There aren’t many clubs that, in their match programme, boast equally of FA Cup success alongside regional and amateur honours. AFC Wimbledon are such a club. In 2002, when Wimbledon Football Club were given permission to play their ‘home’ games in Milton Keynes, the majority of the team’s fans opted against travelling over fifty miles to watch the side and formed AFC instead. By relocating, Wimbledon FC were able to retain their Football League status but their identity and their heritage were left behind in south-west London. After a prolonged battle, ownership of Wimbledon’s past was awarded to AFC and not their rebranded incarnation, the MK Dons. They play in the same all-blue kit with yellow trim that Wimbledon used to and, as Saturday’s programme for the FA Cup First Round tie against Ebbsfleet United attested, it was they who won the FA Cup in 1988, five years after winning Division Four, and it was they who won the Southern League three years in a row during the 1970s too.
AFC Wimbledon are now only one promotion away from becoming a Football League club. They currently lie second in the Blue Square Bet Premier (Conference National), having risen four levels since starting over in the Combined Counties League eight years ago. Only the league winners go up automatically to League Two, however, and if AFC are to top a very competitive division then I would have thought they’ll need to play considerably better than they did against Ebbsfleet at Kingsmeadow. The visitors, who were relegated to Conference South last season, earned headlines of their own in 2008 when they were bought by an online consortium that has continued to have a fluctuating say in the running of the club and the picking of the team ever since. In holding AFC to a pretty dour goalless draw Ebbsfleet took their unbeaten run to fourteen games. The replay in Kent is scheduled for a week on Tuesday.
It wasn’t that the game lacked chances on goal so much as moments of quality in the build-up and a sense of urgency from the players. It didn’t help that the referee showed two red cards in the space of three first-half minutes, reducing both teams to ten men and perhaps contributing to some of the tired finishing that went on to characterise the match. AFC’s Christian Jolley was the first to go for a lunge on Ebbsfleet’s Craig Stone. It was a poor challenge but, with tackles currently coming under closer scrutiny than normal (well, it is Movember now) after recent incidents involving Karl Henry and Nigel de Jong in the Premier League, the suspicion amongst the fans around me in the Tempest End behind the far goal was that the referee was hoping to be seen to have made an example of Jolley for the benefit of the television cameras. Ashley Carew’s dismissal for Ebbsfleet shortly afterwards was even harsher, as he received a second yellow card for failing to retreat ten yards for a free-kick despite being given a whole second to cover that distance before the AFC player struck the ball against his feet.
Opportunities for both sides came and went but there was general dissatisfaction from the home fans, who bemoaned the lethargy of the players and their reluctance to run off the ball. While Ebbsfleet largely managed to contain Wimbledon, when the home side did manage to get between their opponents’ lines they often just left themselves dangerously exposed when the attack broke down. The main culprit was Andre Blackman, a clearly gifted full back cursed by a resolute determination not to track back and concentration levels acquired from an absent-minded Titus Bramble. Blackman made a stunning, jinking run down the left flank during the first half, beating men inside and out, but also incurred the wrath of the crowd on more than one occasion for his habit of trotting back into position whenever the home side lost possession. Playing the ball inside from the eighteen-yard line, giving the ball away in the process, is hardly best practice for a defender either.
Despite the paucity of good football on display though, I was very pleased to finally get the chance to see AFC play after having followed their story in the papers for so long. My ticket cost only £5, which was a third of what it cost me to see Barnet a fortnight ago. There were twice as many people in the ground too. Speaking of the ground, it struck me that Kingsmeadow (currently cumbersomely known as the Cherry Red Records Fans’ Stadium) is now very much AFC Wimbledon’s home even though it was built in 1989 for Kingstonian Football Club. Following AFC’s birth in 2002, Kingstonian now effectively sub-let the ground from the ambitious Dons. AFC are clearly heading for bigger and better things – the programme talked about the need for more effective fan segregation for important league fixtures – while the future of Kingstonian, the original tenants and one of London’s most iconic non-League names, remains static at best. It’s clear that, even outside the country’s top four divisions, some clubs are much bigger than others. As if to prove AFC’s relative fame, later on the tube a man saw me reading the programme and introduced himself as working for Sports Interactive, the gaming company behind Football Manager and the club’s current shirt sponsors.
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