Post by QPR Report on Apr 29, 2009 6:19:09 GMT
David Conn/The Guardian who's always worth reading
David Conn/The Guardian
Tears of joy as AFC Wimbledon prove they are in the wider interest of footballThe south London club built by and owned by its fans has taken another step towards the Football League
AFC Wimbledon's captain, Jason Goodliffe, celebrates with the trophy and fans after winning the Blue Square South Conference league Photograph: Steven Paston/Action Images
At Kingsmeadow stadium in south London on Saturday, the sun gave generously of itself, AFC Wimbledon's ecstatic players sealed the Blue Square Conference South championship, and grown men cried.
Barry Hern, 57, explained that he began supporting Wimbledon 41 years ago in the old Southern League, and he followed them the whole crazy way up, the full lamentable way down and on into this rebirth. Somewhere along the way he found himself standing close to the same bloke in the enclosure at Plough Lane and they ended up meeting at matches, including the 1988 FA Cup final victory over Liverpool, for more than 25 years. "He died at Christmas," Hern sobbed, gazing at the celebrations. "To think he isn't here, to see this."
Rob Cornell, 37, dated his Wimbledon vintage to 1980 when, aged eight, he watched the Dons beat Hartlepool 5-0 in the old Fourth Division. "It was awful to see the club I loved taken away," he said, welling up, referring to the 2002 FA commission which sanctioned moving Wimbledon to Milton Keynes. "To have the club back, and to win this promotion to the Conference Premier is a credit to so many people who have put so much work into rebuilding it."
You could hear that sentiment a lot as the fans gathered hours before kick-off to eat chips, drink beer and soak it all up; appreciation for the collective human effort. Apart from the manager, Terry Brown, formerly at Aldershot and Hayes, and his capable players AFC is a volunteers' club built and sustained by commitment. The chief executive, Erik Samuelson, a former PricewaterhouseCoopers consultant who took early retirement, works all hours at Kingsmeadow on a contract which pays him a guinea a year. "It sounded grander than a pound," he smiled.
AFC Wimbledon is still wholly owned by its supporters via the one-fan-one-vote Dons Trust, and run by those who fought the Milton Keynes franchise and then, when the decision was lost, formed their own club and started again. On Saturday, looking ahead to meeting Luton Town, Wrexham, Oxford United and other formerly solid Football League clubs in the Conference Premier next season, fans recalled AFC's first game, in 2002 in the Combined Counties League where they stood on hay bales placed around the pitch at Bottom Meadow, Sandhurst Town's pitch in Berkshire.
Nobody talks much about the outfit which quickly dropped the Wimbledon name to play as MK Dons, in a new stadium built in partnership with Asda/Wal-Mart, who were granted planning permission for a new superstore as part of the development. Samuelson, the former chairman Kris Stewart, every fan you speak to, say simply, for shorthand: "Our club was stolen from us."
Wimbledon had risen from non-league to top flight with Crazy Gang thuggery and a touch more skill than they let on but became a wreck by losing touch with their roots. Sam Hammam, the chairman, pocketed £5m profit by selling Plough Lane to Safeway in 1994 and for years Wimbledon rented at Selhurst Park which the fans recall as dismal. Hammam made a further £25m by selling the club to the Norwegian shipping billionaire Kjell Inge Rokke and his associate, Bjorn Gjelsten, who believed Wimbledon were to become the Premier League's Dublin franchise, until the Irish FA blocked the move.
The music entrepreneur Peter Winkelman had been seeking a London club to move to Milton Keynes for years and Charles Koppel, Wimbledon's then chief executive, clutched it as a solution. The fans opposed it, arguing that if Winkelman wanted a league club in Milton Keynes he should do the work to build one up. Koppel succeeded in steering the issue to an FA commission, which was staffed by Alan Turvey, chairman of the Isthmian League, Steve Stride, then Aston Villa's operations director, and Raj Parker, a solicitor at Freshfields. By two to one – Turvey, few doubt, voted against – they allowed the move, persuaded it was a route to preserving Wimbledon's future. Yet within months, Rokke put the club into administration.
The phrase which the fans still shake their heads at was handed down in response to Stewart's evidence, that he would not go to Milton Keynes, and would instead work with other fans to form their own club. "Resurrecting the club from its ashes as, say, 'Wimbledon Town'," opined the panel, "is, with respect to those supporters who would rather that happened … not in the wider interests of football."
There were fans at Kingsmeadow wearing T-shirts bearing that phrase, which were issued to commemorate AFC Wimbledon winning the Combined Counties League, and the Premier Challenge Cup, in 2004. Watched by crowds unheard of at that level, AFC won the Ryman League First Division in 2005, then after two seasons in the Ryman League Premier play-offs, Brown arrived last year and they won promotion. Saturday's sell-out crowd to see them ascend to the Blue Square Conference Premier, which Brown warned will be "a major step up", was 4,722 – bigger than all the Conference Premier attendances except at Oxford and Cambridge, and higher than the League Two crowds at Aldershot, Accrington Stanley, Darlington, Macclesfield and Notts County.
When Samuelson talks of the future, he says "when", not "if", AFC make it to the Football League. Many more tickets could have been sold for Saturday's coronation, and he believes there is abundant latent support in the miles of suburbia around. Given past traumas, the club is committed to never again overreaching itself financially, nor to be taken over by one rich man. Brown is planning to renew the squad with "young, hungry players". He said: "This is a very special place. The fans had their club taken away, no ground, they held trials on Wimbledon Common. It is run by volunteers, but it is very professional – not like a lot of non-league clubs, which are run by fly-by-nights."
The captain, Jason Goodliffe, scorer in the fluent 3–0 victory over St Albans, said that when the players join they are given an introduction into the history of the club and why it means so much. "The players are fully aware of the heartache the fans went through and how they rebuilt their club," Goodliffe said, grinning. "It's fantastic to lead a side in front of these supporters."
Outside, crowds settled in for the evening. Niall Couper, fan and author of The Spirit of Wimbledon, said the campaign against the franchise, then the effort to build the new club have brought supporters together. "Before, I'd go to Selhurst with my brother, we'd get there at five to three, nod to the fans around us and go home straight after the game. Now, we know so many people. It really is a community of fans, it has nothing to do with money, it's about supporting a club."
As they make their journey onward, they hope not to lose this spirit, but to spread it – in the wider interests of football.
The wider interests of football
A striking feature of the Wimbledon story is that none of the football men who decided the club's fate are still working in the game. The FA's first arbitration panel, in January 2002, which decided that the Football League, when rejecting the Milton Keynes move, had not given it full enough consideration, was staffed, alongside Charles Hollander QC, by David Dein, then Arsenal's vice-chairman, and Douglas Craig, the chairman of York City.
The subsequent FA commission, which allowed the Milton Keynes move and said that the fans' promise to form their own club was "not in the wider interests of football," featured Steve Stride, then Aston Villa's £162,000 a year operations directors, alongside a solicitor, Raj Parker, and Alan Turvey, chairman of the Isthmian League, who is believed to have voted against.
Next year in the national Blue Square Conference Premier, AFC Wimbledon will play York City, among others. Just weeks before the arbitration panel in 2002 Craig, the long-term chairman, threatened to kick City off its Bootham Crescent ground and sell it for housing unless he and fellow directors were paid £4.5m. He was eventually given almost £2m for the ground. Stride resigned from Aston Villa in May 2007 after Randy Lerner's takeover introduced a new board of directors. Dein was ousted from Arsenal in 2007 and subsequently sold his shares to Alisher Usmanov for £75m.
www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2009/apr/28/afc-wimbledon-blue-square-conference-south-champions
David Conn/The Guardian
Tears of joy as AFC Wimbledon prove they are in the wider interest of footballThe south London club built by and owned by its fans has taken another step towards the Football League
AFC Wimbledon's captain, Jason Goodliffe, celebrates with the trophy and fans after winning the Blue Square South Conference league Photograph: Steven Paston/Action Images
At Kingsmeadow stadium in south London on Saturday, the sun gave generously of itself, AFC Wimbledon's ecstatic players sealed the Blue Square Conference South championship, and grown men cried.
Barry Hern, 57, explained that he began supporting Wimbledon 41 years ago in the old Southern League, and he followed them the whole crazy way up, the full lamentable way down and on into this rebirth. Somewhere along the way he found himself standing close to the same bloke in the enclosure at Plough Lane and they ended up meeting at matches, including the 1988 FA Cup final victory over Liverpool, for more than 25 years. "He died at Christmas," Hern sobbed, gazing at the celebrations. "To think he isn't here, to see this."
Rob Cornell, 37, dated his Wimbledon vintage to 1980 when, aged eight, he watched the Dons beat Hartlepool 5-0 in the old Fourth Division. "It was awful to see the club I loved taken away," he said, welling up, referring to the 2002 FA commission which sanctioned moving Wimbledon to Milton Keynes. "To have the club back, and to win this promotion to the Conference Premier is a credit to so many people who have put so much work into rebuilding it."
You could hear that sentiment a lot as the fans gathered hours before kick-off to eat chips, drink beer and soak it all up; appreciation for the collective human effort. Apart from the manager, Terry Brown, formerly at Aldershot and Hayes, and his capable players AFC is a volunteers' club built and sustained by commitment. The chief executive, Erik Samuelson, a former PricewaterhouseCoopers consultant who took early retirement, works all hours at Kingsmeadow on a contract which pays him a guinea a year. "It sounded grander than a pound," he smiled.
AFC Wimbledon is still wholly owned by its supporters via the one-fan-one-vote Dons Trust, and run by those who fought the Milton Keynes franchise and then, when the decision was lost, formed their own club and started again. On Saturday, looking ahead to meeting Luton Town, Wrexham, Oxford United and other formerly solid Football League clubs in the Conference Premier next season, fans recalled AFC's first game, in 2002 in the Combined Counties League where they stood on hay bales placed around the pitch at Bottom Meadow, Sandhurst Town's pitch in Berkshire.
Nobody talks much about the outfit which quickly dropped the Wimbledon name to play as MK Dons, in a new stadium built in partnership with Asda/Wal-Mart, who were granted planning permission for a new superstore as part of the development. Samuelson, the former chairman Kris Stewart, every fan you speak to, say simply, for shorthand: "Our club was stolen from us."
Wimbledon had risen from non-league to top flight with Crazy Gang thuggery and a touch more skill than they let on but became a wreck by losing touch with their roots. Sam Hammam, the chairman, pocketed £5m profit by selling Plough Lane to Safeway in 1994 and for years Wimbledon rented at Selhurst Park which the fans recall as dismal. Hammam made a further £25m by selling the club to the Norwegian shipping billionaire Kjell Inge Rokke and his associate, Bjorn Gjelsten, who believed Wimbledon were to become the Premier League's Dublin franchise, until the Irish FA blocked the move.
The music entrepreneur Peter Winkelman had been seeking a London club to move to Milton Keynes for years and Charles Koppel, Wimbledon's then chief executive, clutched it as a solution. The fans opposed it, arguing that if Winkelman wanted a league club in Milton Keynes he should do the work to build one up. Koppel succeeded in steering the issue to an FA commission, which was staffed by Alan Turvey, chairman of the Isthmian League, Steve Stride, then Aston Villa's operations director, and Raj Parker, a solicitor at Freshfields. By two to one – Turvey, few doubt, voted against – they allowed the move, persuaded it was a route to preserving Wimbledon's future. Yet within months, Rokke put the club into administration.
The phrase which the fans still shake their heads at was handed down in response to Stewart's evidence, that he would not go to Milton Keynes, and would instead work with other fans to form their own club. "Resurrecting the club from its ashes as, say, 'Wimbledon Town'," opined the panel, "is, with respect to those supporters who would rather that happened … not in the wider interests of football."
There were fans at Kingsmeadow wearing T-shirts bearing that phrase, which were issued to commemorate AFC Wimbledon winning the Combined Counties League, and the Premier Challenge Cup, in 2004. Watched by crowds unheard of at that level, AFC won the Ryman League First Division in 2005, then after two seasons in the Ryman League Premier play-offs, Brown arrived last year and they won promotion. Saturday's sell-out crowd to see them ascend to the Blue Square Conference Premier, which Brown warned will be "a major step up", was 4,722 – bigger than all the Conference Premier attendances except at Oxford and Cambridge, and higher than the League Two crowds at Aldershot, Accrington Stanley, Darlington, Macclesfield and Notts County.
When Samuelson talks of the future, he says "when", not "if", AFC make it to the Football League. Many more tickets could have been sold for Saturday's coronation, and he believes there is abundant latent support in the miles of suburbia around. Given past traumas, the club is committed to never again overreaching itself financially, nor to be taken over by one rich man. Brown is planning to renew the squad with "young, hungry players". He said: "This is a very special place. The fans had their club taken away, no ground, they held trials on Wimbledon Common. It is run by volunteers, but it is very professional – not like a lot of non-league clubs, which are run by fly-by-nights."
The captain, Jason Goodliffe, scorer in the fluent 3–0 victory over St Albans, said that when the players join they are given an introduction into the history of the club and why it means so much. "The players are fully aware of the heartache the fans went through and how they rebuilt their club," Goodliffe said, grinning. "It's fantastic to lead a side in front of these supporters."
Outside, crowds settled in for the evening. Niall Couper, fan and author of The Spirit of Wimbledon, said the campaign against the franchise, then the effort to build the new club have brought supporters together. "Before, I'd go to Selhurst with my brother, we'd get there at five to three, nod to the fans around us and go home straight after the game. Now, we know so many people. It really is a community of fans, it has nothing to do with money, it's about supporting a club."
As they make their journey onward, they hope not to lose this spirit, but to spread it – in the wider interests of football.
The wider interests of football
A striking feature of the Wimbledon story is that none of the football men who decided the club's fate are still working in the game. The FA's first arbitration panel, in January 2002, which decided that the Football League, when rejecting the Milton Keynes move, had not given it full enough consideration, was staffed, alongside Charles Hollander QC, by David Dein, then Arsenal's vice-chairman, and Douglas Craig, the chairman of York City.
The subsequent FA commission, which allowed the Milton Keynes move and said that the fans' promise to form their own club was "not in the wider interests of football," featured Steve Stride, then Aston Villa's £162,000 a year operations directors, alongside a solicitor, Raj Parker, and Alan Turvey, chairman of the Isthmian League, who is believed to have voted against.
Next year in the national Blue Square Conference Premier, AFC Wimbledon will play York City, among others. Just weeks before the arbitration panel in 2002 Craig, the long-term chairman, threatened to kick City off its Bootham Crescent ground and sell it for housing unless he and fellow directors were paid £4.5m. He was eventually given almost £2m for the ground. Stride resigned from Aston Villa in May 2007 after Randy Lerner's takeover introduced a new board of directors. Dein was ousted from Arsenal in 2007 and subsequently sold his shares to Alisher Usmanov for £75m.
www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2009/apr/28/afc-wimbledon-blue-square-conference-south-champions