Boycotting Franchise FC

[Lord Bamber]

I was disappointed that Wimbledon went under and resurfaced as MK Dons.

I would like to see AFC Wimbledon in the League

What difference will not attending this Saturdays game achieve, apart from reducing the crowd to cheer the Albion on and meaning I have to creasote the fence.

Thus I will only be affecting myself & my team (and my fence of course) if I dont go.

So I will be going.

Each to their own though.

 

[LowKarate]

The Oakland Raiders are back in Oakland! Can MK Dons move/return to Wimbledon and if not why not?

Oakland Raiders is not a great example I grant you, as American Football teams re-locate at the sniff of a new stadium.

I think you'll find that Wimbledon can't move back because the club is now the personal asset of another individual who has no interest in returning them to Wimbledon. If your point is that they could not move back because there are no sites then that too is valid, but it is (in my view) secondary to the fact that now Mr. Winkelman owns the club, the only reason he would re-locate would be if someone made it worth his while (much like Oakland).

The whole basis of this debate is whether or not you feel it is right that football communities have no right to retain their club in their community.

As someone else has pointed out in this thread already, the notion that every club must be successful and so re-locating in order to achieve that is acceptable, just feels wrong.

If Archer had moved us to Dover, would that have been acceptable?

 

[Icy Gull]

If Archer had moved us to Dover, would that have been acceptable?

Less acceptable than Gillingham I guess

 

[Commander]

In them days people demonstrated and stood up and fought for their beliefs, the age of keyboard warriors and the "It happened, get over it" brigade were still over 20 years away

In 'them' days, we did fight for our beliefs, and we won. We are moving into a new stadium next year.

Wimbledon however, lost their fight. They have resurfaced and are doing well now. Get over it. Nothing you can do about it now.

If we had them away on the last day of the season and neeed a win to win the Championship, would you really stay at home?

 

[Storer68]

The thing I don't understand is why everyone goes on about how limited Wimbledon's potential was. Obviously it was. But surely a club that's based in an area does however well it can for that area - it's not possible for every club in the country to be competing in the top 1 or 2 tiers, but some seem to suggest it's acceptable that if they're not doing this they can just pack up camp and find somewhere that they can. Not really the point of having a local club is it?

True but much of Merton Borough Council's opposition to the expansion of the club (and remember they were in the top 22 clubs in english football and won the FA Cup) was based on a myiooic nimbyism that prevented the club from any expansion at all to accommodate the club's ambition.

The ground remained unchanged until the club's election to the Football League, though during 1971–72 an attempt was made to start a market on the club's grounds to raise funds. The High Court ruled that this plan contravened a statute decreed by Charles I in 1628 forbidding any market within seven miles of Kingston's — the court reckoned the distance between Kingston market and Plough Lane to be five and a half miles, so no market was built.[12] Despite election to the Football League in 1977 and subsequent success,[13] the club was still plagued by financial trouble.[14] To try and ease the strain on the club, in April 1983 Wimbledon bought out the preemption clause inserted back in 1959 for £100,000. A year later, they sold the ground to Sam Hammam for £3 million.[11][14]

The ground's freehold was purchased from Merton Borough Council by chairman Sydney Black for £8,250 in November 1959, and then donated to the club.[8] Black announced at the same time that the floodlights purchased five years earlier would be erected on eight pylons the next year at the cost of £4,000.[8][10] Due to inflation, the price paid by Black for the stadium would have been equal to £142,939 in 2009[9] — this became significant as one of the conditions of the sale of the ground was the insertion of a pre-emption clause stating that if the site was ever to be used for any purpose other than sport, the Council would have the right to buy the ground back for the same price it had been paid, regardless of inflation.[8] As the pound sterling's value decreased over the years, this clause became a double-edged sword — it protected the club from asset strippers, but also meant that the stadium's value could never grow above the £8,250 that Black had paid in 1959

Following the publication of the Taylor Report in 1990, that introduced new safety measures for stadia including the regulation that they be all-seater,[15] the board of the club decided that Plough Lane could not be redeveloped to meet the new standards.[16] The work required to modernise Plough Lane would have been difficult and expensive, but not impossible as the board claimed.[11] A supposedly temporary groundshare with Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park was announced the same year, to begin for the start of 1991–92.[11] Wimbledon's final first team match at Plough Lane came on 4 May 1991, ironically against new landlords Crystal Palace. 10,002 spectators saw Crystal Palace beat Wimbledon 3–0, before swarming onto the pitch to bid farewell to the ground.

[edit] After Wimbledon F.C.
Plough Lane continued to be used by both Wimbledon and Crystal Palace as the home ground for their reserve teams' home matches until 1998,[17] when Sam Hammam sold the ground to Safeway. Safeway sought to build a supermarket on the site for four years but, after local residents' opposition and local authority objections to their plans, gave up in 2002. They demolished the stadium during the summer and subsequently sold the vacant site to David Wilson Homes in November 2002.[18] Planning permission was granted to the developer in October 2005 to build 570 flats,[19] and the development was completed in 2008

 

[bhaexpress]

I would say it's well past the time to move on. When I lived in the Wimbledon area I met more than a few Ex Wimbledon fans who felt that the journey from South West London to Croydon was too far. As I lived within walking distance I used to watch Wimbledon but no matter who they were playing their fans were always outnumbered. THe truth is they were punching above their weight having bounced out of the Southern League and when they started to slide they went into freefall and their fan base was decimated. Granted Merton Council simply didn't want to have a football team in their borough so there was no way that they'd ever return to their original home.

 

[del strangefish]

I have recently won a tidy sum in a shared lotto win and would like to make up a team and buy it a place in the football league..
Can anyone in the know at MK Dons please advise

 

[Was not Was]

I would say it's well past the time to move on. When I lived in the Wimbledon area I met more than a few Ex Wimbledon fans who felt that the journey from South West London to Croydon was too far. As I lived within walking distance I used to watch Wimbledon but no matter who they were playing their fans were always outnumbered. THe truth is they were punching above their weight having bounced out of the Southern League and when they started to slide they went into freefall and their fan base was decimated. Granted Merton Council simply didn't want to have a football team in their borough so there was no way that they'd ever return to their original home.

And? You seem to be arguing that it was inevitable that Wimbledon drop out of the league / go out of business. Valid point, but how does that make it OK that the club became a franchise, and Milton Keynes got a league team without having to climb the pyramid like everyone else?

 

[Brovion]

Oakland Raiders is not a great example I grant you, as American Football teams re-locate at the sniff of a new stadium.

I think you'll find that Wimbledon can't move back because the club is now the personal asset of another individual who has no interest in returning them to Wimbledon. If your point is that they could not move back because there are no sites then that too is valid, but it is (in my view) secondary to the fact that now Mr. Winkelman owns the club, the only reason he would re-locate would be if someone made it worth his while (much like Oakland).

The whole basis of this debate is whether or not you feel it is right that football communities have no right to retain their club in their community.

As someone else has pointed out in this thread already, the notion that every club must be successful and so re-locating in order to achieve that is acceptable, just feels wrong.

If Archer had moved us to Dover, would that have been acceptable?

I know what you're saying and I'm not totally hostile to your views. I'm going to play Devil's Advocate a little bit here and say don't you think that everything's worked out for the best? Wimbledon's home borough didn't want / couldn't have a top professional football team, so the team that was there moved to a permanent home in a more amenable area. In their place sprang up a team that CAN play in Wimbledon (or near enough), but because of the constraints it hasn't got the same potential for growth and status that MK Dons have. (And which contributed to the original club's problem in the first place; if they'd stayed at Southern League level they'd probably still be at Plough Lane). So now Wimbledon fans have their noddy little club back and Milton Keynes has a nice new ground and an upwardly-mobile football club as a reward for their non-nimby attitude to having a football team move in.

 

[Was not Was]

I don't get why so many of the people on here who are happy to go to MK Dons are so vitriolic towards people whose principles mean they won't. No-one is trying to stop you going. There isn't a picket line. Why get so worked up?

 

[bhaexpress]

I don't get why so many of the people on here who are happy to go to MK Dons are so vitriolic towards people whose principles mean they won't. No-one is trying to stop you going. There isn't a picket line. Why get so worked up?

Who's being 'vitriolic' ? Most people are just saying they're just a team so what ? Moving them kept a lot of people in a job for what that's worth.

 

[Dandyman]

I don't get why so many of the people on here who are happy to go to MK Dons are so vitriolic towards people whose principles mean they won't. No-one is trying to stop you going. There isn't a picket line. Why get so worked up?

Spot on. If people want to go and support the Albion, then do so. Others of us won't go now or in the future, but it's a personal choice.

 

[robbie c]

I promised to sing we're f***ing brilliant to/at my neighbours! gotta go

 

[seagullsovergrimsby]

MK Dongs are just another team we're going to take 3 points from. Over 2,000 Albion fans will be at the MooCamp on Saturday.

 

[Robert Codners Nostrils]

Poyet has said so many times this season that out away support has been fantastic and the players have responded to it. Anyone thinking of boycotting this weekend is putting their dislike/disapproval of MK ahead of their love/will for the Albion to be successful. Utterly ridiculous. You need to have a long hard think about that.

 

[Napper]

agrre with above , 2k ish on saturday.

Promotion season and an easy away day