Graham Kelly: Money, not football, key to Dons decision
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Your support makes all the difference.I am still struggling to come to terms with the Wimbledon decision, handed down by an independent commission appointed by the Football Association after four days of deliberation last month. So, evidently, are the Dons' supporters who are pressing ahead, with plans to lodge an application to form a new AFC Wimbledon and apply to play in the Ryman League.
Coincidentally, the chairman of the Ryman League is an FA Council member, Alan Turvey, who was one of the three members of the commission, together with solicitor Raj Parker of Freshfields, Bruckhaus, Deringer, and Steve Stride, the operations director of Aston Villa. Parker was appointed chairman by the FA to hear what the commission felt was a complex and difficult case, with feelings running high because of the competing commercial and football issues. It reached a 2-1 verdict.
What bewilders me, given the opposition of the governing body of the game, the FA, the clear reluctance of the board of the Football League to sanction the move, the opposition of the hard-core Wimbledon supporters, the lobbying by 150 members of both Houses, is that the commission could reach such a decision. It rides roughshod over the pyramid of football, disturbs the interlinked rules on academies and communities, and gives encouragement to the arguments of environmentalists who are seeking to frustrate the efforts of other clubs to re-locate within their own conurbations.
Here are some key extracts from the judgement that favoured commerce over football:
"In the light of its exceptional circumstances, Wimbledon should be given approval to re-locate to Milton Keynes. We suggest some important steps which the Football League, Wimbledon Football Club and Milton Keynes Stadium Consortium must take to preserve the integrity and identity of the club...
"We do not believe, with respect, that Wimbledon's links in Merton are so profound or the roots go so deep that they will not survive a necessary transplant to ensure the club's survival...
"We cannot conceive of another club in Wimbledon's league position (or which is comparable to Wimbledon) which meets the following criteria. The stark facts which make Wimbledon unique are:
a) It has had no stadium of its own, and has been a secondary tenant, for some 11 years and its shareholders are not prepared to continue to finance its operation in its present financial circumstances.
b) Wimbledon needs to re-locate to have a commercially viable future or, given the level of losses it will continue to sustain, it will go into liquidation. There is no viable South London alternative.
c) Milton Keynes provides a suitable and deserving opportunity in its own right where none exists in South London.
d) Wimbledon's links or roots in its community are of a nature that can be and are agreed should be retained, albeit in a new location.
The commission argued that Wimbledon is unique, primarily on the basis that a former owner disposed of its ground under details many have forgotten. It quoted as "stark facts" the argument put to it that the club's shareholders are not prepared to finance its operation in its present financial circumstances. I should think quite a few shareholders have been tempted to advance similar arguments to highly-paid players since the demise of ITV Digital.
"Milton Keynes provides a deserving opportunity in its own right." Deserving of by-passing the pyramid system and leaping straight into the seeded round of the Worthington Cup? It's like an amalgam of all the board games we played on rainy days before computers were invented. Monopoly. Wembley. Snakes and Ladders.
I find it really difficult to understand how it can be an indicator of the club's so-called uniqueness to make the following suggestions for preserving its identity after relocation. As well as guaranteeing to subsidise fans' travel, they will keep the same kit and logo, streets will be re-named to reflect the arrival of Wimbledon FC and so on.
As Wimbledon struggle to find a way of meeting the Football League's ground criteria at the hockey stadium in Milton Keynes for a temporary home for next season, while planning their exciting new First Division future, the Dons Trust is convening a special meeting on Thursday to sanction the expenditure necessary for committing the fairly modest sum of £20,000 on a ground-sharing arrangement in or near Merton for the new AFC Wimbledon in the Ryman Second Division.
Turvey, a "grass-roots" representative on the FA Council, must be reflecting wryly that his dissenting voice failed to sway his two colleagues from reaching a truly bizarre decision which, however they try to dress it up, will open the door to all sorts of arguments and problems unless the authorities act quickly to close the door that is swinging alarmingly open.
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