Almanac English Soccer – League Two: The Wimbledon Clause (Nov 23)

 

Discussions of relocations is a touchy subject in English football. Arsenal moving across town from South to North London in 1913 and Manchester United moving from Newton Heath to Old Trafford are common examples of teams relocating. But they weren’t really big moves, although if Arsenal proposed to move back across the Thames again, like they did over a century ago, it certainly wouldn’t happen. These moves occurred early in the history of English football, as clubs and football organisations were finding their way, but as the decades passed and football became popular and part of English culture, the thought of relocating teams away from their traditional districts has always been considered unusual because of the nature of the relationship between clubs and their fans. But as we were to find out in the fast and loose finance of the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, with some club owners not having the best interest of the clubs they’d bought at heart, if teams were losing money, and owners could see a chance to make a buck, anything was possible.

Milton Keynes, in northern Buckinghamshire, 90 miles north of London was established by the Ministry of Housing in 1967 as a new city between London and Birmingham. Close to main roads, railways and an airport, and with a population that was expected to grow upwards of 250,000, there were expectations that eventually there’d be a team and a stadium both capable of playing top-flight football.

They quickly began courting potential clubs to move to the area. They approached London club and Division Three team Charlton Athletic in 1973, and the first approach to Wimbledon occurred in 1979. Wimbledon’s highest attendance at Plough Lane – 18,000 – was set in the 1930s against a team of sailors from HMAS Victory and was never surpassed during the 14 seasons they played in the League which included five in the Division One/Premier League, an indication that despite playing in the highest division of English football, that would always be regarded as a small club.

The owner of Wimbledon in 1979, Ron Noades could see the limitations of Plough Lane as a venue which would always struggle to attract large crowds, and recalled in 2001, that Milton Keynes ‘were very keen to get a Football League club, effectively a franchise if you like, into the area.’ But Noades came to the conclusion that a league club in Milton Keynes would not draw crowds much bigger than Wimbledon and abandoned his interest.

Luton Town, nicknamed the ‘Hatters’ because of their 17th century connection to the hat making trade, were approached in the 1980s about moving the 20 miles to Milton Keynes. Fans held protest marches and rallies. The wide unpopularity of the proposed move as well as the vehement opposition and backlash from fans and members of the community in Luton prevented it from happening and, over the years, the idea of any club relocating to Milton Keynes subsided.

A new venture, the Milton Keynes Stadium Consortium, or ‘Stadium MK,’ began operations in 2000, and the courtship of clubs commenced once again. They spoke to Luton and Wimbledon again, as well as Crystal Palace, Queens Park Rangers and Barnet about moving to a purpose-built 30,000 seat football stadium on the southern outskirts of Milton Keynes.

Wimbledon said ‘no’ in 1979 but were more accommodating to the idea in 2000. When Wimbledon moved to Selhurst Park in 1992, it wasn’t popular with supporters and all ten of the Premier Leagues lowest attendances ever were Wimbledon home matches. 3,759 against Coventry, 3,039 against Everton for example. Crowds picked up in the next few years, but it didn’t stop talks about relocating the club. While trying to move back to their borough of Merton, there were also proposals to move to Belfast and Dublin as well as Cardiff, Wigan or Bristol.

The owner, Sam Hamman, attempted to buy Selhurst Park so Wimbledon could have a permanent home, even if it was outside Merton, and when that failed, he sold his controlling shares of the club to two Norwegian businessmen. Wimbledon were relegated the following year, attendances halved, and their debts began to mount. In August 2001, Wimbledon announced their intent to move to Milton Keynes, a move opposed in every quarter. The League rejected the proposal but Wimbledon appealed it, stating that the only way the club could survive was to move to Milton Keynes. One of their arguments was that Wimbledon were already playing outside their borough, and no longer had any firm and extensive roots within the name of the club it represented. The proposal was readmitted, the Football League appointed an independent commission, and on the 28^th of May 2002, with the assertion from the commission that moving back to Wimbledon was not ‘in the wider interest of football,’ they approved Wimbledon moving to Milton Keynes.

Milton Keynes took Wimbledon’s place on the Division One table, Wimbledon fans boycotted their home matches at Selhurst Park, and the record low attendances they received when they first moved to Selhurst Park in the ’90s were replaced by even lower crowd figures. They changed their name to MK Dons, officially moved to Milton Keynes 18 months later and have been hopping between the bottom divisions ever since. The club is generally reviled by English football, fans and organisations where the act of buying your way into the football league was seen as crass and cynical, and MK Dons is universally called ‘the Franchise.’

The supporters of Wimbledon did what any supporter would do when they learned their club had been torn away from them – they all went to the pubs around Wimbledon and got drunk. But there were contingencies and strategies in place if the decision, which it did, was to go against them – start another club. A club for the fans, owned by the fans with legislation in place banning any outright majority ownership. Within weeks, a new side, AFC Wimbledon was formed, they entered a groundshare arrangement with Kingstonian, a club five miles from Plough Lane, and was accepted into the Premier Division of the Combined Counties League, five levels below Division Four of the football league. The club held trials in June 2002 on Wimbledon Common, open to any unattached player who felt was good enough to try out for the team. Over 230 hopefuls tried out, and the club’s squad for their first season was picked from that trial. AFC Wimbledon were promoted to the Isthmian League in 2004 and entered the football conference in 2008. While Wimbledon were a minnow team amongst the Liverpools and Manchester Uniteds when they played in the Premier League, in the divisions outside the football league, with their home ground support of 4,000 fans, and where other clubs would only draw 100 to 200 people, AFC Wimbledon were the Liverpool and Manchester United of the lower leagues. With their support and cash, promotions followed. They won a penalty shoot-out against Luton at Wembley in the National League play-off final and won promotion to the Football League in 2011, nine years after their reformation, and have been there ever since.

The only club who have come from non-league to league status – twice.

But their crowning achievement has to be, above reforming and climbing through the lower leagues and regaining their football league status, and after all the aborted attempts to move back into the borough of Merton, a feat unachievable whilst in the Premier League in the ’90s, that the club bought the site of the London greyhound arena, 200 metres from their original ground of Plough Lane, built a boutique stadium and, in 2020, returned to Plough Lane. Their first match in the new Plough Lane was in an empty stadium due to Covid lockdowns against Doncaster Rovers

They had to postpone games at the start of their 2024 season because a sinkhole appeared on their playing surface from a nearby river that flooded from heavy rains.

A sinkhole? What do the millennials say today when they are shocked at any unexpected news they receive? ‘That was not on my bingo card.’

In the British parliament, a group of Lords are pushing the newly-elected Labour government for a reform that would prevent club owners moving stadiums away from their original locations without fans consent, which has become commonly known as the ‘Wimbledon Clause.’ The current legislation allows a club to move as long as it doesn’t undermine the financial sustainability of the team and cause no significant harm to the club’s heritage. Campaigners have expressed concern that this is too ambiguous. ‘The heartache and pain Wimbledon fans suffered when their club was ripped away from their community and moved 60 miles up north should never be allowed to be repeated,’ one advocate announced. ‘Fans must be given the final say on any such move.’

I proclaim that the rivalry between AFC Wimbledon and MK Dons to be the fiercest in all of UK football. When MK Dons play away to Wimbledon, the scoreboard doesn’t feature their name, an action that once demanded a ‘please explain’ from the FA (can I laugh at the irony?) while Wimbledon supporters refuse to go to Milton Keynes to watch their team play. Celtic and Rangers, due to their sectarian differences and political tension, always had a rivalry tinged with menace, but it’s not as intense in the 21^st century as it was in the 20^th. Tottenham and Arsenal? Liverpool and Everton? City and United? Run-of-the-mill derbies. Wimbledon and MK Dons? A lasting and true rivalry, based upon disregard for tradition, ignoring supporters wishes, greed and theft. With both teams competing in League Two this season, it promises to continue.

 

LEAGUE TWO RESULTS

23/11/2024

 

Grimsby 0 Colchester 1

Notts 0 Newport 0

Wimbledon 0 Walsall 1

Carlisle 0 Doncaster 0

Chesterfield 1 Barrow 0

Gillingham 1 Harrogate 2

Swindon 2 Morecombe 3

 

Matches postponed

Bradford v Accrington

Fleetwood v MK Dons

Salford v Bromley

 

 

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