By Sam Elliot
What were you doing in early June, 2002? You would be hard pushed to remember, most likely.
If you’re English, one thing you were likely to be doing was discovering a new bone in your body, the much-maligned metatarsal.
Joining the rest of the country, you were looking to the heaven hoping that the tiny piece of David Beckham’s foot could mend in time ahead of the World Cup in Japan and South Korea.
Little did most know a rather famous repair job had just got started in the tiny back office of a printing merchants in south west London.
As the gaze predictably fell on Golden Balls and the other Three Lions heading on the plane, there was hardly a second thought given to a group of football fans who needed such focus and attention like you couldn’t imagine.
Wimbledon supporters had just lost their football club, permission granted for its relocation to Milton Keynes. With England set for action, a great time to bury bad news.
Annoyance from all around for sure, but with the World Cup soundtrack blaring, the sympathy and outcry were conveniently drowned out by the din from East Asia.
All of a sudden, a group of fans had to cancel their summer engagements, ignore the World Cup and put on hold any holiday plans.
They had a football club to create.
AFC Wimbledon were born and their tale back to the Football League inside nine short years is well told. But last month, chapter three was completed in glorious technicolour.
A return to Plough Lane granted, the romantics’ old favourite – Wimbledon’s remarkable streak through the divisions from the Southern League to FA Cup winners – has arguably just been equalled.
Yet 14 years ago AFC Wimbledon was just a dream, playing back in the borough pure fantasy.
The fans who just over a decade ago were watching the team battle the likes of Viking Greenford in the parks of the Combined Counties League are going back to a place they have mourned since 1991.
The decaying greyhound stadium, a stone’s throw from where the troublemakers like Wally Downes and Dennis Wise probably used to throw stones at each other, will now turn yellow and blue.
Power to the people. Bobby Gould, Wimbledon’s iconic FA Cup-winning manager, never thought he would live to see the day.
“It’s the conclusion to the story everyone wanted,” he said. “Perhaps now the last leg of the journey would be for them to scale the leagues all the way to the top, but they are fan-owned – and football has changed so much as everyone knows.
“When the flats went up on the old Plough Lane site, and when the club was essentially sold to Milton Keynes, there was no chance.
“I think only Wimbledon fans could have done this. The people there, Erik Samuelson, Ivor Heller and so many others, they’ve done something great. They’ve not only recovered from their club being the first to ever be franchised in this country, but they are better for it. They committed themselves to this.
“Not only have they done it, they’ve done it the right way. It’s still supporter-owned, it’s still in the hands of the people who love it – the people who created it.”
This result in December at Merton Civic Centre was the mother of all ‘I told you sos’ to all those former Wimbledon owners who said the council were the devil in disguise.
A quarter of a century of untidy efforts to return the club to its spiritual home were blown out of the water inside two years of detailed study and a drive to make sure the chance to go home wasn’t missed.
A footballing middle finger too towards the Football Association. Fans were told creating this new phoenix club back in 2002 would “not be in the wider interests of football”.
Penny for the thoughts of the genius within the FA’s three-man commission who came out with that nugget. It’s acted as the club’s inspiration ever since.
It’s not the same site from where their rise from the Southern League started, but it’s on the same road. Nestled in between 600 stylish flats, the initial £20m, 11,000-capacity stadium will rise to 20,000 should the League Two club further progress.
They’ll be home by the summer of 2018 and the second chapter of one of the game’s most recognised stories will be complete.
Gould’s memories of the old place won’t ever leave him, although, admittedly, he wishes some of them could be wiped from his mind.
He has vowed to be there when the ribbon is cut back in SW19 and added: “Do you remember that picture when the players lined up and they all showed their a***s?
“Well, that full moon cost the club £10,000. I was sitting in the stands with the wife and they started to remove their shorts. I was screaming at them but it was too late – I knew what was coming, a huge whacking fine, that’s what!
“I can’t see the AFC Wimbledon players getting away with that kind of behaviour under Neal Ardley but I can’t wait to see the team walk back out there.”
