How time races past - it is nearly 5 years since I last made a post here. It's more than 10 years since I started the blog. And it's now more than 20 years since the FA Commission gave its disastrously wrong 2-1 verdict to allow a football team to move to Milton Keynes. The dissenting voice on that Commission has passed away and much else has blurred into history. It's not over, of course it isn't, because this is a football club at the heart of everything and that means it's never over, but those making up the club change. There are Wimbledon fans in their 20s now who weren't even born in 2002, and it's all those who have become part of the Wimbledon story that now carry it forward. There are plenty of voices and faces from the past who are still around to tell the stories, to remember past heroics, to hold us to past promises and to keep the history very much alive and literally kicking - Wimbledon's spirit and knowledge are being passed on, generation to generation, and it now happens back on Plough Lane.
I didn't blog about the return to Plough Lane, because it was personal, private and overwhelming - it had nothing to do with anyone except us, Wimbledon fans returning to a place many of us knew as home and that younger fans will come to feel the same way about. Home. That one word says everything, it encapsulates all the feelings of love, belonging, sadness, safety and hope. It's where Wimbledon's football club is now - home. And that is all that ever did, or ever will, matter.
And now it's time to end things. This will be the last time I post to this blog. It was all over a long time ago, in truth before I even started this blog - which was only ever about keeping the truth told and exposing the lies told to try to justify what was done. Wimbledon fans won everything, as it turns out, from the very moment the club was reformed on 30th May 2002. That's how history already judges it, the simple but immense decision and effort to not take it lying down, to not take no for an answer and to not accept that our football club was dead (and yes, Milton Keynes was death for Wimbledon FC, that pesky history thing has borne us out on that). The blog will stay up for as long as it doesn't cost me any time or money to keep it here, but its job is done, and only a mad few are left denying the truths.
But what of the 'Dons' nicked-name? I said I'd continue for as long as the Milton Keynes team masqueraded under Wimbledon's nickname. It's over, they had their chance and they've blown it. I can't honestly say whether the campaigns and pressure over the years have influenced things much in either direction, one can only deal with observable reality and guess. The observable fact is that a team in Milton Keynes is still defining itself with the nicked-name of another town, despite now laying claim to being a shiny new city. I don't see that changing now until Winkelman is gone - and he's still trapped in a nightmare of his own making, unable to free himself of the club without losing the stadium. The name will go, it is as inevitable as it has always been, but it will probably take another generation before enough Franchise FC customers ask, "Why are we still using this thing just to piss off Wimbledon fans who haven't given a shit about us for many years?" It is as inevitable as water flowing downhill, but I may not live to see it. It is a source of great amusement to me that long after I'm gone there will be a couple of Dons fans sat in a pub, maybe it will be the Fox & Grapes, chatting over a pint after an appalling 0-0 draw with Doncaster, Fulham, Halifax, Hereford, Chelsea or Hartley Wintney, and it'll go something like this: Womble1 "I see Franchise dropped the 'Dons', calling themselves MK Warriors now." Womble2, "Is that right? What does the MK stand for?" Womble1, "Dunno, some place in the Midlands I think. Did you know they used to be us?" Womble2, "What do you mean us? Who's ever going to believe they could have anything to do with Wimbledon? Now stop being fucking silly and get a round in. I need another after watching that shambles, we'll never get back in the European Supermax Red Bull Third League at this rate."
It has been fun. Take care - I'll see you out there.
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