Should we not be BOYCOTTING MK Dons?

[Pretty pink fairy]

who's worried about the game anyway

 

[pork pie]

Hmmm...another Chelski fan sneaking into Albionland?

Ha ha, just because I only care about Albion, and not putting the world to rights i'm Chelsea? Wanker!

 

[pork pie]

Hmmm...another Chelski fan sneaking into Albionland?

Hum, just seen your bottom line! So we have a f***ing Yid on here do we?

 

[Arthur]

Not going for the obvious reason. Those who are going to support the Albion - fair enough.

As for the Arse, I live in north London and have to pass Emirates on my way to work each morning. I'd happily see the cheats relegated back to the division they never won promotion from and sent back to Woolwich too.

 

[Herne Hill Seagull]

Well PorkPie, I'm sorry to hear that but as I said you're entitled to your opinion. I can only say that, while I completely accept Tooting's point about where the real efficacy of our own campaigning hit hardest, if your sentiments were universal, clubs like ours would be viewed as utterly disposable by enough people that we'd be quickly discarded in the drive for an elite league of big-boys. It's about the game, not just some 'namby-pamby love-in' as you describe it.

You fight for your club (and others) to preserve them because it matters that clubs don't just become franchises and f*** off to somewhere they can make more money - if it could happen to Wimbledon, a top flight club much more recently than us, it could certainly happen to us too. There was and is I think, in our support of other clubs' supporters' fights, pragmatism mixed in with the altruism.

 

[Brovion]

I suppose you did, fair enough. Glad you're not saying i'm a bit of a thickie, thanks for that.

What i'm saying is that you might have been as outraged as me at the time, but it seems now a few years have passed you can't be bothered to oppose the move anymore, and just shrug your shoulders*. Its riled me because a) it wasn't that long ago, and b) this is very similar to an argument that kicked off a month or so ago about Archer/Belotti/Stanley, ie. 'get over it', 'it was ages ago' etc.

Re. Contemporary. It happened in our life time for starters, and only a few years ago at that. I don't know you TG, but i'm guessing you weren't born in 1913 when Arsenal moved north, and there's a decent chance your parents weren't either? Thats certainly the case for me.
Plus football was a different game back then, whereas its very different now- in my opinion and many others the money men are ruining the game-,and the moving of a football club to a different part of the country and the automatic place in the football league granted to that club is another aspect of this.
Plus Woolwich Arsenal were in existence for approx 27 years before their move and re-naming. Wimbledon were in existence from 1889 until they were moved to MK.

I'm not saying your example of Woolwich Arsenal was SHIT, but do you see where i'm coming from?

*of course, if you didn't care in the first place then fine.

I think you've made some very good points and I can see where you're coming from 100%.

However, football DOES change; clubs are born, sometimes they merge and sometimes they die. Saying that the Arsenal move was a long time ago and anyway they hadn't been in existence that long misses the point. I could argue that you're simply using those as excuses to justify why you're in favour of one relocation and opposed to the other.

I think the more pertinent question isn't why did Wimbledon move to MK but more why did they leave the Borough of Merton?

You're right about opinions though, at the time I thought it was APPALLING that Wimbledon were allowed to move to MK, now I feel as strongly about it as I do the Arsenal's move to North London. Admitedly this is helped by the fact that AFC Wimbledon are doing well, I wonder how they'll cope if they get into the League?

 

[Mick Beard BHA]

However, football DOES change; clubs are born, sometimes they merge and sometimes they die. Saying that the Arsenal move was a long time ago and anyway they hadn't been in existence that long misses the point. I could argue that you're simply using those as excuses to justify why you're in favour of one relocation and opposed to the other.

Just to clarify what i was saying about Arsenal- when standing for a cause which you were not directly affected by, i think you have to have some appreciation of or association with people who were. I certainly do not agree with the 'relocation' of clubs, whether it was Wimbledon a few years ago or Arsenal back in 1913. However i have no association/appreciation/experience of the Arsenal 'move', and one of the reasons why is that it happened many many years before i was born. Therefore its not something i can really get involved in.

re. Arsenal's relatively short existence by 1913- i was just trying to emphasise how different a case it is to Wimbledon's. In 1913 the world of football was very different; in the early years clubs were being formed, changed and even disbanded frequently. Fast forward to the late 20th century and the early 21st and its a very different story. Clubs like Wimbledon had been around for a century or more, even if their specific league status had been much more recent.

Sorry to repeat if you'd got this first time around!

 

[empire]

get a grip,you either want to support the club,or get on your high horse,bet half the people that said they would never go to the golstone site(rip),fuckin well have,end off

 

[alan partridge]

Well PorkPie, I'm sorry to hear that but as I said you're entitled to your opinion. I can only say that, while I completely accept Tooting's point about where the real efficacy of our own campaigning hit hardest, if your sentiments were universal, clubs like ours would be viewed as utterly disposable by enough people that we'd be quickly discarded in the drive for an elite league of big-boys. It's about the game, not just some 'namby-pamby love-in' as you describe it.

You fight for your club (and others) to preserve them because it matters that clubs don't just become franchises and f*** off to somewhere they can make more money - if it could happen to Wimbledon, a top flight club much more recently than us, it could certainly happen to us too. There was and is I think, in our support of other clubs' supporters' fights, pragmatism mixed in with the altruism.

Doubt very much Pork Pie understood any of that. And he said Mamby Pamby, not Namby Pamby.

 

[Djmiles]

What's done is done.

Wimbledon fans moved on and AFC Wimbledon was born. Hell, it happened so long ago, AFC have worked their way up through the leagues and could well be the division below us next season.

I will be at stadium:mk cheering on the Albion.

 

[pork pie]

Well PorkPie, I'm sorry to hear that but as I said you're entitled to your opinion. I can only say that, while I completely accept Tooting's point about where the real efficacy of our own campaigning hit hardest, if your sentiments were universal, clubs like ours would be viewed as utterly disposable by enough people that we'd be quickly discarded in the drive for an elite league of big-boys. It's about the game, not just some 'namby-pamby love-in' as you describe it.

You fight for your club (and others) to preserve them because it matters that clubs don't just become franchises and f*** off to somewhere they can make more money - if it could happen to Wimbledon, a top flight club much more recently than us, it could certainly happen to us too. There was and is I think, in our support of other clubs' supporters' fights, pragmatism mixed in with the altruism.

I'm sorry, but i totally disagree. If a Club is not viable, it should go. Then people who want/need a league club could have one somewhere else.

There are a finite number of places in the Premiership/Football League. If these are taken by a lot of old dead wood from the likes of northern mill towns of the past, how will the new towns and cities ever get a club? Rotherham? What are they still in existance for?

Even if you take my view, the Albion should have been allowed to carry on. We are a well supported Club in an afluent area. If anything, our problem is that we are too small to attract local football supporters, who are able to spend the big bucks going to watch Premiershite football in London, or in some cases, Manchester. Those fans are not interested in shite football in a shitehole of a ground like a falling-down Goldstone or Withdean. The Club needed to move from the Goldstone, to attract the local fans. Unfortunately, the move has been via a royal shafting from Archer et al. When we get to Falmer, this Club will go places.

If Rotherham were in a northern Wembly, the majority of local fans would still want to watch the two local big clubs - Wednesday or United. Best let them fold and allow someone like Crawley with a big catchment area have a go.

 

[Mick Beard BHA]

get a grip,you either want to support the club,or get on your high horse,bet half the people that said they would never go to the golstone site(rip),fuckin well have,end off

Not sure if this is directed at me specifically? Anyway:

I have got a grip, i do want to support the Albion, i will be there on Saturday whilst on my high horse, and i swore i would never go to the goldstone site and i have stuck to it.

end 'off'.

 

[Brovion]

Just to clarify what i was saying about Arsenal- when standing for a cause which you were not directly affected by, i think you have to have some appreciation of or association with people who were. I certainly do not agree with the 'relocation' of clubs, whether it was Wimbledon a few years ago or Arsenal back in 1913. However i have no association/appreciation/experience of the Arsenal 'move', and one of the reasons why is that it happened many many years before i was born. Therefore its not something i can really get involved in.

re. Arsenal's relatively short existence by 1913- i was just trying to emphasise how different a case it is to Wimbledon's. In 1913 the world of football was very different; in the early years clubs were being formed, changed and even disbanded frequently. Fast forward to the late 20th century and the early 21st and its a very different story. Clubs like Wimbledon had been around for a century or more, even if their specific league status had been much more recent.

Sorry to repeat if you'd got this first time around!

Again I sympathise with your views, I'm sure I said pretty much the same thing myself at the time.

But in retrosopect, given the circumstances, (i.e. the at best indifference and at worst hostility of Merton Borough Council) was relocation actually the lesser of two evils? After all they were never going to be 'Wimbledon' again and it DID allow the creation of the first fans' club.

Like I say I no longer have strong feelings either way on the subject and part of me does feel that, given the circumstances, everything's worked out for the best. However I don't feel TOO comfortable arguing in favour of Franchise FC so I'll stop there!

 

[NF9]

Get over this whole wimbeldon thing at the time i didnt like it either but im not going to boycott my teams game against MK Just because of some crap that happened 10 years ago that at the moment is irrelevant to my feelings

 

[drew]

To all those diehard men of principle posting on this thread, can you just remind where exactly it is that AFC Wimbledon actually play?

 

[HG201]

I think that getting behind our team is far more important than boycotting some franchise club

 

[Djmiles]

To all those diehard men of principle posting on this thread, can you just remind where exactly it is that AFC Wimbledon actually play?

Not too far from Plough Lane. Why do you ask?

 

[FalmerforAll!**]

I will be going on Saturday. First of all, I think Winkleman is scum. I remember reading something along the lines of 'I stole a car at the weekend. One of the tires was flat, so I paid for the repairs myself' to describe how he has dealt with the birth of Franchise F.C. It's outrageous and I can't believe he got away with it. Shame on the FA for letting it happen.

HOWEVER, why bother boycotting? As someone mentioned further down the thread, when the day eventually comes that AFC Wimbledon play MK, will they be boycotting? I very much doubt it. Let's go there in numbers, outsing the plastics and show them what real football is. More to the point, I will be going purely to support my team. It's a relegation scrap and they need us. Come on the Albion

 

[Jamon Jamon]

To all those diehard men of principle posting on this thread, can you just remind where exactly it is that AFC Wimbledon actually play?

I think you'll find they saved Kingstonian from going under.


.

 

[Herne Hill Seagull]

If a Club is not viable, it should go. Then people who want/need a league club could have one somewhere else.

...

Even if you take my view, the Albion should have been allowed to carry on.

...

If Rotherham were in a northern Wembly, the majority of local fans would still want to watch the two local big clubs - Wednesday or United. Best let them fold and allow someone like Crawley with a big catchment area have a go.

It is indeed your view, old boy - and your view is blinkered by being an Albion fan. Do you think a Rotherham fan would see us as a big club that deserved to survive? I doubt it. We're on the way to the bottom division and do not (yet) play in our own stadium, just as they don't. And we were not really viable in the late 90's - playing in a borrowed stadium, 75 miles from home, in front of as few as a 1000 fans.

Apply your own logic and we'd be gone, before Adams turned up to drive us up out of the basement, possibly before Horton even arrived and started to turn things round. Any club could surive and thrive given a new stadium and the right conditions - look at where Wigan have come from, when they were playing at Springfield Park for example. Should they have been culled too?

And on the last point, I haven't lived in Brighton for 16 years but I know that the steady stream of fans leaving the city on Saturdays clad in Chelsea, Arsenal, Spurs shirts etc shows no signs of abating. So, again - why not let Brighton fold and give a club like Crawley a go?