Wimbledon’s board, attracted by Peter Winkleman’s Milton Keynes Stadium Consortium, wanted to move the club to a new location nowhere near their original home, in an attempt to parachute in a Football League club to a city that couldn’t be bothered to gain one by the old-fashioned method of winning football matches.

As we discussed in the first part of this series, the Football League Board had rejected the move, but Wimbledon had appealed, and it was now up this F.A. panel to decide. It was up to three men to determine the future of a club over a century old: Alan Turvey, chairman of the sub-conference Ryman League; Raj Parker, a commercial solicitor; and Steve Stride, Aston Villa’s Commercial Director.

The report outlined all the negative reaction this had drawn. In the “objections” section, it noted that opposition had not just come from Wimbledon fans; “respected football writers”, “a Parliamentary All Party Committee”, “Merton Borough Council” had all expressed their disapproval, “and of course the Football Association, the Football League, the FA Premier League and the Football Conference Ltd have all provided statements which stress the identification of clubs with community, the sacrosanct nature of the pyramid structure based on sporting merit (English football does not allow a franchise system)”.

Most of the hundreds of communications the panel had received were against the proposal, it said. “Supporters’ associations and individual fans from many other clubs and people from as far afield as the United States, Australia (Wimbledon Supporters Down under), Russia and Norway have also expressed similar views.”

The panel, in a 2-1 verdict, concluded that despite this, “Our decision is that, in light of its exceptional circumstances, WFC should be given approval to relocate to Milton Keynes.”

The report argued Wimbledon F.C. faced liquidation (this remains unclear as the club did not release its accounts), that it had “no viable South London” prospective ground (despite claims to the contrary by Merton Council) and most amazingly, that “WFC’s links or roots in its community are of a nature that can be and are agreed should be retained by WFC and MKSC, albeit in a new location. The Football League can ensure these links are put in place and preserved.”

Peter Winkelman, heading the Milton Keynes Stadium Consortium, could have written parts of the report himself. The report noted that “His enthusiasm for the project and it has to be said for Milton Keynes itself, was almost infectious, and obviously genuine. . .He believes that with over 40,000 school children in the area WFC will be fantastic news.”

“The potential fan base is huge. 8 million people live within one hour’s drive,” it blathered, as if Wimbledon were moving from a sleepy village on a remote island to a thriving metropolis. The report contrasted Winkleman’s vision of a 45,000 seater stadia with Wimbledon’s poor attendance figures and squalid groundshare with Crystal Palace.

The report added that “WFC intends to work with the fans to win them over and communicate with them to preserve the Club’s identity and meet their concerns as to travel. A glossy brochure has been produced which makes the case.”

The summary did, reluctantly, note that for some odd reason this “glossy brochure” had not won over the vast majority of Wimbledon’s fans to the move. “The most difficult issue was, obviously, how to win the hearts and minds of WFC’s fans to this proposal and to make it possible for them to continue to support and identify with the Club.”

This, though, would be easily remedied. The Board had agreed to subsidise travel and season tickets! Fans would even be consulted on the design of the stadium “to properly reflect the history and traditions of WFC.” Fans weren’t being consulted on where the stadium would actually be located, since they might want that to, well, “properly reflect the history and traditions of WFC”, but they could have a say in the design.

Dave Boyle, writing in Four Four Two magazine, captured perfectly this madness. “The report descends into farce by the end with the Commission seriously arguing that fans might find the transition to Buckinghamshire easier if they arrive at the new stadium along Fashanu Way or Sanchez Avenue. They also feel that if a museum was built in Wimbledon it would lessen the blow.”

The report dryly observed that the fans did not quite see the issue as one of marketing, but of life or death for their football club, inextricably linked to their community.

We heard both Mr Kris Stewart (Chair, WISA) and Ms Louise Carton-Kelly (Chair, the Dons Trust) in person. It was clear from their evidence that they care passionately about WFC[..]

Perhaps the most important point put forward by WFC’s fans is that the Club would die as WFC upon a relocation to Milton Keynes. Indeed when Mr Stewart was, in effect, asked by counsel for the Club, to choose between life for the Club in Milton Keynes, or death in Merton, he replied that he regarded both as death. Instead he hoped to resurrect the Club and start at the bottom of the pyramid. He would of course be free to do that if the circumstances so arose.

The committee was unmoved. “We do not believe, with all due respect, that the Club’s links with the community around the Plough Lane site or in Merton are so profound, or the roots go so deep, that they will not survive a necessary transplant to ensure WFC’s survival.”

The panel, with all due respect, was wrong. The fans founded their own club, A.F.C. Wimbledon, and have fought tooth and nail to ensure Milton Keynes Dons are not able to lay claim to any of the history of the club. This was finally recognised by all parties last year when Wimbledon’s honours were returned to Merton. We will look at how the two new clubs have fared since the panel’s decision in the remainder of this series.

Photo credits: dogbreath1; szczels

The former are a non-League supporter run club created in protest against the move of Wimbledon F.C. to a town sixty miles away with no connection to the club’s history. The latter are derided by A.F.C. Wimbledon fans as “Franchise F.C.”, yet the media are now lauding MK Dons’ success as they sit atop League Two.

Before exploring what’s happened in each case and the meaning of it for the future of football, we’ll need to explain the remarkable rise and fall of Wimbledon F.C. in the first place.

Wimbledon F.C. rose from the grit and mud of Plough Lane in the Merton Borough of London. They had long plied their trade in the nether regions of English non-League football since their founding in 1911, but made their name with some F.A. Cup giant-killing heroics in the 1970s, eventually winning a place in the Football League.

Not ten years later, now in the top flight thanks to a series of promotions, in 1988 Wimbledon headed to the F.A. Cup Final to take on Liverpool. Vinnie Jones (pictured right on another occasion making friends with Paul Gascoigne) and the rest of the “Crazy Gang” beat the “Culture Club” at Wembley Stadium 1-0.

It was an upset, but not another giant-killing, for Wimbledon weren’t half-bad: though criticised for their primitive style, they finished eighth in the top flight that year, and would stay there for another twelve years despite relatively small crowds and strictly limited financial resources.

That same year, the club’s hopes to build a new ground in Merton foundered. Again and again fans dealt with disappointment, and protested against new plans by their owner, Sam Hammam, to merge them with south London’s Crystal Palace. When Hammam said new football legislation made Plough Lane impractical, they ended up at Palace’s Selhurst Park anyway on a groundshare in 1991 that would last through the end of the decade, but they at least kept their identity.

Six years later, as David Conn puts it in The Beautiful Game?, “their soul was slowly freezing over at Selhurst Park” and Hammam cashed out, selling 80% of the club to two Norwegians. Soon it emerged that the Norwegians had bought in with a scheme to find Wimbledon a new home. But not only was it not in their native borough, nor in London, it was not even in England: the owners wanted to pack up and take the club to Dublin.

Over supporters’ protests, the Irish franchise idea was approved by greedy fellow Premier League owners who fancied a larger slice of the Irish appetite for English football. The Irish F.A., however, had other ideas, and convinced the English F.A. to step in and block the move.

It was a short-lived victory for Wimbledon fans. Hammam had left the club, and a new chairman, Charles Koppel, arrived in 2000. The same season, Wimbledon fell out of the Premier League and lost over three million pounds. The fans wanted a return to Merton, but Koppel said it wasn’t feasible.

And then along came Peter Winkelman, described by Conn as “a shaggy haired music producer with a salesman’s silver tongue” and a man with a plan: to move Wimbledon to his own town, Milton Keynes. It was all part of a property development plan involving a new stadium and supermarket for Milton Keynes, 45 miles north of London.

Milton Keynes shopping centre [Mike and Debs]

Milton Keynes was the largest of the Government-created “new towns” of the 1960s in the south-east of England, built to soak up and relieve the congestion in London and known as a somewhat sterile place. Winkelman said that it was the largest town in Europe without a professional football club. There were four non-league teams there already, but Winkelman argued a major new development project would be more easily financed by transplanting a current League team there as bait.

The Wimbledon board embraced the idea, as the owner’s had put themselves in trouble after their original plan to move the club had been scuppered. The fans were furious. To move the club 62 miles away, to a home not even in London, to a place with no connection to the club at all, was absolute anathema.

The Football League’s rulebook was a serious issue for Winkelman to deal with. It stated that “The location of the ground, in its relation to the conurbation. . .from which the club takes its name or with which it is otherwise traditionally associated, must meet with the approval of the Board.” It didn’t. The Football League Board voted against the move in August 2001, and fans praised the decision as a victory against the introduction of the concept of “franchising” football teams to England.

Milton Keynes Station [UKPlus Photos]

Koppel appealed, and the matter was ultimately decided upon by an F.A. panel in 2002. Stating the club’s financial future was too bleak as things stood, and claiming to see no available site for a new ground in South London (despite a Merton Borough councillor’s assurance a 20,000 seater stadium was viable at Plough Lane), the panel approved the move.

As When Saturday Comes wrote at the time of the “They decided, like a character from Alice in Wonderland, that Milton Keynes is Wimbledon’s real home.”

The second part of the series later this week will look at what became of this wreckage.