Thursday, 15 September 2011

It's a supermarket property deal

One of the things the Franchise customers have tried to revise history on, is what was the purpose and driving force behind the franchising of a football club and Football League place to Milton Keynes. In their rose-tinted, hindsight-and-a-microscope way, some of them have convinced themselves (but no one else), that it was about 'saving' Wimbledon FC. This ridiculous notion has been shot down enough times already by the fact that Pete Winkelman approached many clubs with his scheme and by the fact that nothing of Wimbledon FC has been saved by Milton Keynes. The truth the customers have been trying to hide from is that it was all driven by Asda/Walmart's desire to build a vast supermarket in Milton Keynes, which planning laws at the time were stopping.

Personal motivations of the individuals involved can only be claimed and we can never know the truth of them (Winkelman even claimed the whole thing was about providing his football-playing son with a local club to play for! Sweet, but nonsense when it comes to taking a football club away from another town, building a £50m stadium and enacting a property deal worth even more), but the corporate involvement and the motivations behind them are clear - and they have nothing to do with providing Milton Keynes with a football team, they have to do with providing it with an Asda supermarket.

The Milton Keynes Stadium Consortium was extremely secretive about its composition, but we know it was approaching clubs at least as early as 2000 when it approached Wimbledon FC and that it had previously tried it on with other clubs. Nowhere in the 2002 Commission decision is it even revealed who the members of the MKSC were. Yet this snippet from a 2006 interview In Property Week with Winkelman makes interesting reading:

"Winkelman formed Inter MK and enlisted former ASDA development manager Mark Turner as commercial director and Richard Foreman, director at Denbigh Land and a former director at Lambert Smith Hampton, as development consultant."


 (NB Foreman was also quoted in a Property Week article from 14/5/04 saying "The Scheme {MK Stadium} will go ahead" insists Richard Foreman, a director at InterMK's development consultant, Denbigh Land and a former director at Lambert Smith Hampton who has advised the consortium for  more than four years. "It has the total support of the council and the worst case is that we have a year and a half to find another club" Thereby revealing that it didn't matter which football team was involved and that they were perfectly prepared to go out and get another one if Franchise FC didn't come out of administration.)

Mark Turner is now a director of a number of companies involved with the Denbigh development (do a Google search for Mark Turner and InterMK). The same Mark Turner who, as an Asda employee, featured in this May 2003 piece about enabling supermarket developments through football stadiums:


And it is through this piece that one can confirm the entire purpose of the franchising of a football club. Even with the enabling stadium development, significant doubt is expressed about permission being granted for supermarket developments out of town...

"The stark reality is that for every Milton Keynes or Coventry, there are five or six proposals that don't make it past the qualifiers. As Fryer puts it bluntly: "It costs an estimated 1,000 [pounds sterling] a seat to develop a stadium: that is 20m [pounds sterling] for a 20,000-seater. You are going to have to build one helluva supermarket to achieve that value and it won't deliver the whole cost. You only have to think of a third division football club that is in administration. How is that going to raise the lest {sic} of the money?""

All of this makes clear precisely why Asda was prepared to pay such a vast sum of money for a football stadium to be built - to get permission for its supermarket to be built. As the article says, "Asda declines to comment on the funding terms at Milton Keynes, but it is reportedly stumping up significantly more than originally mooted."

 And how big a deal was it for all concerned? Big enough that rival firm Tesco fought the development too:


Asda's involvement did finally come out into the open:


And the whole fact that it has all been about the property deal has long been known of course, this article from When Saturday Comes in 2006 is just one of many confirming attitudes:


So, remember what that 2003 article in The Grocer confirmed, "More than amenable to joining Redevelopment City FC in exchange for new superstores in out-of-town locations otherwise out of bounds". And remember too the ugly truth revealed in the flyers distributed in MK:


"No ASDA – no stadium. No Stadium – no Wimbledon FC. No Wimbledon FC – no future."

How right they were - no future for Wimbledon FC, that was for sure. Plenty of future for Asda though. Never let Franchise customers revise the truth - it was all about getting round planning rules so Asda/Walmart could build a supermarket. It may be a sad and embarrassing truth for Milton Keynes, but it is the truth.
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Monday, 12 September 2011

The guilty parties

It's a common theme with Franchise customers that whenever you refer to one of the guilty parties in the move, they whine about you not blaming the others, as if every time something comes up one has to list everyone involved! Well, here we go... who was/is to blame, why and, importantly, where are they now:

Sam Hammam
Bought shares in Wimbledon in the 1970s and graduated to owner and chairman, replacing Ron Noades when he went to Crystal Palace. His guilt lies in persuading Merton council to remove the covenant on the Plough Lane ground that ensured it must be used for sporting purposes - a covenant applied when Sidney Black donated the freehold of the land to the club in 1959. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plough_Lane) Hammam got the covenant removed in 1983, claiming it was so the club could redevelop the land to benefit the club - this did not happen. After Wimbledon started playing home games at Selhurst Park, Hammam sold the land to Safeway for a supermarket development, which was blocked, and they later sold it on for development of flats, which now occupy the land.

Hammam's other 'crime' was selling Wimbledon FC on to two Norwegians in 1997, having sold them on the idea that the club could be moved to a more lucrative venue - Dublin. (http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/football-league/david-conn-wimbledon-still-paying-for-hammams-dreams-651536.html)

Hammam exited the stage in 2000 and went on to cause more chaos at Cardiff City. His legacy is as the prime enabler in the destruction of Wimbledon FC, through the covenant removal and the implanting of the idea of a move to a different town/city. As guilty as he is of creating the circumstances that others exploited, he had no involvement in the Milton Keynes move. (Although ironically he was previously involved with MK City, along with Ron Noades in the late 1970s. Maybe that's why he didn't consider MK as an option.)
Current involvement: None known of with either Wimbledon or Franchise. 

Charles Koppel
The man exposed as lying many times (http://www.footballforums.net/forums/archive/index.php/t-44159.html) during his tenure as chairman of Wimbledon FC from 2000 to 2003, and was responsible for forcing through the Milton Keynes move. There are so many things one can say about Koppel, many of them highlighted in the link above, but it all boils down to one thing - his only aim during his time as chairman was to move the club to Milton Keynes and he never seriously countenanced any other option. As well as the many lies he perpetrated (many of which the Franchise customers still repeat, as I continue to highlight), he presided over a catastrophic period for the club in which key players were sold to rivals for promotion, a competent manager was sacked for no reason and a constant campaign was waged by him against his own club's supporters, even famously telling a residents' association that football fans were "not the sort of people you want on your doorstep", before providing his PR company (Brunswick) free of charge to help the residents' association fight against the return of the club to Plough Lane.

Mere words simply cannot express how despised this man is by Wimbledon fans for his actions. I could write another entire blog detailing solely the outrages perpetrated by Koppel in his quest to push through the franchising of the club to Milton Keynes. He lied to us, he campaigned against us, he betrayed both Wimbledon fans and the community, all in the name of trying to make money out of franchising the football team to another town. Koppel was the hatchet man, the ugly face of greed that looked to exploit Wimbledon's football club. That ultimately he failed to profit either personally or on behalf of the Norwegian owners who brought him in, is only of some small comfort. If it hadn't been Koppel though, it might well have been someone just as bad brought in by the owners and then subsequently exploited by Pete Winkelman.
Current involvement: None known of with either Wimbledon or Franchise, although there were hearsay reports of him sniffing around Franchise several years ago. He and fellow ex-Wimbledon FC director Matthias Hauger are now directors of Samco Gold, whose "principal business is the acquisition, exploration and development of precious metals resource properties in Argentina." (http://www.samcogold.com/Management/Directors) So, football men through and through then! Still looking to make pots of cash though, obviously. No mention of 'hatchet man deployed to kill a football club' though. 

Kjell Inge Røkke and Bjørn Rune Gjelsten
The two Norwegian billionaires became co-owners of Wimbledon FC in 2000, sold by Hammam on the idea that they could relocate the team to Dublin, as detailed and linked above. They appointed Charles Koppel, they tried to move WFC to Dublin and then they tried moving it to Milton Keynes.

Despite the fact that they did build a stadium for their home town club Molde in Norway, there is not a shred of evidence that they ever seriously tried to find a location for and build a stadium in Wimbledon or anywhere else in south London. Every single claimed effort by Koppel simply does not stand up to examination, it was all PR and spin without any substance whatsoever. (I'll detail this in another post sometime.) Particularly with hindsight, their ownership is one of the most blatantly opportunistic and appalling pieces of dealing ever, and it has heralded more owners at the top of the game who use football clubs as bargaining chips in property deals and other financial wheeler-dealing. The fact that they were allowed to get away with the franchising of a football team may not have resulted in more teams moving towns, but the message that businessmen could do just about whatever they liked with a football team as long as they had enough cash and power to wield it, was received clearly by many and has resulted in a catalogue of other clubs being affected. Maybe that's where the game was headed anyway, but what happened with Wimbledon FC was clearly a contributory factor.

We can never know exactly how early or detailed the plans were between the Norwegians and Koppel - they were far too careful and intelligent for that ever to come to light - but there is no doubt whatsoever that from the moment Winkelman hove into view with his scheme in Milton Keynes, they never had any other intention than pursuing it and in so doing killing Wimbledon FC.
Current involvement: None known of with either Wimbledon or Franchise. Although Kjell Inge Røkke has a conviction for corruption and has served jail time for it. http://www.webcitation.org/5fPBIa15Q Clearly not the sort of person you want owning your football club. A shame his conviction came too late to stop him failing the fit and proper person test, although I have no faith in the test that he would fail it even now. 

London Borough of Merton council
Agreed to the removal of the covenant securing Plough Lane for sporting use. Could and should have done more to make up for this error by more actively seeking out a viable location for a stadium. And that's about it. Much as some have tried to blame the council further, they could not stop the owners of Wimbledon FC leaving the borough, nor could they afford to build the club a stadium. The council did grant planning permission for a ground in the Wandle Valley under Hammam's ownership, but this was never acted upon and the permission lapsed. No planning application from the club was ever rejected.
Current involvement: Closely involved with AFC Wimbledon in finding the club a site for a ground and partners to help build it. 

The Football Association
The FA itself never actually ruled in favour of the move. It submitted evidence to the independent Commission opposing the move (see the Commission report for details), but, along with the other parties involved, was legally bound by the decision of the Commission. Therefore, the FA's guilt lies in its inaction. The Commission took a decision that the game's ultimate governing body disagreed with. How can that possibly have been allowed to happen? The FA could and should have stepped in, rather than allowing events to unfold as they did.
Current involvement:The FA has never apologised to Wimbledon fans for failing them in 2002 and continues to maintain its silence on the entire affair. 

The Football League
The Football League board twice rejected the move to Milton Keynes, but after an arbitration panel said they should consider the matter again because they had not followed correct procedure, the FL passed the matter to an FA Commission to decide. http://www.football-league.co.uk/latestnews/20020422/wimbledon-move-bid-referred-to-fa_2293301_210613 In so doing,  they abdicated their responsibility to the game and to Wimbledon's fans. They also ensured that just 3 people would decide the club's fate, rather than the entire Football League board as it should have been. The FL then gave evidence to the Commission opposing the move, but by abdicating their responsibility they had already passed legally binding power to the Commission. As with the FA, their's is a guilt of inaction - the FL could and should have stuck to applying its rules as it saw them and not abdicated its responsibility to the game and to the fans.
Current involvement: The FL has also never apologised to Wimbledon fans for failing them in 2002 and continues to maintain its silence on the entire affair. 

Raj Parker and Steve Stride
The 2 men on the FA Commission who voted for the move. Parker was a lawyer and Stride was operations director at Aston Villa. They held no qualifications or other experience that qualified them to make rulings on the matter. The third member of the Commission was Alan Turvey, chairman of the Ryman League, FA Council member and with a huge experience of running grass roots football. Although he has never confirmed it, Turvey is accepted as having voted against the move. The one man with experience of running the game and able to assess all the different aspects involved, not just the financial or legal elements at one club, is the one man that was ignored.

To read the Commission report now is like reading an absurd work of fiction. It makes so many ridiculous statements, including impractical recommendations that were never going to be met. It was discredited from the moment it appeared, by journalists, fans and even the FA Chairman himself who described its verdict as "appalling". http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/w/wimbledon/2209767.stm Parker and Stride are guilty of giving the final permission for the move, but such power should never have been placed in the hands of two men who were in no position and clearly did not have the ability to responsibly wield that power.
Current involvement: Parker is still a lawyer at Freshfields http://www.freshfields.com/people/profile/11/2468 and Stride has retired and written a book. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Stride 

Wimbledon fans 
About the most you can blame Wimbledon fans for is not seeing through Hammam early enough or recognising the Norwegian owners' intentions early enough. Whether that would have ultimately made a difference is impossible to know. Otherwise blameless, despite what misinformed Franchise customers have been led to believe.
Current involvement: Supporting Wimbledon of course. 

Other Wimbledon residents
According to some, these people can be blamed for not attending Wimbledon games in sufficient numbers and of not making the club welcome in the town. If you believe that, then it's all about consistency of argument, because you then have to apply exactly the same expectation to every other town, including Milton Keynes. And on that basis, MK is supporting its club even less well than Wimbledon did, so must be guilty of this as well. So which is it? Personally I don't think this argument stands up at all, but I include it for the sake of completeness.
Current involvement: None. Rather self-fulfilling this one. Either you're a Wimbledon fan or you're not, so those who aren't Wimbledon fans, but live in Wimbledon, by definition have no involvement with things. 

Milton Keynes council
Were an active part of the Milton Keynes Stadium Consortium (MKSC). Their representative, John Cove, attended many of Winkelman's meetings with football clubs, trying to lure them to MK. The council provided Winkelman with the land for the stadium development. The council is also responsible for the insistence on the football team involved in the deal being of Football League standard.

MK council hasn't received nearly the opprobrium it should have over this entire affair. While Merton is blamed by some, MK council has escaped the wrath of all but a few. Yet they encouraged Winkelman's scheme, insisted on the FL team, gave the land for nothing and were involved in the negotiations, all so that Asda/Walmart would pay for MK to have a stadium. Should be held far more accountable than they so far have been.
Current involvement: John Cove was seconded from MK council to work at Franchise and is now employed their full time as Chief Executive. The council continues to work with Winkelman over the stadium development site. 

Asda/Walmart
Part of the MKSC and the prime source of funding for the stadium development and early funding of Franchise FC under Winkelman's ownership. Under planning regulations in force at the time they needed to provide an enabling development (the stadium) in order to build their supermarket. An integral part of the scheme, without them it simply couldn't have happened.
Current involvement: The supermarket was finished long before the stadium and, like all supermarkets, is many times more lucrative to run than a football club. Laughing all the way to the bank. Ironically, Franchise customers are not allowed to use the Asda car park on match days. 

Franchise customers
Provided financial support to Winkelman and thereby gave tacit approval of what was done to put a Football League team on their doorstep.
Current involvement: Still providing that financial support to Winkelman, because he's still there. 

Other Milton Keynes residents
Again included solely for completeness. If you believe Wimbledon residents were guilty of not supporting their football club, then give a round of applause to over 200,000 MK residents for boycotting Franchise FC. Silly, right? But that's the argument some still make about Wimbledon.
Current involvement: Still staying away in their droves. Maybe the team should be moved to a more deserving town eh? 

Peter Winkelman
I left him until last for good reason - he's the one, out of all the major players, who is still most involved and who has benefitted the greatest from a scheme that he cooked up in the first place. According to the FA Commission itself and based on Winkelman's own evidence, he instigated the move in 2000 by approaching Koppel and, through InterMK, he now owns both the football club and the stadium development. Without Winkelman the entire MK scheme never even gets started. Wimbledon would still have had problems and suffered at the hands of Koppel and the Norwegians, but there would have been no mirage of riches in MK for them to grasp at.

Winkelman's guilt is established beyond a shadow of a doubt to all except the most blind of Franchise customers who claim he 'saved' Wimbledon FC. The fact that nothing of Wimbledon FC was saved in MK seems to escape their notice. I'll return to Winkelman's actions in this blog again and again, because while he remains in charge at Franchise, we still have one of the biggest villains of the piece at the dark heart of the matter.
Current involvement: Chairman of Franchise FC. Owner of Franchise FC through parent company InterMK. Beneficiary of all the stadium site developments through InterMK and owner of the stadium, a capital asset worth in the region of £50m. Has never once apologised for luring a football team away from its fans.

So there you have it. There are many minor players within the grand scheme of things, but it would take several books on the subject to list them all. So the next time someone says, 'But what about...', you know where to send them for a list of those to blame and those who have been wrongly blamed.
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Saturday, 10 September 2011

No one cares? Guess again

Franchise customers are very fond of pretending that no one else cares about the franchising of Wimbledon's League place and that they are now universally accepted and welcomed around the country. This is not true. Naturally enough, the passing of time mellows some opinions, but the reality is far from what the customers want people to believe.

What there is, is a widespread acceptance amongst fans of other clubs that it's not the fault of the customers currently handing their cash over to Winkelman. This is understandable enough - the customers are, at worst, guilty of rewarding Winkelman for his disgraceful actions in attempting to lure a number of football clubs to MK and succeeding with Wimbledon FC. Still nothing to be proud of, but many of them have no shame when it comes to something like that, they put their own self-interest first. And it would be the same in any town, there are always those prepared to put their own selfish interests ahead of any notion of common good. I have nothing against Milton Keynes as a town, it's the customers that prop up Franchise and, more importantly, insist on spreading a complete pack of lies across the internet and, presumably, in person, that I object to.

So, what of this supposed acceptance they keep claiming? They make much of individual other fans not giving them a hard time at face to face meetings, but this is a nonsense. Most football fans go to watch their team play and to have a good day out. The last thing they are looking for is to have a row with some Franchise customer. Those that do care deeply about the whole business are highly unlikely to seek out a customer just to have a row - that's the behaviour of someone looking for trouble and most normal people simply don't do that. Those people that care are far more likely to give Franchise customers a wide berth and want nothing to do with them.

So let's look at a few forum threads and other sources to see how the customers' 'acceptance' notion stacks up. None of these will be meaningful taken on their own, but they weren't hard to find and they build up to make a bigger picture...

The comments at the end of this Guardian article do not suggest acceptance is as widespread as they'd like (and I didn't weigh in until late on remember):


When Saturday Comes still excludes Franchise FC from its season review and this piece from late last year also generated plenty of vociferous resonse:


Recent opponents Carlisle had a bit of a ding-dong on a forum about their returning hero John Gorman. Note the usual lies being repeated about Wimbledon FC being guaranteed to go bust and, of course, a Franchise customer pleading on behalf of 'the children' and spreading the usual crap about them being lied about:


Stevenage not exactly showing the love:


This one went on a bit:


Today's Franchise opponents Sheffield Wednesday managing not to forget, or forgive in some cases, either:


And these were easy to find just this morning - there is masses more material out there, and it's not ancient stuff either, the hate at the franchising of a football team is still strong out there. (I'll add to this list if anyone cares to share further recent examples.)

So who are Franchise customers trying to kid with this notion of acceptance? Partially I think they are hoping it will be a self-fulfilling prophecy and influence football fans (part of the continuing charm and PR offensive by a few from the favoured customer clique), but mostly I think they are the hollow words of people hoping something will be true while knowing it's not.

The hate for Franchise FC was never universal and it's certainly not now, but when you see a Franchise customer claiming everything is now sweetness and light for them and that Franchise has been accepted, recognise it for what it is - wishful thinking.

Of course, there is one way the Franchise could help itself be more widely accepted... drop the ludicrous attempted link to Wimbledon provided by having 'Dons' in the team name. Will they? Doubt it - they simply don't have the sense to.
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Wednesday, 7 September 2011

Does size matter?

A frequent slur thrown about by Franchise customers is that we didn't support our club either well enough or in enough numbers. Let's deal with the 'well enough' aspect first...

Since the quality of support is impossible to measure in an empirical way, it's a pretty stupid thing for anyone to say in the first place. Quite what is going on in the heads of the people that make this accusation is a mystery. Is one supposed to shout louder and longer? Were Wimbledon FC fans supposed to jump up and down more to show their displeasure at the MK move? Absurd, of course, so this can just be dismissed. Quality of support is irrelevant. After all, the morgue-like atmosphere at Franchise FC home games, which has been reported by virtually all visiting fans, Franchise customers themselves and observable from the television highlights, hasn't stopped their team from winning games. So, it's purely a numbers game...

I'll look at Wimbledon FC first, starting by tracking the home attendances from our first season in the Football League up until 2002:

1978: div 4 - 3,135 (Plough Lane)
1979: div 4 - 3,712 (Plough Lane)
1980: div 3 - 3,426 (Plough Lane)
1981: div 4 - 2,484 (Plough Lane)
1982: div 3 - 2,596 (Plough Lane)
1983: div 4 - 2,347 (Plough Lane)
1984: div 3 - 3,459 (Plough Lane)
1985: div 2 - 4,391 (Plough Lane)
1986: div 2 - 4,578 (Plough Lane)
1987: div 1 - 7,811 (Plough Lane)
1988: div 1 - 7,995 (Plough Lane)
1989: div 1 - 7,768 (Plough Lane)
1990: div 1 - 7,652 (Plough Lane)
1991: div 1 - 7,432 (Plough Lane)
1992: div 1 - 7,062 (Selhurst Park)
1993: div 1 - 8,391 (Selhurst Park)
1994: div 1 - 10,475 (Selhurst Park)
1995: div 1 - 10,206 (Selhurst Park)
1996: div 1 - 13,230 (Selhurst Park)
1997: div 1 - 15,139 (Selhurst Park)
1998: div 1 - 16,666 (Selhurst Park)
1999: div 1 - 18,235 (Selhurst Park)
2000: div 1 - 17,157 (Selhurst Park)
2001: div 2 - 7,897 (Selhurst Park)
2002: div 2 - 6,961 (Selhurst Park)

What these figures tell us, quite clearly, is that a team with a core fanbase of less than 3,000 when it entered the Football League in 1977, had grown to at least between 5-6,000 by the time of the 1991 switch to Selhurst Park. It's unknown how the attendances might have developed if the club had stayed within Wimbledon/Merton in a bigger ground, but the doubling of core support between 1977 and 1991 is clear, based on the capacity of Plough Lane and the percentage of away fans.

That is as far as one can reliably go regarding Wimbledon, because the Selhurst Park figures are all over the place. They show that any top-flight football team can attract customers to games in a big enough stadium, but they tell us nothing about how Wimbledon's core support changed over the 1992-2002 period. The fact that after relegation in 2000 the average attendance dropped back to comparable levels with those first achieved at Selhurst Park in 1992-93, suggest the core fanbase, willing to travel to Selhurst Park instead of Wimbledon, hadn't changed much in those ten years and that the increases were down to away fans, neutrals and 'floating' customers.

So, let's err on the safe side and say that in 2002 there were 5,000 core Wimbledon fans - well below the average home attendance and bearing in mind not every dedicated fan makes it to every home game. How does that stack up against other clubs? 5,000 puts a club near the top of division 4 (League 2) or comfortably within division 3 (League 1) - basically amongst the top 60-70 clubs in the country. And bear in mind I've been conservative with the estimates and not really considered away fans as a factor.

So how are AFC Wimbledon bearing out those figures? Quite well as it turns out. Bearing in mind that the capacity of Kingsmeadow is less than 5,000 (varies depending on arrangements for away fans), after 3 home games this season the average attendance is 4,424. Along with the fact that there are an increasing number of all-ticket games which have been sold out, the confirmation that Wimbledon's football club, both then and now, is comfortably among the top 100 best supported clubs in the country and with the potential for more, is indisputable.

Where does that leave any accusation that Wimbledon fans didn't support their club in great enough numbers? It leaves it completely rubbished. Unless one is going to claim that all football clubs from division 4 (League 2) and downwards aren't well enough supported and don't deserve their football team, then this one is a complete non-starter.

Milton Keynes
So what of Milton Keynes, which we were told deserved a football team more than we did (by both WFC's owners, Winkelman and the FA Commission report), surely there are some crushing statistics available to bear out that claim? Surely the case must have been overwhelmingly clear to grant permission? Errr... no.

If you read the FA Commission report, the full extent of their study appears to be the acceptance of hearsay:

"19. In the early part of last year WFC concluded that the MKSC proposal they had been exploring represented the best option. The potential fan base is huge. 8 million people live within one hour’s drive, and 2.2 million within half an hour’s drive. Milton Keynes is said to have the largest population in Europe without a professional football team."

There is nothing else in the report that explains its conclusion that, "Milton Keynes provides a suitable and deserving opportunity in its own right where none exists in South London." Much is made of Winkelman's "enthusiasm", but the report completely omits any attempt at justifying this analysis of Milton Keynes as deserving an opportunity to have a Football League team. The Commissioners didn't even bother to check the erroneous assertion that Milton Keynes was the largest population in Europe without a professional football team. It made a nice soundbite, but it wasn't true then and it wouldn't even be true now, despite MK's continued growth. Indeed you don't even have to look outside England for bigger places without a professional football team!


Note Dudley above MK on that list even now, 10 years later, and others like Wakefield were ahead of it at the time. When so little attempt has been made to check the validity of the statements made to the Commission about Milton Keynes' suitability for a football team, what are we to make of the damning comments they make about Wimbledon's suitability? Did it escape their notice that more than 8 million people live within an hour's drive of Wimbledon?

There's no evidence that the Commission was presented with any of the details of football activity in MK up to 2002 to back up the claims that it was deserving of a professional football team. And the reasons why are fairly obvious - it was a catastrophic catalogue of failure...

Milton Keynes Borough
Bletchley Town and Milton Keynes City
Milton Keynes County
Milton Keynes Town/United
Wolverton Town (plus 3 other name changes)

Virtually no trace of any of these clubs exists now - much like the oldest football grandstand in the country that was at Wolverton and which was 'saved' in much the same way as Wimbledon FC were. To see it now makes a mockery of the concept that anything has been 'saved'.



But I digress, back to MK's supposed greater suitability than south London...

And what of the achievements of these clubs in the name of Milton Keynes? Not one of them ever progressed past the equivalent of today's Spartan South Midlands Premier League (level 9 of the pyramid, which Wimbledon's friends at the Oxhey Jets are playing in) and if any of them ever made so much as the first round proper of the FA Cup then I can't find a record of it. Attendances? There simply aren't any records online - none of the teams ever got high enough for the data to still be available and club websites, if there were any, are long gone. There's no evidence of any club even getting close to regular attendances approaching 1,000.

To put it in perspective, the current highest average attendance in the division most MK clubs existed in, is 152. In the similar levelled United Counties League Premier, it's Kings Lynn Town at 652, but next highest Sleaford Town is just 212. All the MK clubs were playing at the equivalent of the CCL that Wimbledon restarted in, but never progressed above it, so even though the records aren't online it is clear that none of them either achieved anything either on the pitch or through the turnstiles that could possibly justify the Commission's conclusion that, "Milton Keynes provides a suitable and deserving opportunity in its own right where none exists in South London." Indeed, reading that assessment now, it is beyond belief that two of the three commissioners could make such a statement bearing in mind the actual facts.

In the nine years that have passed, what has been achieved in Milton Keynes? Surely such a "suitable and deserving opportunity" must have put South London to shame and outstripped it by a huge factor? For the Commission to have ruled as it did it can't possibly have ended up a close call, surely...

Wimbledon FC - div 2 - 2001-2 - 6,961

Franchise FC - div 3 - 2010-11 - 8,512

One can argue all one likes about the technicalities of divisions, away fans, cheap children's tickets, travel to Selhurst Park and all the rest of it, but the cold, hard final analysis says that last season the so-called overwhelming justification for moving a Football League place to Milton Keynes amounted to 1,551 people. 1,500 people - and the football club still doesn't own the stadium or benefit from the additional income streams generated by it, so it's no better off in MK than it was at Selhurst Park from the additional revenue side of things.

All that, for 1,500 extra on the gate, after tens of millions of pounds have been spent, a football club destroyed and the endless anger and argument that followed.

And what is it the Franchise customers tell each other about all this?

"I was as surprised as anyone that the move was sanctioned but when they came that was that you just play with the hand you're dealt. I was (and still am) amazed that people still make stupid rancorous comments about us. We weren't the cause of Wimbledon's demise; their previous owners, their lack of local support, their precarious finances and deliberate fan boycott saw to that."


How easily the old lies trip off their keyboards as justification for their actions. Trying to mollify their own guilt by still pretending it was our fault and we deserved it. Take a look at the numbers... what Franchise customers deserved was a Spartan South Midlands Premier League team. And until such time as they actually create a local club that they then propel through its own efforts up the football pyramid, that's all they ever will have deserved. But in the meantime, the least they can do is to stop clinging to the lies and misinformation that even the FA Commission repeated, and face the facts about how their town was gifted a Football League place.

And let's be clear, I don't expect them to give up that League place or even stop attending Franchise - I expect them to stop lying about the facts, stop whitewashing the guilty parties and stop pretending their franchised football team has anything to do with Wimbledon by dropping the 'Dons' from their name.
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