famous ‘Great Dane’.

Professional football closed down in 1915, though, and George returned home to Manchester and enlisted with the 39/66th 2nd East Lancashire Regiment Territorial Force as a cyclist, eventually arriving in France in February 1917.

The cyclist’s role in World War One was versatile and precarious. At home, cyclist units patrolled coastal areas where invasion might be expected. On the Frontline, it involved enemy reconnaissance, delivering dispatches or simple transportation (they were, after all, soldiers too). Wireless communication was for future battlefields and cable could easily be cut or damaged, so physical, life-or-death messages were regularly carried from command to trench or battery unit.

It is a measure of the peril involved that the first British casualty of the Great War was Private John Parr, a reconnaissance cyclist with the 4th Middlesex, killed in action at Mons, Belgium, on 21 August 1914.

The cyclist role had obvious crossovers with the athletic capabilities of professional footballers such as George, many of whom were otherwise deployed as physical exercise trainers. Often, though, two wheels proved incompatible with trench conditions and units found themselves stowing away their bicycles and joining regular units – generally on the frontline.

This happened to George, whose regiment suffered such devastating losses in the face of Germany’s Spring Offensive at the battle of St Quentin in March 1918 they were reduced from 9,500 fighting men to just 2,500.

This is probably when the Chelsea man was transferred to the 2/4th Battalion of the Hampshire Regiment, attached to the 62nd West Riding Division, and became embroiled in a relentless succession of battles as the Allies pushed through Picardy. It was here that his life was prematurely taken.

'We’re not sure why George’s story wasn’t passed down through the generations,' Paul pondered. 'My dad died in 1997 but never mentioned his uncle.'

Paul has since met his cousin Jacqueline and visited his once-forgotten ancestor’s grave in Frasnoy. He still reflects on his great-uncle’s heartbreaking fate: taken from the brink of stardom on the field of a great football club to the mayhem and destruction of the battlefield, losing his life as it was just beginning.

George Lake’s name is on the Great War memorial at Clayton Park, just a mile away from the Etihad Stadium. It also appears on the Chelsea FC Roll of Honour, among serving or former footballers killed during World War One.

This article first appeared in the Chelsea matchday programme in 2023. You can buy past copies of the programme here.