Almanac English Soccer – League Two: Round-up (Nov 16)

 

Aussie Wombles (Paul Harman) continues his series on his life as a Wimbledon fan, heading back to the lightning rise of the club in the 1980s, while giving us the scores from this weekend’s League Two matches.

 

When Fitzroy merged with the Bears in July of 1996, a few months later, in October, I started to follow Wimbledon. The sporting gods must have taken pity on my devastation of losing the Royboys, and offered me a club on the other side of the world to support? When I started to follow Fitzroy in 1989, the Lions had finished sixth and just missed out on the finals, they came from forty points down to win the reserves grand final, (the third quarter was one of the most violent quarters of football ever played at the MCG) and to me Fitzroy were just a normal, middling club, not as big as a Carlton or a Collingwood or an Essendon, on par with a Footscray or a St. Kilda. I was puzzled though, that in the 1986 finals series Fitzroy could draw over 66,000 fans when they played Sydney in a semi-final, but while the Footscray and the St Kilda’s could draw 15,000 against the interstate clubs during the home and away season, Fitzroy could only draw 5,000, I’d wonder where did all those supporters who watched them beat Sydney in the semi-final all go to in such a short time? I never thought the AFL would get rid of Fitzroy. Even though we were plagued with years of merger talks, I never believed it would happen. The AFL would finally come to their senses, realise the error of their ways and the merger talks would die down.

My best memories of Fitzroy were standing at the outer at Princes Park, my insecurities about who I was in life, how I was to fit in society, how I was supposed to act and talk and hold conversations and try and appear normal was forgotten when I was at the football. Being surrounded by Fitzroy supporters, I had all the security I needed. These other Fitzroy supporters, strangers but united by a love of a football club. I longed for belonging in life, and I belonged at Fitzroy.

But from October 1996 onwards, Aussie rules was lost on me (how could I support an organisation that went out of its way to get rid of the club I followed) and it was Wimbledon and the English Premier League. I’d set the alarm for Sunday mornings, the matches usually started at 2am, and I’d sit in the lounge room, listening to the radio on 2KY. I used to smoke and drink back then. I had a spin-top ashtray on the table next to my chair, that once you stubbed out your butt, you could press a button, and the top of the ashtray would spin and spin and the cigarette butt would disappear to the small hopper below. A nice touch – a clean looking ashtray instead of the ones clogged with butts to make you forget about the possibility of emphysema or lung cancer or other smoking related problems that could arise in later years. I always had a slab of Tooheys 250 mls stubbbies, known as ‘thrown-downs’ in the fridge, which when you had the thirst, would take about three gulps to finish one off, so my Sunday mornings, when it was dark and everyone was asleep would consist of listening to the commentary of a game while blowing smoke to the ceiling and swilling down beer after beer.

Wimbledon was in the middle of a winning streak when I started following them in 1996, and I was to find they had one of the more interesting stories of any English club. They were a non-league club for most of their history; were known as Wimbledon Old Centrals, then latterly the ‘Wombles.’ They won the FA Amateur cup in 1963, won three successive Southern League championships in the mid-seventies and were elected (there were no play-offs back then) to the Football League in 1977. They see-sawed between fourth and third divisions, being promoted and relegated in their first few years in the League, then they went from fourth to third to second division in three years, and in 1986 were promoted to the top flight, nine years after their initial elevation.

You would think the British press, with such a ‘rags to riches’ and ‘underdog’ story, would welcome Wimbledon with open arms to Division One; instead the club was met with derision and were made to feel an imposter against established and more famous clubs like Liverpool, Arsenal, Everton and Tottenham. This club playing at a ground that hadn’t been renovated for decades and could only hold ten thousand didn’t deserve their right to be in the top division, the pundits lamented, and with their tactics of the goalkeeper booting the ball deep down the other end of the ground so the Wimbledon forwards could hopefully scramble a goal was labelled ‘route one,’ and was equally derided by sports journalists. ‘Where’s the skill in that?’ they’d complain, and the journalists hoped their stay in Division One would be a short one, and they’d soon drop down to the lower divisions they belonged in.

Against all expectations, Wimbledon finished mid-table in their first year in Division One and went one better two years later and won the FA Cup in 1988, defeating raging favourites Liverpool in one of the biggest cup shocks in history. Lawrie Sanchez put Wimbledon ahead in the 37^th minute; Liverpool was awarded a second-half penalty and John Aldrich, who was about to be replaced by Aussie Craig Johnstone had his penalty shot saved by Dave Beasant and Wimbledon hung on for a famous 1-0 win. BBC commentator John Motson delivered his famous line after the match, ‘The Crazy Gang has defeated the Culture Club.’ The photo of captain Dave Beasant accepting the cup from Princess Diana after the game is one of Wimbledon’s more famous images. Wimbledon was a founding member of the Premier League in 1992, and while they never finished high enough to qualify for European competitions, and they flirted with relegation a couple of seasons, to the end of the nineties, were a mainstay in the top division of English football.

The year I started to follow them, in 1996/97 they made it to the semi-final of the FA Cup, got knocked out of the League Cup on goal difference to Leicester, and their seven game Premier League unbeaten run helped them finish the season in eighth place with 56 points. Every two months, the latest edition of the Wombles Down under magazine arrived in my letterbox and I learnt all things Wimbledon. I wasn’t standing in the outer at Princes Park like I did with Fitzroy, but I had a club to follow, and I belonged again.

When the League commissioned the Taylor report after the Hillsborough tragedy and recommended that stadiums be all seating arenas, Wimbledon’s dilapidated ground at Plough Lane was deemed unsuitable for Premier League football, and the club began a temporary ground sharing arrangement with Crystal Palace’s at nearby Selhurst Park while they investigated options of trying to find land or build a modern stadium in Wimbledon.

Three events that unfolded in the late nineties led to a decision that was to split English football in the early 2000s.

Firstly, Wimbledon’s owner, Sam Hamman sold Plough Lane to a supermarket chain in 1997, denying Wimbledon the chance to move back to their original ground.

Secondly, he sold the majority of his shares in the club to a Norwegian businessmen.

Finally, Joe Kinnear, Wimbledon’s popular manager suffered a heart attack before a game against Sheffield Wednesday in 1998 and was replaced by Egil Olsen.

Wimbledon was relegated from the Premier League at the end of the 2000 season, culminating in one of the more controversial decisions made by the FA, and well, really, as I was to find out, it was Fitzroy all over again. The sporting gods were mocking me after all.

 

League Two results 16/11/2024

(With a nod to my favourite British show, Blackadder, which aired its final episode from 35 years ago recently.)

Accrington Stanley 2 Swindon 2

Barrow 1  The Sir Anthony Cecil Hogmanay Melchett front line all-stars, Wimbledon 3

Bromley 1 Carlisle 1

Colchester 1 Bradford 1

Crewe 2 Notts 0

Doncaster 1 Salford 1

Harrogate 2 Chesterfield 1

The Baldricks without a cunning plan 3 Cheltenham 2

Morecambe 0 Port Vale 1

Newport 0 Grimsby 0

 

Matches postponed

Tranmere v Fleetwood

Walsall v Gillingham

 

 

Read more from Aussie Wombles HERE

 

 

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