They. [69][99] Winkelman then offered the ground to Wimbledon. If you would like to change your settings or withdraw consent at any time, the link to do so is in our privacy policy accessible from our home page. Wimbledon become a member of the Football League as late as in 1977 and reached the first division nine years later. The entire history of Wimbledon Football Club remained ours. [85] Twenty Irish clubs "reaffirmed their opposition" to Wimbledon playing in Dublin the following month;[88] a week later Reuters called the proposal "dead and buried". [170][181] John Gurney, who had just become the chairman of Luton Town following a takeover by a consortium from Hong Kong and the United States, briefly floated the idea of buying Wimbledon F.C. MK Dons initially claimed Wimbledon F.C. players had worn[n 16] were replaced by white shirts, shorts and socks, with black, red and gold as accent colours. (commonly shortened to MK Dons). [96] In December that year, Wimbledon were reported to be considering the football and greyhounds option again. Wimbledon Stadium, also known as Wimbledon Greyhound Stadium, was a greyhound racing track located in Wimbledon in southwest London, England. We were one of the founding members of the Premier League in 1992, where we stayed for eight consecutive seasons and produced some of the most-famous players of that era. On the one hand, Wimbledon as they were: homeless, in debt, undersupported, unapologetically unglamorous, and burdened with fans that as far as the commission was concerned either didn't really. [46] Clyde kept their original name,[45] while Meadowbank renamed themselves Livingston Football Club. The Milton Keynes Development Corporation approached Luton proposing a new all-seater stadium in central Milton Keynes, housing either 18,000 or 20,000 spectators, as part of a leisure and retail development. [142] Winkelman told reporters that even if the appeal were unsuccessful "our door will be open to any club in trouble". [115] He attested to a vast untapped fanbase for football in Milton Keynesa "football frenzy waiting to happen", he said. That has to be the tastiest FA Cup game I've ever known. [89] Vocal opposition from Wimbledon fans emergedafter a friendly match in August 1997 fans holding "Dublin=Death" and "Dons Belong in Merton" placards refused to leave the stadium for two hours. [2] Rumours that the groundshare would eventually result in the Dons and the Eagles merging led Hammam to say "Id rather die and have vultures eat my insides than merge with Crystal Palace". The club was founded in 2002 by a group of Middletown residents who had been supporters of the Wimbledon Football Club that moved to Milton Keynes Dons a few years earlier. "[65] Abandoning his interest in MK City,[65][66] Noades sold Wimbledon to Hammam in 1981 for 40,000. [57] Finally, on 5 December 1992, Charlton had their first match back at the Valley, a 10 win over Portsmouth. [217] AFC Wimbledon's chief executive Erik Samuelson said in response: "Now, at long last, we can start planning with confidence to give AFC Wimbledon a secure future at the heart of the community the club represents. [183] In late June, after Wimbledon F.C. [65] Planning to move Wimbledon there by amalgamating with an established Milton Keynes club, Noades purchased debt-ridden Southern League club Milton Keynes City (MK City; formerly Bletchley Town)[n 1] for 1. "[83], Hammam later claimed to have looked at every possible stadium site in Merton. We first moved to our legendary home, Plough Lane, in 1912; we won the coveted FA Amateur Cup in 1963, we were elected into the Football League in 1977 after winning a hat-trick of Southern League titles and we won the FA Cup in 1988 with a famous 1-0 triumph over Liverpool at Wembley. Erik was backed by an army of loyal volunteers and devoted staff. [46], In English non-League football, events surrounding Enfield F.C. [156], The commission report described redeveloping Plough Lane, which Merton Council insisted remained viable "if there is a will for the club to pursue this option", as the only recourse for Wimbledon other than Milton Keynes. [30], At the end of the 197879 season, 20 leading non-League clubs left the Southern League and the Northern Premier League to form the Alliance Premier League. [8][9][10] This site was chosen as it was equidistant from London and Birmingham, close to main roads and railways, and near Luton Airport. Manage Settings [62] Koppel re-adopted the National Hockey Stadium as his preferred interim destination, announcing a plan to convert the stadium for football and play there from the start of the 200304 season. youth players and members of the pressfor the Tuesday-night game against Rotherham United on 29 October 2002,[2][173] setting a post-Second World War record for the top two tiers. [67] With political control of Merton Council having changed, Hammam secured the 8million sale of Plough Lane to Safeway supermarkets in 1998. The vast majority of the team's fans switched allegiance to AFC Wimbledon in protest. [n 7] South Shields of the Third Division North relocated 8 miles (13km) west to Gateshead in 1930 and renamed themselves Gateshead A.F.C. in August 2002 that its continued use of the Wimbledon double-headed eagle device for its logo was illegal, so the club adopted a new badge before the 200304 season. As Wimbledon's move was delayed several times, the club was placed in administration and many top players were sold. Follow our timeline and experience the highlights from over 125 years of Wimbledon's Football Club Scroll [146] Under FA Rule 'F', the Football League and Wimbledon were informed of these appointments; neither objected. [245] [1][2][3] Two similar club relocations had occurred in the Scottish professional ranks during the 1990s, but the permanent relocation of an English League club to another conurbation was unprecedented. Where did the Baltimore Colts play in the CFL? Together, they navigated us through a labyrinth of planning regulations and meetings - and even the threat posed by then Mayor of London Boris Johnson - until permission was granted for AFC Wimbledon to build a new ground on the site of the towns famous but then dilapidated greyhound stadium. [65] "They were very keen to get a Football League club, effectively a franchise if you like, into Milton Keynes to take up that site," Noades said in a 2001 interview. AFC Wimbledon were formed in 2002 by Wimbledon FC supporters dismayed by the Football Association's decision to allow the club to move to Milton Keynes. [219] Wimbledon eventually sold Kingsmeadow to Chelsea to provide part of the financing for their new stadium. [3] "If it moves it will mean nothing to us," said Marc Jones, a WISA spokesman. Practically speaking, the Wimbledon split centred on the immediate interests of the two parties: the desire to run a profitable business set against the desire to watch a local football team. [95], Parker, Stride and Turvey sat at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer's Fleet Street offices on 14, 15, 16 and 22 May 2002. [4] Wimbledon began playing its home games at the new Donsdale Road Stadium in 2007. The statement concluded that "infinitely more harm would be caused to football if WFC went out of business" and that a "proportionate exercise of discretion would allow the 's creditors, but delayed while the Inland Revenue decided whether or not to pursue the club's 525,000 debt to the UK taxpayer before the Law Lords. But behind the triumphs were the disasters. The game was tied at 1-1 after 90 minutes of play and went into extra time. [32][n 3] "New communities have developed which lack clubs in League membership," Chester reported, in 1968. ", Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. We gave birth to the infamous Crazy Gang and we made a Womble our official club mascot! 's contentious transfer from south London to Milton Keynes After seven more seasons in League One, the team was promoted to the Championship in 2015 under the direction of Karl Robinson, only to be demoted after one season. Many football fans develop a topophilic relationship with their club's ground that cannot be explained by the aesthetic appeal or utility of that ground: as was said of Wimbledon's original Plough Lane, 'a dump, but our dump'. have been latterly described as mirroring what was to occur at Wimbledon. Meanwhile, the original Wimbledon FC, which gained approval to move their club to Milton Keynes in 2003, renamed their club MK Dons (Milton Keynes Dons). The club aim to have the stadium ready for the 2020-21 season. Anybody considering moving a club, then, is immediately faced with a problem: do they stick with the old name, and look peculiar, or change that as well, and gravely weaken their claim to be the same club. The fans' club was accepted into the Combined Counties League, seven levels below Wimbledon F.C. [39], Promotion and relegation in and out of the Scottish Professional Football League was not introduced until the league system's reorganisation in 2014;[43] until then it was nearly impossible for sides outside the League to join. On its own, all the above was miracle enough. In 1994, Wimbledon's Irish manager Joe Kinnear contacted the football pundit and former player Eamon Dunphy to inform him of this and to put to him the idea of moving the club to Dublin. [62] The club's swift "fairytale" rise from obscurity through the English football pyramid caused it to reach a level of prominence far above that suggested by its modest home stadium at Plough Lane, which remained largely unchanged from the club's non-League days. [4] Hammam was outraged two years later when the council, attempting to retain the Plough Lane site for public use,[4] refused to sanction its sale for a supermarket redevelopment that Hammam said would finance a new ground at the dog racing site. by the move to Milton Keynes",[231] renounce any claim to Wimbledon F.C. Well: Newcastle, Southampton through in League Cup after shootout victories, Despite the optimistic exclamation mark, none of these claims proved to be true. Dunphy was enthusiastic about the idea and became its main proponent in Ireland over the next three years. [2][80] The respective Wimbledon and Crystal Palace reserve teams groundshared at Plough Lane after the Wimbledon first team left. They say they wanted to "move with the times" and "achieve consistency" between the sexes. Never again would we be at the mercy of private owners with their own egotistical agendas. [199][200], The new name of the relocated club was Milton Keynes Dons F.C.
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