My son starts school in September, which means that henceforth, my wife and I will have to pay those inflated school holiday prices whenever we go abroad. So, this being our final year of getting “that cheaper deal”, we decided on going to the Hard Rock Hotel in Tenerife.

It has it all: the fabulous pools, a few footballer celebrities that I recognise, Danny Boyle, and probably the best background music scene any music lover would die for. And to boot, we have some very similar minded guests, amongst a few of whom it was not long until football became the hot topic of conversation.

One gent I spoke to grew up in Southampton, and went to the Dell for a decade before moving away and becoming a fully-fledged Newcastle United supporter. We spoke a bit about AFC Wimbledon and our history (he knew a lot about the rebirth, the prospective move to Plough Lane, and that we play at “Kingstonian’s old ground”), and we discussed, as is often the case when you meet a supporter of a Premier League team, a lot about their relegation, Rafa Benitez staying, and their subsequent promotion.

It is slightly irksome, yet amusing, that supporters of Premier League and (top eight) Championship teams seem to take the discussion away from lower league sides: Conference and non-league sides can garner some talk, but Leagues One and Two receive the bare minimum of debate. It is very much an ‘us and them’ chat that always starts to raise my eyebrows as high as the sky, especially as said Saints supporter looked at our league and said, “You see, I look at the teams in your league, and they’re all small clubs. Don’t get me wrong, I can see from the perspective of AFC Wimbledon that they are big clubs to go visit: Blackburn are a falling giant, Southend’s attendances are up and down like crazy … and Bury?”

So with that, I decided to look at the differences in attendances between Championship and League One clubs – using my German eyes, not those blighted by bias for my beloved AFC Wimbledon – because, as we all know and must believe, matchday attendances bear the true nature of a club’s support.

With Newcastle averaging around 51,000 through the turnstiles last season, and Burton attracting around 5,200 for a home game – mainly due to their tiny ground – the average attendance in the Championship came to 20,119. In League One, Sheffield United led the way on 21,800, whilst Fleetwood’s 3,300 average propped up the table, culminating in an average of 7,900 attendees across the division. That’s an average difference of almost 300 per cent between the divisions, adding more weight to the claim that there is a gulf in size between clubs in League One and the Championship, at least in terms of paying spectators. The revenues from the FA and ‘trickle down monies’ from the Premier League & live TV bonuses – discussed here by Nick Draper – are other factors, but I shall not and want not to discuss that side of the coin just now.

Now, there is an argument that ‘Blackburn is too big a club to be in League One’ being touted on occasion, and if history and size of the stadium is taken into account, I can fully support that point of view. However, due to recent history and bad off-field management, they fully deserve to be in the third tier. Ergo, they must forfeit the right for higher attendances and find their funding through a sugar daddy – and we all know how attendances can have a major influence on financing players or wages or transfer fees. Especially in the lower leagues.

So let us talk about ‘Little ol’ Wimbledon’ in this context. We averaged a crowd of 4,450 last season. Our capacity is 4,850. That is a great percentage of maximum capacity to have. The new stadium in Plough Lane will have an initial 9,000 or 11,000 capacity, depending on which reports you like to believe, with scope to increase to 20,000, but all we can do is base our projections of attendance at the new stadium with the current figures from Kingsmeadow. And therein lies the rub, as the bard would tell us: they are projected. Some are saying we will probably average around 7,000 fans if we are in League One, 5,000 if we are in League Two, and we would probably sell out if we are in the Championship when we move back home. I tend to agree with those numbers, give or take a thousand, and that still puts is in good stead for whatever division we are in.

However, to go back to the initial argument, put forward by that South Coast Gentleman put: the teams in League One ARE small clubs, compared to the likes of his team and their 51,000 average attendance. But for us 4,500 punters, the League One attendance table looks quite daunting.

Quite daunting, that is, until we look at what Neal and his team achieve every season, and realise that the adage of “punching above your weight” is actually quite apt. Until we get that new freaking stadium, of course.

Can someone point me towards that wrecking ball?

// Mark Hendrikx – @MarkatCIFF

It is typical that the biggest clubs in the country, long detached from the lives of the people who support them, are edging ever closer to their European rivals at the same time the nation awaits its independence from its continental counterparts.

The desire of last season’s top six teams to take a greater share of the Premier League’s television revenue continues to be subdued by their fellow top flight clubs, who are vaunted for their stance. But with English clubs’ performances continuing to decline in the Champions League, the owners of those six clubs will not tolerate the status quo for much longer.

And as competition within Europe’s other top leagues continues to deteriorate, and as TV companies scramble to find ways to boost flagging viewing figures, the outcome, which many have expected for decades, seems inevitable.

But whilst common opinion has always been opposed to the idea of a European ‘Super League’, clubs in the Football League should perhaps start to consider how beneficial the disappearance of the nation’s largest sides could be – and the evidence is already starting to mount.

Over the last two seasons, stadium attendance in all three divisions of the Football League has risen. League Two may have noticed a modest 1.5 per cent increase, but with rises of 12.7 per cent each, League One and The Championship have experienced somewhat of a boom period.

Of course, the relegations of Aston Villa and Newcastle have impacted these figures, but these increases are not to be ignored. Television has made elite-level football more accessible than ever before, but the desire to attend games on a Saturday afternoon remains as fierce as it always has been.

And for Premier League clubs, those three o’clock kick-offs will soon be rarer than a full stadium in Milton Keynes.

The current broadcast contract allows for 168 live games a season – at a cost of £5.136bn to Sky and BT Sports. However, viewership as a whole dropped: 14 per cent for Sky; 2 per cent for BT.

So in an effort to ensure the two broadcasters continue to invest such huge sums, clubs are proposing allowing over 200 games to be screened live when the new contract begins in 2019. That leaves less than half of all games to be scheduled for Saturday 3pm – and that figure will be further diminished by midweek games and Europa League rescheduling.

With viewing numbers falling so sharply, the broadcasters have, naturally, looked for ways to ensure they can afford the product, with the loss of the contract not an option, particularly for Sky, who will not want to suffer the embarrassment of letting slip their hold of the competition they have helped build since 1992.

The only way to keep those figures up is to offer more and more games to international viewers, at times more convenient to them. Saturday evenings and early Sunday mornings are another inevitability, to exploit the Asian and Australian markets, with the former also attempting to steal a share of the UK peak-time audience.

It’s a tactic that the biggest clubs in Spain have already started to take advantage of, with Real Madrid and Barcelona experimenting with 12.30 or 10pm starts. And it is this that forms the crux of the issue for the ‘Big Six’.

It is currently estimated that international rights rake in £3bn of revenue for the Premier League. The argument, pushed chiefly by Liverpool and Manchester City – but supported by Manchester United, Arsenal, Tottenham, and Chelsea – is that their popularity is the key generator behind that revenue, and that they should have a greater share.

For those clubs, it is the only way to compete with their Spanish rivals, who have won six of the last 10 Champions League finals between them.

But the Premier League’s collective bargaining deal will restrict them from doing so, and with Sky wanting to ensure they can continue to profit from subscribers, a breakaway European League seems the only solution for the biggest players in the market to get exactly what they want.

Why should the Football League celebrate this? There are many problems that would have to be resolved which have the potential to have a negative impact – the fate of the FA Cup, for one.

However, with attendances already on the rise, EFL clubs could be taking advantage of a surge through the turnstiles from 2019, when for many top flight fans, Sunday morning away games become unattainable. On top of that, the increased cost of pay TV channels could also convince fans to head to their local club for their weekend football fix – especially with many freezing and even reducing ticket prices, with a notable increase in matchday turnouts because of that, most famously at Bradford City.

Any departure for the top clubs to a breakaway league would likely need a lot of negotiation, akin to – but hopefully nowhere near as laborious as – our beloved Brexit. For example, whilst a rise in ticket sales would be beneficial, it would be negated if the cash that trickles down from the top division, however negligible many believe it to be, was not protected.

Yet in the age of globalisation, numbers wanting to connect with people at a local, community level is burgeoning. A more competitive top division, free from the stranglehold of half a dozen clubs, would do wonders for clubs seeking greater engagement from their local population.

For ourselves, with a new stadium on the horizon, the potential is huge. For so long we have resisted reform, but perhaps a change at the top will ensure life for us remains how we would like it to be. It’s just a question of whether the rest of Europe’s elite clubs elect not to remain with the status quo, and instead leave their nations behind.

I can’t speak for those countries, but I’m not sure English football would be too sorry to see our top clubs go. We’d remain strong and stable without them, and I’m sure the benefits would be felt by the many – not just the few.

// Nick Draper – @ngdraper

Tom Elliott typified what Wimbledon fans look for in a player. Strong, honest, hard-working and affable, we should be proud and humble to have had him at our club – not downhearted that he has decided to move on.

Indeed, despite Tom being voted Player of the Year by supporters – who also urged him to sign a new contract as he collected said award – his exit will not weaken the first-team whatsoever. In fact, it is likely to strengthen us as we enter our difficult second season in League One.

This is not to detract from or diminish his achievements during the last campaign, or his importance to us in maintaining our position in the third tier.

But aside from a purple-patch of form between October last year and January this, the quality of Tom’s performances over the course of his two seasons with the club was inconsistent, and our desire to build around him rendered us predictable, inflexible, and ineffectual for most of the second-half of our League One campaign.

Having left Leeds in 2011, and struggled at a number of clubs, including Hamilton Academical during a short spell with the Scottish Premier League side, Tom found his feet – and enjoyed his most prolific spell – with Cambridge United, in the Conference. He finished the 2012-13 season as the club’s top goal-scorer, netting once every two games, before fitness problems disrupted his form over the next couple of years.

Eight goals during United’s first season back in the Football League encouraged Neal Ardley to bring him to Kingsmeadow as one of four strikers in the squad – most likely with a view to rotating him with Adebayo Akinfenwa in the role of target man. As the season unfolded, Elliott was often Ardley’s pick in the starting line-up, but his contributions were limited – the last of his six League Two goals coming in a 3-2 defeat to Yeovil in January.

Akinfenwa, meanwhile, began to exert his influence on the squad as the season wore on, and played a vital role in not only earning us a place in the play-offs, but winning them as well. His performances over the entirety of the campaign had been much-maligned, but Akinfenwa’s season total of six goals was equal to that of Elliott’s – even though both registered on the score-sheet fewer times than another much-maligned forward, Adebayo Azeez.

The anaemic nature of Tom’s performances led many to believe that he would struggle in League One, and that fear seemed to be being realised over the first 10 games of the season, with Elliott and new signing Tyrone Barnett interchangeable alongside Lyle Taylor in a staid 442 line-up.

But a switch to 433 in late September changed Tom’s, and the team’s, fortunes.

Away wins at Oxford, Bury, and Peterborough saw the Dons playing their best football of the season, with Taylor and Andy Barcham flourishing alongside the big man upfront. Whilst Elliott dominated both centre-halves in the air, his two partners exploited space out wide and in-behind the opposition, which allowed the Dons midfield to push high up the pitch also. Teams were unable to counter the fluid nature of the team in that period, and another play-off push was not out of the question, especially with Dom Poleon slotting comfortably into the system when required.

However, the key to the success of that system was dependent on Elliott winning his battles. And just before Christmas, once teams figured out how to nullify his threat, Tom’s impact became marginalised – and the team suffered. Unable to win his aerial duels, his lack of pace, and surprisingly poor ability with his back to goal, were accentuated. Worryingly, we did not seem confident to change plans from what had been working so well for us before, and so became almost obsessed with directing our attacking play through Tom, to the visible frustration of some of his teammates.

Occasionally, it paid dividends – Bolton away, for example – but for the most part, it hampered us. Tom’s late equaliser at home to Charlton was born more out of persistence than quality, and the subsequent draw with Coventry – for which Elliott was suspended – exhibited the tactical rigidity we had succumbed to: if Tom was not there, we did not change style, only personnel. We had become so one-dimensional that the team lacked ideas, imagination, or invention. After the turn of the new year, we managed just five wins – and Tom failed to score in any of them.

So instead of being fearful of the impact Elliott’s departure will have on the team, we must take advantage of his leaving, and re-evaluate how we will tackle League One next year. We have to reassess how to get the best out of our most productive attacking players – namely Poleon and Taylor, who were as and more prolific than Elliott respectively last year – and instil a flexibility in our players that avoids prescribing them with a complacent, routine game-plan.

This does not mean we forget the contribution Tom made for us, nor that he is an upstanding individual, as the podcast team discovered whilst working with him in the latter part of the season, during which time he proved himself a true gentleman and perfect ambassador for the club.

But had he not decided to chance his arm with Millwall – and the club offered him a new contract, remember – we’d have likely slept-walked into keeping calm and carrying on as before, almost certainly into a scrap to avoid relegation.

We can feel sad that such a character is no longer a part of our family, but we must welcome the opportunity to make ourselves stronger, and more stable, without him. The signing of Kwesi Appiah is the first step: his touch and movement, allied with the pace of Barcham and goals that Lyle guarantees, should make us forget what has been, and get us excited by what is to come.

// Nick Draper – @ngdraper

At the start of every season, the FA introduces new rules – and this season was no different. However this year, a change to loan market regulations could have massive implications for many lower league clubs.

In previous seasons, a club facing an injury crisis – or looking to add some fresh faces for a late promotion push – simply had to ring up one of their manager’s many contacts from the Championship or, if they were lucky, the Premier League, and borrow an under-21 player who would otherwise be developing their skills in glorified friendlies on the training ground every week.

Similarly, a club in Leagues One or Two would benefit from loaning out youngsters to non-league teams, in order for them to gain some first-team match experience of which there is no real substitute for. David Fitzpatrick and Toyosi Olusanya, at Torquay and Kingstonian respectively, are examples of how we have looked to use that system ourselves this campaign.

However, that option is no more and in fact, Fitzpatrick’s loan had to be cut short because of the new laws. Now, clubs in the lower leagues have to do all their business inside the dedicated August and January transfer windows.

This is actually great news for us, and has strengthened our position in the league, as we can reap the rewards of our long-term strategy that prioritised funding the Academy at the expense of an increased first-team wage budget. Players such as Fitzpatrick, instead of being farmed out or forgotten about on the sidelines, can now fight for a place in our matchday squad.

FUNDING

The benefits of having young, homegrown, and hungry players, ready to push for a first-team place, can not be underestimated – and neither can the importance of Academy funding.

For example, Jack Midson’s winner against Fleetwood Town, back in April 2013, is remembered as possibly one of the most important AFC Wimbledon goals since our rebirth in 2002. But not only did the goal save us from a return to the National League, which year-on-year is the hardest division from which to gain promotion, but it meant we saved our Central Funding from the Premier League, which provides £340,000 towards our Academy – just over half of our budgeted running costs.

The rewards of maintaining that funding have already been felt: Ryan Sweeney’s appearances in the first-team, and subsequent sale to Stoke; and now fresh-faced youngsters, such as Alfie Egan, are finding themselves named in Football League squad lists.

NATIONAL SUCCESS

This year, for the second consecutive season, the Under 18s reached the last 16 of the FA Youth Cup, losing out narrowly to Preston North End: 3-2 in extra time. Last season, over 3,000 fans packed out Kingsmeadow to see us lose 4-1 to Chelsea, but the majority of that crowd, like myself, would have been bursting with pride that we had players, that we had produced, competing with a team featuring Swedish and Italian youth internationals.

Of course, we don’t just stumble on this talent, and anyone who visits our training ground on a Saturday or Sunday morning can see our Academy out in force. In the boys squads alone, we now have 164 players, ranging from the Under 7s to the Under 18s. We also now employ 61 staff – nine of which are full-time – that perform roles that range from coaching, operations, scouting, and, most importantly when working with youngsters, education.

I was fortunate this season to interview both Jeremy Sauer, Academy Manager, and Mark Robinson, Academy Head of Coaching. It was a great to be in the presence of people who are responsible for producing our future stars. The passion and determination they showed left me feeling that no matter how bad the odd first-team result can be on a Saturday afternoon, the future we have is bright – and beautiful. Over the past two years, we have seen 12 players sign professional contracts, with the most recent – Anthony Hartigan – potentially the best of the lot.

FIRST-TEAM PROGRESSION

Reaching Wembley last season, and gaining promotion to League One, was magical. We scored some great goals to help us get there – Jake Reeves’s 25-yarder against York; Tom Elliott’s shot into the top corner at Notts County – but my favourite was Tom Beere’s against Accrington Stanley, in the first leg of the play-off semi-final.

In such an important game and tense atmosphere, Neal Ardley had the confidence to bring Beere on – with just five minutes to go. I had seen Tom playing in front of no more than 100 fans, made up mostly of family members and scouts, at Merstham in the Under 21 Development League. He had just returned from a loan spell at Hampton & Richmond, and yet just months later, he is scoring a vital goal in front of a sell-out crowd, live on Sky Sports. Incredible.

HOPES AND DREAMS

My vision for the future is a Wimbledon squad of which 40 per cent is made-up of homegrown players. This will mean we have players who know our identity and values, along with the benefit of providing us with additional funds to our budget, helping us produce a strong squad capable of holding its own and, potentially, reaching the Championship – once we are back at Plough Lane.

So next time you are feeling down about the first team losing a game, pick yourself up by heading down to our training ground in New Malden, and watch our Academy players learning the trade. Trust me, you can get as much pleasure seeing a young Anthony Hartigan scoring a goal as you can from Lyle Taylor netting a beauty at Kingsmeadow … and in a few years time, you could be seeing that player at Plough Lane, singing, “He’s one of our own” …

A version of this article appeared in the WUP fanzine – wupgb.co.uk – in February 2017.

// Stuart Deacons – @StuartdDeacons

Football has reached its saturation point in this country. At every level, we play too many games. Premier League managers recite this argument regularly, and are sneeringly mocked by the wider football public for doing so – most likely because they appear to use fixture congestion and player fatigue for their respective failures.

Many pundits and former England managers receive similarly short shrift when they raise the point, most notably when they suggest introducing a winter break, or further alterations to the format of the FA Cup. However, it is unfortunate that these headline-grabbing assertions divert attention away from a reasoned debate about the structure of the professional game, especially at our level.

That debate looked set to happen over the course of this season, as the Football League introduced proposals to add eight teams to the existing 71 legitimate (and one rogue) EFL clubs, changing the current structure from three divisions of 24 clubs, to four divisions of 20.

This would have removed eight games from each club’s calendar, likely bringing an end to any pre-scheduled midweek fixture lists and saving fans of clubs such as ourselves, Coventry, and Scunthorpe from long road trips across the country on a Tuesday night, and loss of annual leave.

Arguing in favour of the change, the EFL championed 13 potential benefits of the reorganisation, including the ‘potential to reduce squad size’, and an ‘increase in season ticket sales’.

Unfortunately, these benefits were lacking sufficient explanation or evidence to be substantiated and, positioned alongside other questionable arguments, rendered the suggestions impractical in the eyes of many supporters and clubs, with our own Erik Samuelson vocal in his scepticism.

It was of little surprise when negotiations regarding the proposals were curtailed in November, with conflict over changes to the FA Cup cited as the key reason. Fans warmly received the news, but it feels like a missed opportunity, for increasing membership of the EFL to 80 clubs creates the option to return to a regionalised structure, last employed 60 years ago, that could enable smaller clubs to become more financially stable, generating extra interest at a local level.

There appears little need for the fourth and fifth tiers of English football to be fully nationalised, and aside from cost savings regarding travel and overnight accommodation, an increase in attendances seems inevitable. Morecambe, for instance, would welcome more away fans if they were hosting Barrow, York, and Macclesfield, as opposed to Plymouth, Leyton Orient, and Exeter – especially as the reduced fixture list would ensure Saturday afternoon kick-offs.

Similarly, Crawley would likely garner more interest from home and away fans if they were hosting Bromley and Aldershot, instead of Hartlepool and Mansfield – although I accept that there’s little interest that Crawley can garner in the first place.

Now, those in positions of power at League One and Two clubs may well disagree, and will of course have greater knowledge of the finances involved. They will argue that the shortfall generated by staging fewer fixtures, midweek or otherwise, would not be covered by a greater number of travelling supporters. And fans, like myself, would certainly miss the big away days that we’ve enjoyed over the years, from Torquay to Tranmere, Rotherham to Rochdale.

But wouldn’t it be nice to have more of those more local fixtures, more big derby days, and more tightly-packed terraces? And wouldn’t it benefit players to reduce their travel schedules, clubs their travel costs, and fans their midweek-travel logistical headaches? I’m a huge fan of tradition, but sometimes, tradition for tradition’s sake is counter-productive. And sometimes, change is good.

// Nick Draper – @ngdraper

Contrast a senior management team incompetent in making football decisions, with contempt for the club’s history and its fans – fans who are fighting for the soul of their club – with a model of sustainable growth, with promotion achieved thanks to sensible transfer spending and astute management from a former player, earning the respect of all real football fans.

In the spring of 2002, those two clubs were Wimbledon, and Charlton Athletic. Fourteen years later, and as the two South London clubs renew rivalries on the field, the story remains the same, but the roles have been reversed, and League One is not where either set of fans would have imagined crossing swords with each other for the first time this millennium.

Supporters at The Valley have been forthright with where they apportion their blame, and when over a thousand Dons fans descend on the stadium that the fans rebuilt in 1992, they’ll be asked to lend their support to the latest protest declaring supporters’ revulsion at what the Roland Duchatelet regime has done to a proud, community-based club.

Over 500 scarves will be given to Wimbledon fans this Saturday, in order for them to join ‘Black and White Day’ – a day on which many Charlton supporters will attend the game in the colours of the club’s 1947 FA Cup winning side.

Fans dressing in black and white are sending the message that they support the club and its history, but they’re not buying into the current incarnation until there is a change at the top. They are not helping finance the owners of the club by purchasing the club’s official kits, but they also refuse to walk away from what they rightfully proclaim as belonging to them.

The Duchatelet regime, featuring CEO Katrien Meire, has mocked assertions that the football club is owned by the fans; has even gone as far as to label fans believing this to be, quote, ‘weird’.

‘You wouldn’t do that to the local cinema,’ they sneer, arrogantly embellishing their attitude that a football club is a business, not a community asset. Yet it is a business that they seem incapable of managing correctly, for the third tier of English football is – clearly – not where this club should be residing.

That it finds itself in the company of teams that plied their trade in the North West and Combined Counties Leagues as little as twelve years ago – whilst The Valley hosted Premier League fixtures – is the fault of a leadership team that does not grasp what it is that they are leading.

“Duchatelet sold our best players, such as Yann Kermorgant, because his mysterious advisors decreed them ‘not good enough’,” explains a spokesperson for the Coalition Against Roland Duchatelet (CARD). “He replaced them with players who had no suitability for the English Championship.

“When Chris Powell resisted allowing Duchatelet to pick the team, and impose new signings on him, he was sacked and replaced with a series of unqualified ‘first-team coaches’. Relegation to League One was unnecessary.”

It was long before that relegation was confirmed that a number of supporters’ groups united to form CARD, fully disenchanted with the direction the club was headed.

The primary aim of the coalition is to force the current regime out, with two potential bids for ownership on the table from genuine parties that would look to engender fan engagement. However, to underline the current owners’ disdain for the ‘customers’ of their ‘franchise’, one bid, from former CEO Peter Varney, was slandered by the accusation that the offer stipulated a move away from The Valley.

Varney demanded a public retraction.

Misinformation and lies from the mouths of people in power, seeking to make their money to the detriment of the lives of thousands of supporters of which football would be nothing without, has rung a far-too-commonly heard bell to many.

But the situation at The Valley rings more closely to home than many for Wimbledon supporters, for Charlton is a club saved by its fans, and returned to their stadium under the stipulation that supporters were represented on the board – a forerunner in the drive to supporter ownership of which AFC Wimbledon is, perhaps only behind Barcelona, the greatest flag-bearer.

Therefore, the kinship between The Valley and Plough Lane is palpable, and support for the real heart and soul of the beautiful game should make for a most powerful statement this Saturday afternoon.

More information about CARD is available at charltoncard.tumblr.com.

// Nick Draper – @ngdraper

More than a little editorial licence with the headline, granted, but then following on from yesterday’s events, the typical Tuesday routine will have been ripped to pieces for Wimbledon fans – at least those that didn’t find themselves behind their desks at nine o’clock today.

Whilst Monday was an incredible day to experience, today has been one for reflecting, reminiscing, and reliving a scarcely-believable sixth promotion in 14 years: one sealed in storybook fashion under the arch of ‘the greatest pitch of all’.

That line was uttered by Sky commentator Gary Weaver following our semi-final win at Accrington, and fit the moment perfectly, but only because it omitted the pitch, made somewhere in the region of 14 years ago, that suggested resurrecting Wimbledon FC from its ashes in the first place – perhaps, say, as ‘Wimbledon Town’.

When that pitch became a reality, the name of AFC Wimbledon was stumbled upon. For many years, a good number would refer to the club as, simply, ‘AFC’, due in some part, as a way to differentiate ourselves from the Buckinghamshire franchise which continued to bear the name of Wimbledon, despite the initials of ‘MK’ that appeared on their badge and sponsor’s logo; despite their move to a stadium 70 miles away from the postcode SW19.

Nobody talks about ‘AFC’ anymore. We are Wimbledon, in everyone’s eyes. Television coverage has ditched the old ‘AFCW’ abbreviation at the top of the screen; presenters and analysts have ditched the prefix that is deemed superfluous at Sunderland and Bournemouth.

And when they talk of Wimbledon, they talk of 1963, 1988, and 2011 as milestones in the history of one club, and one club alone.

MEDIA DARLINGS

The greatest cup final upset aside – and the exploits of Coventry and Wigan make that a matter of serious conjecture anyway – fans during the latter days of the Wimbledon FC era suffered somewhat of a persecution complex over the club’s treatment on the radio waves and in the column inches of the national press.

The worm has turned significantly since 2002. It would have been impossible for it not to have done. The whole club is a story that, had it not actually happened, would have been deemed too fanciful, too far-fetched for Hollywood executives. As proved by the newspaper coverage today, it’s the ‘fans with typewriters’, as one former manager affectionately addressed the written press, that have gleefully written, or at least transcribed, the script.

To the victors go the spoils, and of course, the vast number of column inches – far greater than those usually afforded to fourth-tier’s big day at Wembley – focus on our rise. Whilst some commentators have registered their dismay at the one-sided nature of the coverage from the dailies, it would take a stunning lack of nous not to realise that the analysis of yesterday’s game extends much further and drills much deeper than the outcome of 90 minutes of football.

Mike Walters, in The Mirror, described the day as, ‘a lesson to opportunists who cut corners by relocating clubs 65 miles from their homeland to retail parks’. Daily Mail reporter Adam Shergold commented that the club’s rise is, ‘beginning to rival that of their predecessors’, whilst The Times produced a graphic to compare our ascent since 2002 with the ‘progress’ of the MK franchise in that time.

Somewhere in the midst of the history – both that that we are all well-versed in, and that that we continue to make – a football match does get discussed. Writing in The Times, Ian Winrow observed: ‘Victory was deserved. Ardley’s side (adapted) to the game much more quickly than their opponents … Wimbledon established a supply line to Tom Elliott and (Lyle) Taylor, the forward pairing whose understanding unsettled the Plymouth defence.’

And whilst it is true that Elliott was a constant menace, Walters quite rightly commented that Akinfenwa’s ‘arrival from the bench tipped the contest Wimbledon’s way’, although Shergold astutely picked Jake Reeves as the game’s outstanding player. Our visitors, meanwhile, were unanimously dismissed, described as ‘toothless’ (Walters) and ‘disjointed’ (Winrow).

MANAGERIAL MUSINGS

Argyle boss Derek Adams could not disagree with those indictments. ‘It’s a huge disappointment to come here and not show people what we can do,’ he told The Mirror, but his counterpart had a bigger story to discuss.

‘Standing in front of 25,000 people who had their club ripped away from them 14 years ago, as one of their own who came through the ranks at the age of 11, it feels surreal,’ Neal Ardley explained, adding: ‘It’s immense, what you dream of.’

But if possible, an even bigger issue was addressed by one of his predecessors, Dave Bassett, who was afforded his own – ghost-written – commentary in the Mail, taking the opportunity to highlight the need to go back to Merton.

Titled ‘We must return to Plough Lane area’, Harry extols the virtues of our fans, Ivor, Erik, David Charles, Ardley, and even himself for appointing Neal in the first place. But his message is clear: the stadium is what is of utmost importance.

‘At the start of the day, if they could have taken promotion or the stadium, they would have gone for the stadium. That’s the way forward.

‘The big thing now is for Mayor of London Sadiq Khan to help Wimbledon into their own stadium. If Wimbledon are back in the Plough Lane area they can expect gates of 10,000 and can prosper.’

THE OTHER SIDE

It was a message that Harry sent throughout Sky’s coverage, but he was also keen to play down the first league meetings with Milton Keynes. ‘It’s not a consideration: the stadium is what’s important,’ he explained.

But the issue can not be overlooked. ‘The games against MK Dons will be just two of a 46-game season and they will be two games with an edge to them, there’s no doubt about that,’ said Ardley, giving them no more credence than to say, ‘Hopefully those games will add to our points total.’

Erik was more dismissive. ‘Let’s not think about that now,’ he told Giuseppe Muro in the Evening Standard. ‘They are not coming into this. Absolutely not. I know people like to talk about it but that is not for now. This is our time.’

He delivered this message in typically eloquent and calm, yet forthright, manner during interviews with Sky Sports News and BBC London News over the course of the day. However, Patrick Barclay in the Standard did not pass up the opportunity to highlight the issue, with a focus on the nonsensical continuation of the franchise club’s use of ‘Dons’ in their name.

Let down by a couple of factual errors, a perverse defence of MK’s somewhat ironic community work and youth development scheme, and a seeming belief that Wimbledon anger rests solely on issues of stadium geography, and not also of league place merit and legitimacy, his plea is correct and well-intentioned.

‘They have no right to the ‘Dons’ title. Now is the time to hand it back,’ he writes.

‘Good luck to Wimbledon. May they return home to the envisaged 20,000-capacity stadium and aspire to the top flight. Others may look back on Vinnie Jones and Sam Hammam … as romantic figures – I don’t. I prefer the club’s current incarnation. Barry Fuller and Dannie Bulman are players you warm to.’

PARTING GIFT

Yet Fuller and Bulman are just two of a squad-full, including the ‘overgrown child’ Adebayo Akinfenwa, who signed-off his Dons career in an identical fashion to that of Danny Kedwell.

His unemployed status and advertisement of his services has dominated coverage, especially that on Sky throughout the day, but it is not only he that is departing. Sean Rigg is also having his respectable Dons career come to an end, and whilst he may have had his Wembley moment taken away, Callum Kennedy leaves having sealed his place in the hearts of all Wimbledon fans.

Talk of six promotions in 14 years, of starting again on Wimbledon Common, of repeating the Wembley heroics of 1988 … the story does not lie in these milestone moments, but in the words of Callum – a man who represents the never-say-die attitude that permeates every last corner of this unique, special, incredible football club – in an interview with getwestlondon.co.uk following his release.

‘The fans have created the folklore. They are incredible.

‘I have been at other clubs before and you talk about the fans and stuff, but to decide you are not happy about something, make your own club and then to be going up today into League One 14 years later it is unheard of and it does rub off on the players.

‘I’ve never felt as much of a connection between the fans and the players as much as I have here.’

And it is that connection that forms the foundation of a club that deserves the column inches, radio conversations, and television air-time not afforded those of other basement-division sides; a club that might receive some extra attention for a bank holiday weekend, but remains securely embedded in the wider interests of football fans every single day.

// Nick Draper – @ngdraper