AFC Wimbledon: The fan revolution that saveD a club

Fair Game’s Steven Piper takes a closer look at the history of Wimbledon’s football club

MARK LEWIS remembers the exact date of his first Wimbledon match—December 1977. “It was at Plough Lane, with my dad,” he says. “That’s where it all started.” He soon became more than just a fan—writing for the club’s fanzine through the 1980s and standing on the terraces during Wimbledon’s remarkable rise to the 1988 FA Cup Final.

But just a decade later, the club was drifting into crisis. “The writing was already on the wall when Sam Hammam sold the ground in 1989,” Lewis explains. “We moved to Selhurst Park and lost a part of our soul. The club became rootless, and rumours started swirling.”

Those rumours soon turned to reality. In the late 1990s, with attendances dwindling and relegation looming, Wimbledon’s owners proposed a move to Dublin, rebranding the club as the “Dublin Dons.” Lewis was by then part of Wimbledon Independent Supporters Association and active in protesting what many fans saw as a betrayal.

“The whole thing felt surreal,” he says. “The Premier League seriously considered letting a London club play its home matches in Ireland.”

That plan was eventually dropped. But worse was to come. In 2001, the club was sold to a consortium of businessmen in Milton Keynes. “There was no proper engagement with supporters,” Lewis recalls. “We were left out entirely.”

Despite organised protests, alternative proposals, and thousands of fans walking away, the decision was made. A tribunal convened by the FA in 2002 allowed the club to relocate - marking the only time in English football history a team has been permitted to move 60 miles and retain its league status.

“They said it wasn’t in football’s wider interest to keep the club in Wimbledon. That was devastating. The decision told us everything about how the game was being governed.”

Lewis was at Sandhurst Town when AFC Wimbledon played its first match—on his birthday. “I watched from a hay bale. It was one of the most moving days of my life.”

AFC Wimbledon was born not just in defiance, but out of a deep commitment to doing football differently. It is now majority-owned by its supporters through a trust model, with fans holding over 75% of the club.

“We lived through it—childhood to adulthood,” says Lewis. “We lost our club, but we didn’t lose what it meant.”

Volunteers were essential in the early years—selling programmes, stewarding games, managing logistics. Lewis himself ran an unofficial matchday programme during the protest years and remained closely involved with the fan movement. That spirit remains strong today. “There’s still a massive culture of volunteering here. We never forgot where we came from.”

The pain of the relocation still lingers. MK Dons—known as “The Franchise” among many Wimbledon fans—have been the subject of sustained protests (and terrace chants) ever since; “You know what you are,” the fans still chant, “you franchise bastards, you know what you are.”

But AFC Wimbledon’s story is ultimately one of resilience. The club is now back in League One, and after years in exile, has returned to a new stadium near the original Plough Lane. "Walking into that ground again—it was emotional,” Lewis says. “We’d come full circle.”

In the years since, the so-called “Wimbledon Clause” has been introduced to stop anything like this from happening again. But Lewis remains cautious. “There are loopholes still, and pressures in the modern game haven’t gone away. That’s why we need better regulation—real fan voice, proper due diligence, and ownership tests that mean something.”

He points to recent documentaries and growing awareness about fan ownership as signs of progress. “The fact that people are talking about this now—that wasn’t the case 20 years ago. AFC Wimbledon is proof that another way is possible”.

Looking back, the trauma has undeniably left a lasting legacy—both painful and powerful. “Even now, I get a tight knot in my stomach just thinking about it,” Mark Lewis reflects. “But we’re fundamentally in a better place. We’re in control of our own destiny.”

This article is part of a special series highlighting the voices of fans, clubs, and communities at the very time the Football Governance Bill is making its way through Parliament.