In Focus | AFC Wimbledon
In the first of a new series, Sam Moakes turns the spotlight on our clubs.
First up:
AFC Wimbledon
LEAGUE ONE’S AFC Wimbledon are one of the founding members of Fair Game, and their story personifies the organisation’s ideals and aims.
A club relocating almost 60 miles away from the fans it had represented for 113 years would almost certainly spell doom on most occasions. However, when the owners of Wimbledon FC took the club’s league place and dumped it in a town in Buckinghamshire in 2002, the fans refused to give up. They fought to keep their heritage and traditions alive and revive the heart of their community: the football team.
And thus, AFC Wimbledon was born. Whilst the physical club moved up the M1 and continued its life in League One of the Football League, AFC Wimbledon harnessed the intangibles left behind to fight for the pillar of their community.
And so, their life scrapping at the bottom of the football pyramid began, in the Combined Counties League Premier Division, the ninth tier of English Football. Their first match, a pre-season friendly, was played in front of a crowd of 4,657 in a display that proved the importance of the club to so many.
Four promotions later and AFC Wimbledon found themselves in the Conference, just one more leap away from the Football League. They became the youngest ever club, after just nine years of existence, to reach League Two three years later via the play-off final.
Fast forward a decade and AFC Wimbledon now compete in League One, alongside their former incarnation Milton Keynes. A play-off final victory in League Two brought them to the third tier of English football in 2016, as the club has continued to smash barriers on the back of fan-ownership and a community focus.
Despite just hanging on to their League One status in recent years, with two 20th and one 19th place finishes in their previous three campaigns, AFC Wimbledon are about more than just what happens on the pitch. Next season should see the Dons playing in front of fans at a reconstructed Plough Lane – regarded as the spiritual home of the football club 30 years after the club last played on it.
Chief Executive Joe Palmer explained just how important the new stadium is for the club’s culture and the community: “It took us eight months of lobbying to get the authorities to let us have this…this is the catalyst for what we want to do and how we can be different as a club.” A message on the wall outside the dressing room really shows what AFC Wimbledon stand for: “To successfully continue the greatest story in football.”
It is this fan focus, and Wimbledon’s remarkable journey, that makes them an integral symbol of the Fair Game movement. Former Dons defender John Scales is also an ambassador for Fair Game, and spoke about its importance: “This is not a breakaway – but it’s absolutely a breakthrough.
“We simply cannot afford to ignore the chaos that is strangling the life out of our beloved game anymore. It needs to be tackled at source, otherwise calamities like Bury and Macclesfield, for example, will become more and more common.”
These issues are at the heart of every AFC Wimbledon fan. They almost saw their community ripped apart by the heavily opposed relocation of their football club, as a result of financial mismanagement. The power of fans was realised as AFC Wimbledon reignited the town’s fire, and broke records in their journey back to the EFL, including a world record of 78 unbeaten league games in 2004.
AFC Wimbledon’s story is an example of how these difficulties can be overcome, but by no means should it ever get to that stage. These are the catastrophes that Fair Game is working tirelessly to oppose. Make no mistake, Fair Game is unmistakably necessary, and as a founding member, AFC Wimbledon’s story should inspire us all of the power of football.
