In
late Spring, when John Carver, the self-styled Best Coach in the Premier
League, was seemingly piloting Newcastle United over the cliffs of footballing
destruction towards a relegation that was both inevitable and utterly preventable,
I made the crack that if the Magpies did go down, I’d only attend 1 match at
SJP in 2015/2016; against MK Dons, as the two sides could battle it out for the
specially commissioned Moral Bankruptcy Trophy. It got a bitter series of
laughs in the pub after a banal 1-1 draw at home to West Brom, but thankfully I
won’t have to address this particular issue just yet as NUFC fans were spared
the indignity of demotion to a lower tier that would have been entirely merited
following the performance of the club hierarchy and the vast majority of the
playing squad in the season just ended. However, on a wider football level, the
promotion of MK Dons to within one step of the Premier League, with the chance
of subsequent SKY-endowed riches provided by any future elevation to such
exalted company, leaves fans of all clubs needing to address the elephant in
the Championship. Are MK Dons really the pantomime villains of the contemporary
game that many observers who comment on the sociological rather than tactical
aspects of the sport insist they are?
Ever
since then Wimbledon chairman Charles Koppel announced his desire to relocate
the club to Milton Keynes in 2001, barely half a decade after Sam Hamman’s half
serious attempts to move from Selhurst Park, not back to their original home in
the borough of Merton, but to Dublin, the accepted and seemingly unchallenged
narrative among many fans and those writing in fanzines and blogs, is that MK
Dons are the embodiment of all that is wrong and evil about modern football
club owners and the influence they have over the game. Supporters of MK Dons
have been demonised, pilloried and scorned since the club moved to the (now
demolished) National Hockey Stadium back in 2003, with levels of derision
racked up further by subsequent events including the adoption of the club’s
current name the year after and the move to purpose built Stadium MK in 2007. Presumably
now the club will have an increased media profile, on the back of both
promotion and SKY’s contract to show 112 football league games from next season
onwards (the vast majority of which will undoubtedly be from the Championship),
then levels on enmity on social media and in the pages of independent
publications will presumably increase from snide sniping to all out condemnation
of the club and fans. It’s time for some perspective here; this is not the
Miners’ Strike and MK Dons are not the Nottinghamshire branch of the NUM
undermining King Arthur from within. This is football and we need to remember
that.
It
has to be stated in unequivocal terms that the relocation of Wimbledon to
Milton Keynes was wrong on every level; it caused the death of a club that you
simply had to admire for their spirit and pluck. I first recall them as a
Southern League club, holding then league champions Leeds United to a 0-0 draw
in the FA Cup fourth round in 1975, when impressively bearded keeper Dicky Guy
saved a Peter Lorimer penalty. I visited the astonishingly ramshackle Plough
Lane ground in 1987, to see Newcastle lose 3-1 to a muscular Crazy Gang,
enjoying their debut top flight season. The year after I cheered their FA Cup
win over Liverpool. In all of those incidents and in the years following, it
was the collective ethos of club and their small band of supporters that
deserved the respect of the whole football world for achievements against all
the odds. Everything seemed to unravel after relegation from the top flight in
2000. Changes of owners, changes of personnel, dwindling crowds; the usual
problems suffered by clubs in decline, though rarely are they terminal as in
this case. Wimbledon’s metamorphosis into MK Dons wasn’t a case of assisted
suicide; it was involuntary euthanasia; identity theft rather than a fresh
start. However, we’ve seen it before and nobody seems to have complained too
loudly about other clubs who had the rug pulled out of them by unscrupulous and
ambitious administrators, who transgressed not the rules of club ownership but
any moral justification they could claim for their actions.
On
Good Friday 2005, Spennymoor United of the Unibond Northern Premier League,
beset by financial difficulties and marooned at the bottom of the table, went
out of business after losing 5-1 away to Gateshead, calling time on 128 years
of history after 33 games of the very epitome of a season to forget. It was
very sad, but it wasn’t the end of the story. Two steps lower in the national
pyramid were Evenwood Town of Northern League Division 2; playing in the
smallest centre of population in the Northern League, with a miniscule support
and an ageing committee, they were taken over that summer by a consortium that
renamed them Spennymoor Town and moved their home from Evenwood’s Welfare
Ground to the Brewery Field in Spennymoor, effectively ending 115 years of
history in the process. Nobody complained that much; Spennymoor Town attracted
crowds of over 500 immediately, won the Northern League 4 times in 5 seasons,
as well as the FA Vase in 2013, before taking promotion to the Northern Premier
League. Bankrolled by local businessman Brad Groves, they are club clearly on
the up. On the surface, it seems like an unqualified success, but try telling
that to the family of Gordon Nicholson, Evenwood stalwart for 50 years, who
died of a broken heart less than six months after his team merged with Spenny,
in the same way that Austria merged with Germany in 1938.
Think
that’s bad? Consider the case of Clydebank and Airdrie United. In summer 2002,
Airdrieonians finished runners-up in the Scottish First Division, but their
financial situation was bleak. With debts totalling £3m, the club folded and
Gretna (there’s a whole other tale to be told about that club!) were elected to
fill the vacancy, starting in the bottom division. However, second division
Clydebank, who had assumed East Stirlingshire’s identity in 1964 to gain
admittance to the Scottish League, a move that saw the clubs forcibly demerged
the year after by the Scottish FA, were on their last legs following decades of
mismanagement. The club had lost its ground and were itinerant tenants at a
succession of west of Scotland lower league sides, while proposed moves to
Carlisle and Dublin (we’ve been there before, haven’t we?) fell through.
Clydebank were massively in debt and run on a shoestring budget by
unsympathetic administrators. When a consortium of Airdrieonians fans sought to
buy the club, the few remaining Bankies fans were powerless to object and the
club were forcibly moved to Airdrie and had its name changed to Airdrie United,
with the blessing of the Scottish FA. Not many voices were raised in support of
Clydebank, though my mate Neil remains a lifelong devotee of the Bankies and
one of those who keeps the reformed club going in the Scottish West Juniors
League, the equivalent on non-league north of the border.
Looking
at the cases of Evenwood and Clydebank, it seems that the only difference
between them and Wimbledon is the level of publicity engendered, with the
supporters being wholly innocent victims and the ones made to suffer in the long
term. The fabulous achievement of AFC Wimbledon in reaching the Football League
cannot be understated; nor can the superb successes of FC United of Manchester,
who recently opened their splendid new ground. However, what can we say to the
fans of Spennymoor United or Airdrie United? Are they in any way responsible
for the venal sleights of hand that obliterated Evenwood and Clydebank? Of
course they’re not; as fans, they want to have a club to support and, faced
with closure and oblivion themselves, they reacted to the good fortune that
maintained a link with their club with great glee. It may be schadenfreude by proxy, but I can’t
blame them for revelling in their good fortune. Of course, this is not the case
for followers of MK Dons, as they didn’t have a club to support in the first
place. However, if the main argument about moving Wimbledon to Buckinghamshire
was that football should be related to the community where clubs spring from,
could we not counter this by saying it is far better that those who live in the
environs of Stadium MK support their local side rather than Chelsea or
Manchester United from sofa or bar stool?
I’ve
seen MK Dons in the flesh; a dire 0-0 draw away to Doncaster Rovers where about
150 of them kept up an irritating nasal whine for the whole game, repeatedly
enquiring “shall we sing a song for you?” However, these are predominantly
young lads doing what young lads do; having a few beers and travelling up and
down the country, supporting their team. To classify them as scabs or collaborators
is plain wrong and opposed to the ethos of supporter commonality. MK Dons fans
are entitled to support their team and should be afforded the respect we give
to fans of all other sides. Mind I think their manager Karl Robinson,
successful though he undoubtedly has been, can almost match Alan Pardew for
smarmy, vacuous arrogance, but let’s not go there.
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