When was Wimbledon Football Club formed?
Relocation of Wimbledon F.C. to Milton Keynes
Wimbledon Football Club relocated to Milton Keynes in September 2003, 16 months after receiving permission to do so from the Football Association on the basis of a two-to-one decision in favour by an FA-appointed independent commission. The move took the team from south London, where it had been based since its foundation in 1889, to Milton Keynes, a new town in Buckinghamshire, about to the northwest of the club's traditional home district Wimbledon. Hugely controversial, the move's authorisation prompted disaffected Wimbledon supporters to form AFC Wimbledon, a new club, in June 2002. The relocated team played home matches in Milton Keynes under the Wimbledon name from September 2003 until June 2004, when following the end of the 2003–04 season it renamed itself Milton Keynes Dons F.C. (MK Dons).
AFC Wimbledon
To mark their first game in the Football League on 6 August 2011 against Bristol Rovers, the team wore a white and blue commemorative kit which was based on that worn by the original Wimbledon F.C. during 1977–78 in order to remember their own first season as a member of the Football League in the old Fourth Division (now League Two). To prevent copyright infringement, a single blue stripe replaced the three trade mark stripes of the Adidas original and the shirts were emblazoned with a modified crest for the occasion.
Wimbledon F.C.
The 1997–98 season looked highly promising for Wimbledon as late on as Christmas, as the team were regularly in the top five. However, the side's form in the second half of the season was less impressive, and the club dipped to 15th place in the final table – the lowest finish yet for Wimbledon in the top flight. A similar pattern followed in 1998–99 – a good start followed by a slump. As late on as mid-March, the team were on the fringe of a UEFA Cup place. The signing of West Ham United striker John Hartson boosted hopes of success for Wimbledon, but a terrible run of form in the final weeks of the season saw the side dip to 16th in the final table. Wimbledon again reached the League Cup semi-finals that season – losing to eventual winners Tottenham Hotspur.
London Welsh F.C.
London Welsh Football Club are one of the oldest in London having played its first competitive match on 18 October 1891, although it had been founded around a year earlier by officers of the Welsh regiments, with the aim to "honourably uphold the reputation of Wales in the Metropolis".
2001–02 Wimbledon F.C. season
Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Wimbledon, already one of the smallest clubs in the division financially in spite of having been a Premiership club for the previous fifteen seasons, had fallen on hard times. In August 2001 the club announced its intention to move to Milton Keynes; the move was approved by the FA in April. Many Wimbledon fans, disgusted by this decision, created their own football club in response, AFC Wimbledon."Wimbledon's score comes first"
List of Milton Keynes Dons F.C. seasons
Milton Keynes Dons Football Club (usually abbreviated to MK Dons) is a professional association football club based in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, England, founded in 2004. The club was formed from Wimbledon F.C. after the latter had relocated to Milton Keynes. The club renamed itself as the 'Milton Keynes Dons' but subsequently considers itself to be a new club founded in 2004 (the club badge includes MMIV - Roman Numerals for 2004).
AFC Wimbledon
AFC Wimbledon Ladies switched affiliation from Wimbledon F.C. after the 2002–03 season.
Stadium MK
After hosting the first few home matches of the 2003–04 campaign at Selhurst Park, Wimbledon F.C. played their first match in Milton Keynes in September 2003. A company voluntary arrangement was put together in March 2004 under which Winkelman's consortium would take Wimbledon F.C. out of administration, reportedly using a holding company called MK Dons. The Football League threatened to expel the club if the takeover were not completed by 31 July. Winkelman's Inter MK Group brought Wimbledon F.C. out of administration in late June 2004 and concurrently announced changes to its name, badge and colours. The new name was Milton Keynes Dons F.C. (commonly shortened to MK Dons).
1877 Wimbledon Championship
On 18 June 2012 a commemorative plaque was unveiled at the former home of the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, in Worple Road, Wimbledon celebrating both the first Wimbledon Championships and the 1908 Olympic tennis event. The ceremony was performed by Heather Hanbury, Headmistress of Wimbledon High School; Philip Brook, Chairman of the All England Club, and Cr David T Williams JP, Mayor of Merton.
Relocation of Wimbledon F.C. to Milton Keynes
The south-west London club Wimbledon, traditionally a semi-professional non-League side, won three successive Southern League championships between 1975 and 1977 and were thereupon elected into the Football League. Nicknamed "the Dons", they proceeded to perform strongly in fully professional football, winning promotion to the then-top flight First Division for the 1986–87 season. The club's swift "fairytale" rise from obscurity through the English football pyramid caused it to reach a level of prominence far above that suggested by its modest home stadium at Plough Lane, which remained largely unchanged from the club's non-League days. Wimbledon's record attendance at Plough Lane—18,000, set "in the 1930s against a team of sailors from HMS "Victory""—was never broken during 14 League seasons at the ground, including five in the top flight.
History of football in England
A key issue facing the professional clubs was the lack of competitive matches. This was especially so for teams that had been knocked out of the FA Cup. It was self–evident that crowds for friendly fixtures were much lower and of course this meant a reduction in revenue and consequent struggle to pay wages. Aston Villa’s Scottish director William McGregor sought a solution by asking the other professional clubs to arrange annual home and away fixtures on a competitive basis, with points to be awarded for winning and drawing. Following a conference between club directors on 23 March 1888, the English Football League was founded on 17 April 1888 as one division of 12 clubs: Accrington (founded in 1876; folded in 1896), Aston Villa (founded in 1874), Blackburn Rovers, Bolton Wanderers, Burnley (founded in 1882), Derby County (founded in 1884), Everton (founded in 1878), Notts County, Preston North End (founded in 1880), Stoke F.C. (founded in 1863; became Stoke City in 1925), West Bromwich Albion (founded in 1878) and Wolverhampton Wanderers (founded in 1877; always commonly known as "Wolves"). Six of the clubs were in Lancashire and six in the Midlands so, at this time, there were none from Yorkshire or the north-east or anywhere south of Birmingham. 1888–89 was the Football League’s inaugural season and Preston North End earned the nickname of “Invincibles” by going through the entire 22–match league competition unbeaten. They also won the FA Cup and so recorded the world's first “double”. Preston retained their league title in 1889–90 and Blackburn won the FA Cup.
AFC Wimbledon league record by opponent
AFC Wimbledon is an English professional association football club, based in Kingston upon Thames, Greater London. The club was formed on 30 May 2002 by a group of supporters of Wimbledon Football Club, led by Kris Stewart, Marc Jones and Trevor Williams who strongly opposed the decision of an independent commission appointed by the FA to allow the relocation of Wimbledon F.C. to Milton Keynes, who were subsequently reformed as Milton Keynes Dons in 2004.
AFC Wimbledon league record by opponent
The club went on to achieve 5 promotions in 9 years, ensuring that they were the first club to be formed in the 21st century to make it into the Football League and making them the youngest of the 72 Football League clubs by some distance. On 30 May 2016, AFC Wimbledon achieved their 6th promotion to Football League One after victory in the 2016 Football League Two play-off Final, exactly 14 years to the day since the club's formation.
Wimbledon Stadium
The opening night was on 19 May 1928 with the first race being won by a greyhound called Ballindura trained by Harry Leader. The Burhill kennels in Walton-on-Thames became renowned within the industry housing the hounds for Wimbledon and were initially used by trainers Stanley Biss, Harry Leader and Ken Appleton. Paddy McEllistrim, a Norfolk farmer and breeder of greyhounds, and Sidney Orton joined the training kennels soon after.
AFC Wimbledon
On 28 May 2002, the Football Association backed a 2–1 decision by the three-man independent, arbitration commission they had appointed to allow Wimbledon F.C. to relocate north to the new town of Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire; a decision influenced, among other factors, by claims from Wimbledon chairman Charles Koppel that such a move was "necessary" in order to prevent the club from going "bankrupt." The F.A. forbade any right of appeal against the decision.
Relocation of Wimbledon F.C. to Milton Keynes
Koppel announced Wimbledon Football Club's intent to move to Milton Keynes on 2 August 2001 with a letter to the Football League chief executive David Burns requesting approval. The letter stated that Wimbledon had already signed an agreement to relocate and "subject to the necessary planning and regulatory consents being obtained" intended to be playing home games at a newly built stadium in Milton Keynes by the start of the 2003–04 season. The proposed move was opposed in most quarters: along with most of Wimbledon's fans and many football supporters generally, the League, the Football Association (the FA), Merton Council, most football writers in the national press and a 150-man Parliamentary All-Party Committee voiced disapproval. Two similar club relocations had occurred in the Scottish professional ranks during the 1990s, but the permanent relocation of an English League club to another conurbation was unprecedented. A group of Wimbledon fans decided to boycott club merchandise in protest against the plans, and launched an "alternative matchday programme for both home and away fans", "Yellow and Blue", to compete against the official publication. The League board unanimously rejected Wimbledon's proposed move on 16 August 2001, stating that any Milton Keynes club would have to earn membership by progressing through the pyramid and that "franchised football" would be "disastrous".
AFC Wimbledon
As part of WISA's campaign to try and reclaim the history of Wimbledon Football Club, the Wimbledon Old Players Association (WOPA) was formed in 2005. Membership of WOPA is open to all former Wimbledon F.C. and AFC Wimbledon players and managers. Among the sixty founding members were Glenn Mulcaire, who scored AFC Wimbledon's first ever goal in 2002 and Kevin Cooper, who remains the club's all-time highest goal scorer with 107 goals between August 2002 and May 2004, as well as retaining the title for the most goals scored in a season with 66 during 2003–04. Others that joined included some of the legends of the old Wimbledon F.C. such as John Fashanu, Dave Beasant, Efan Ekoku, Neil Sullivan, Dave Bassett, Wally Downes, Marcus Gayle, Neal Ardley, Alan Kimble, Andy Thorn, Roger Joseph, Dickie Guy, Allen Batsford, Roger Connell, Ian Cooke, Roy Law and Steve Galliers. On 16 July 2006, WOPA fielded a team in the Masters Football Tournament at Wembley Arena, with AFC Wimbledon's backing. The team included Carlton Fairweather, Scott Fitzgerald, Marcus Gayle, and Dean Holdsworth.
Milton Keynes Dons F.C.
Wimbledon, established in south London in 1889 and nicknamed "the Dons", were elected to the Football League in 1977. They thereafter went through a "fairytale" rise from obscurity and by the end of the 1980s were established in the top division of English football. Despite Wimbledon's new prominence, the club's modest home stadium at Plough Lane remained largely unchanged from its non-league days. The club's then-owner Ron Noades identified this as a problem as early as 1979, extending his dissatisfaction to the ground's very location. Interested in the stadium site designated by the Milton Keynes Development Corporation, Noades briefly planned to move Wimbledon there by merging with a non-league club in Milton Keynes, and bought debt-ridden Milton Keynes City. However, Noades then decided that the club would not gain sufficient support in Milton Keynes and abandoned the idea.
AFC Wimbledon
The 2015–16 season was AFC Wimbledon's fifth consecutive season in League Two. Despite getting the season off to a mediocre start, the Dons finished the season strongly, winning seven out of their last 10 league matches to ensure that the club would confirm their highest ever League Two finish of seventh place and qualification to the 2016 Football League play-offs. A record home attendance of 4,870 turned out to see AFC Wimbledon beat Accrington Stanley 1–0 in the first leg of the play-off semi-final on 14 May 2016 (exactly 28 years to the day since the original Wimbledon won the 1988 FA Cup Final against Liverpool) following a dramatic extra time winner from academy product Tom Beere. This goal ultimately proved to be the difference between the two sides as AFC Wimbledon went on to win 3–2 on aggregate after a 2–2 draw in the reverse fixture. This win earned them a place in the play-off final at Wembley Stadium against Plymouth Argyle. The fixture was scheduled for 30 May 2016, exactly 14 years to the day since the club's foundation. AFC Wimbledon ultimately triumphed 2–0 on the day in front of a crowd of 57,956.
AFC Wimbledon Development Squad and Academy
The AFC Wimbledon Academy was founded in 2003. In 2010, the Under-13s squad won the Tesco Cup, having triumphed through the County and Regional rounds of the competition, by beating Lytham St Annes YMCA 2-0 in the final.
Wimbledon F.C.
Wimbledon's "Crazy Gang"—so-called because of the boisterous, eccentric behaviour of the players—won the FA Cup in 1988, beating that season's League champions Liverpool, and thereby became one of only three clubs to have won both the FA Cup and its amateur counterpart. In 1991, following the publication of the Taylor Report recommending all-seater grounds for top-flight clubs, Wimbledon left Plough Lane to groundshare with nearby Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park—an originally temporary arrangement that ended up lasting over a decade. The team remained in the First Division and its successor the FA Premier League until they were relegated in 2000.
AFC Wimbledon
Upon their foundation in 2002, AFC Wimbledon entered into a ground–sharing arrangement with Kingstonian to play home fixtures at Kingsmeadow in the neighbouring borough of Kingston upon Thames.
1877 Wimbledon Championship
The 1877 Wimbledon Championship was a men's tennis tournament held at the All England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club (AEC & LTC) in Wimbledon, London. It was the world's first official lawn tennis tournament, and was later recognised as the first Grand Slam tournament or "Major". The AEC & LTC had been founded in July 1868, as the All England Croquet Club; lawn tennis was introduced in February 1875 to compensate for the waning interest in croquet. In June 1877 the club decided to organise a tennis tournament to pay for the repair of its pony roller, needed to maintain the lawns. A set of rules was drawn up for the tournament, derived from the first standardised rules of tennis issued by the Marylebone Cricket Club in May 1875.
Wimbledon RFC
The ladies team
The ladies team was founded in the 1990–91 season by Tina and John Ambler, club stewards from 1989 to 1993. Their team mascot is Alderney, one of The Wombles.
List of AFC Wimbledon records and statistics
The club was accepted into the Combined Counties League for the 2002–03 season and proceeded to rise through the non-League system, winning five promotions in nine seasons to return to the Football League less than a decade after the original Wimbledon Football Club had still been competing in the top flight of English football. AFC Wimbledon’s average home attendance at league fixtures for their first season exceeded 3,000 – higher than the average attendance in the same season of Wimbledon F.C., who were still playing in the First Division (now the Football League Championship).
List of AFC Wimbledon seasons
The club went on to achieve 5 promotions in 9 seasons, ensuring that they were the first club to be formed in the 21st century to achieve Football League status, and making them the youngest of the 72 Football League clubs. On 30 May 2016, AFC Wimbledon achieved their 6th promotion to Football League One after victory in the 2016 Football League Two play-off Final, exactly 14 years to the day since the club's formation.
London Camanachd
The club was formed in 1874, being an amalgamation of London Northern Counties and London Scots. The club toured Scotland in 1909. The club entered for the Camanachd Cup in 1896 and scratched to Glasgow Cowal as they could not afford the trip to Glasgow. In earlier times play was held at Wimbledon Common, Parliament Hill, Kodak Grounds (Harrow) and also at Stamford Bridge, the current ground of Chelsea F.C.. Between 1873 and 1915 regular play was held on Good Friday and Boxing Day at Wimbledon. Of all the London clubs only London Camanachd continued until the 1920s and 1930s. The club lost many players in the Great War and this is commemorated by a war memorial in Crown Court Church in Covent Garden London. .
Wimbledon, London
Wimbledon has been inhabited since at least the Iron Age when the hill fort on Wimbledon Common is thought to have been constructed. In 1087 when the Domesday Book was compiled, Wimbledon was part of the manor of Mortlake. The ownership of the manor of Wimbledon changed between various wealthy families many times during its history, and the area also attracted other wealthy families who built large houses such as Eagle House, Wimbledon Manor House and Warren House. The village developed with a stable rural population coexisting with nobility and wealthy merchants from the city. In the 18th century the "Dog and Fox" public house became a stop on the stagecoach run from London to Portsmouth, then in 1838 the London and South Western Railway (L&SWR) opened a station to the south-east of the village at the bottom of Wimbledon Hill. The location of the station shifted the focus of the town's subsequent growth away from the original village centre.
Ian Cooke (footballer)
Cooke joined the amateur Isthmian League club Wimbledon in 1963, and played in the club's final two amateur matches a year later. Wimbledon turned professional in 1964, and Cooke's employers, Westminster Bank, initially refused to let him sign for the club. Wimbledon eventually managed to secure Cooke's signature, and the young forward had made eight appearances by the end of the 1964–65 season. Cooke broke into the side during the following season, and scored 29 goals in 44 matches to be Wimbledon's top scorer, something he would remain for six out of the next seven seasons. Cooke later became captain of Wimbledon, and moved back into midfield during his later years as a player; taking part in Wimbledon's final season as a non-League club, Cooke's career finally ended in 1977, just before Wimbledon's election to The Football League. Cooke made the second highest number of appearances for Wimbledon, with 615; his 297 goals was also the second highest number scored for the club.
Wimbledon, London
Wimbledon has also been well known for another period of sporting fame. From a small, long-established non-League team, Wimbledon Football Club had from 1977 climbed quickly through the ranks of the Football League structure, reaching the highest national professional league in 1986 and winning the FA Cup against Liverpool in 1988.
2003–04 Wimbledon F.C. season
During the 2003–04 English football season, Wimbledon F.C. competed in the First Division. This was Wimbledon's last season before changing its club name to Milton Keynes Dons after being given permission by the Football League.
Stadium MK
Starting in 2000 the consortium offered this proposition to several Football League clubs, including Luton Town, Crystal Palace, Barnet, Queens Park Rangers, and Wimbledon F.C.. Wimbledon F.C., who had groundshared at Crystal Palace's Selhurst Park ground since 1991, adopted the Milton Keynes plan after the appointment of a new chairman, Charles Koppel, in January 2001. Koppel said that such action was necessary to prevent Wimbledon F.C.'s going out of business. He announced Wimbledon F.C.'s intent to move on 2 August 2001 with a letter to the Football League requesting approval, stating that Wimbledon had already signed an agreement to relocate and "subject to the necessary planning and regulatory consents being obtained" intended to be playing home games at a newly built stadium in Milton Keynes by the start of the 2003–04 season. The proposed move was opposed in most quarters; the League board unanimously rejected Wimbledon's proposed move in August 2001. Koppel appealed against this decision, leading to a Football Association (FA) arbitration hearing and subsequently the appointment of a three-man independent commission by the FA in May 2002 to make a final and binding verdict. The League and FA stated opposition but the commissioners ruled in favour, two to one.
Relocation of Wimbledon F.C. to Milton Keynes
Hammam sold Wimbledon to two Norwegian businessmen, Kjell Inge Røkke and Bjørn Rune Gjelsten, for a reported £26 million in June 1997, while remaining at the club in an advisory role. In December that year, Wimbledon were reported to be considering the football and greyhounds option again. Ownership of Plough Lane was transferred from the club to Rudgwick Limited—a company founded in 1993 with Hammam serving as director. With political control of Merton Council having changed, Hammam secured the £8 million sale of Plough Lane to Safeway supermarkets in 1998. He unsuccessfully attempted to gain permission to redevelop a former gas works in Merton during the same year, and soon after entered abortive negotiations over a site in Beddington.
Wimbledon F.C.
The club had two main supporters organisations– the official Wimbledon F.C. Supporters Club, and the more radical Wimbledon Independent Supporters Association (WISA) which was founded in 1995. The WISA was instrumental in the formation of The Dons Trust in March 2002; this trust, created in part to oppose the relocation to Milton Keynes, helped the WISA to found AFC Wimbledon months after its own establishment. Both the WISA and The Dons Trust from this point became affiliated to AFC Wimbledon, while the official Supporters Club became defunct following the relocation.
AFC Wimbledon
The club crest, which is based on the coat of arms of the Municipal Borough of Wimbledon, features a black double headed eagle in reference to a local legend that Julius Caesar once made camp on Wimbledon Common, this symbol being his own attributed coat of arms. The crest is designed to replicate, as closely as legally possible, the crest of the original Wimbledon F.C. in order to reflect the fact that AFC Wimbledon see themselves as a direct continuation of the club that existed before the relocation and renaming as Milton Keynes Dons.
Relocation of Wimbledon F.C. to Milton Keynes
According to the Football League's statement to the independent commission on Wimbledon F.C. in May 2002, the English League "had allowed temporary relocations for good reasons outside 'conurbations' in respect of certain clubs where it was intended the club would return, but there has been no previous occasion on which the Football League had granted permission to a club to relocate permanently to a ground outside its 'conurbation'." Clubs in the English professional ranks that have relocated to other locales within their traditional conurbations include Manchester United and Woolwich Arsenal, who moved and respectively in 1910 and 1913. South Shields of the Third Division North relocated west to Gateshead in 1930 and renamed themselves Gateshead A.F.C.. The commission reported that there was no Football League precedent for a move between conurbations, but stressed that there was direct precedent for such a move in Scotland.
Relocation of Wimbledon F.C. to Milton Keynes
After Gjelsten agreed to write off the £24 million he and Røkke had lent to the club since 1997, a (CVA) was put together on 18 March 2004 under which Winkelman's consortium would take Wimbledon F.C. out of administration, reportedly using a holding company called MK Dons. This was accepted by most of Wimbledon F.C.'s creditors, but delayed while the Inland Revenue decided whether or not to pursue the club's £525,000 debt to the UK taxpayer before the Law Lords. The Football League threatened to expel the club if the takeover were not completed by 31 July. In May "Property Week" reported that the new stadium in Denbigh would be cancelled if Wimbledon F.C. were wound up. Richard Foreman, a director of the consortium's development consultant, denied this, saying that the project would continue with "the total support of the council"; the consortium would invite another League team to move, he said, and would have 18 months to do so. This did not prove necessary. After the Inland Revenue announced on 27 May that it would not pursue the club's debt, Winkelman's Inter MK Group brought Wimbledon F.C. out of administration in late June 2004, paying £850,000 for the club, and concurrently announced changes to its name, badge and colours.
The Championships, Wimbledon
The All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club is a private club founded on 23 July 1868, originally as "The All England Croquet Club". Its first ground was at Nursery Road off Worple Road, Wimbledon.
Kjell Inge Røkke
Røkke, along with his business partner Bjørn Rune Gjelsten, also bought into Wimbledon Football Club in the late 1990s, becoming a joint owner of the team in 2000. The following year, with the side homeless since leaving their Plough Lane ground in 1991 and playing at Crystal Palace's Selhurst Park stadium in Croydon, southeast London, Røkke and Gjelsten, along with chairman Charles Koppel and businessman Pete Winkelman agreed to relocate the team from London to Milton Keynes, a town around 60 miles from their traditional base. The move was controversial and sparked a year of protest at matches from Wimbledon fans, determined not to let their club be 'franchised' like this. Although common in American sport, the relocation of a professional English football club had never been done before. After rejections from the Football League and The FA, the decision was eventually passed on to a three-man arbitration panel, the outcome being two to one in favour of the move. Wimbledon fans, outraged with the decision, agreed to form a new club to support, AFC Wimbledon, and declared a boycott on their former team. The following season, Wimbledon FC would go on to play in front of record low crowds, including just 664 for a League Cup game against Rotherham, before finally completing the move in September 2003. It renamed itself a year later, adopting the name Milton Keynes Dons.
Wimbledon College
The College was founded in 1892 "for improvement in living and learning to the greater glory of God and the common good." It is affiliated with the Sacred Heart Church and Donhead Preparatory School, its former feeder preparatory school. It is also affiliated with the Ursuline High School, the College's sister school, who have worked in partnership since 1986.
Wimbledon F.C.
The record for most appearances for Wimbledon was held by Roy Law, who turned out for the club 644 times between 1958 and 1972; Law's 433 league appearances was also a record. Wimbledon's all-time top goalscorer was Eddie Reynolds, who scored 340 goals in 329 matches between 1957 and 1966. The closest to Reynolds's record was Ian Cooke, who notched 297 between 1964 and 1977; Cooke also made the second highest total number of appearances for the team, having appeared 615 times in a Wimbledon shirt.
South London derby
During World War II Millwall's ground The Den was severely damaged by a German bomb and a fire destroyed a stand a few days later. For a brief time the club was invited by their neighbours to play their games at The Valley and Selhurst Park. In 1984 Charlton went into administration. The club were forced to leave The Valley just after the start of the 1985–86 season after its safety was criticised by league officials. The club began a groundshare with Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park, which lasted for six years until 1991. After another year groundsharing at West Ham United's Upton Park, Charlton moved back into The Valley in 1992. Wimbledon groundshared at Selhurst Park from 1991 until their relocation to Milton Keynes in 2003. The campaign of Wimbledon's fans against the relocation led to the formation of AFC Wimbledon.The teams first met in 1921, with Charlton winning at The Den 1–0. They won the return fixture at The Valley 2–1, completing the first league double over their local rivals. Millwall hold the record for the longest unbeaten run between the teams at 14 games. Between 1922–1930, the Lions won eight and drew six. Charlton's longest unbeaten run against Millwall is six games, between 1934–1968 they won three and drew three. The longest period the clubs have gone without playing each other is 31 years (between the 1935–36 and 1965–66 seasons), due to being in different leagues. Millwall also have a run of 12 games unbeaten between 1979–1992, where they won six and drew six. Millwall have completed the double over Charlton nine times (in 1923–24, 1924–25, 1931–32, 1932–33, 1968–69, 1970–71, 1971–72, 1988–89 and 1992–93) compared to Charlton's three (in 1921–22, 1934–35 and 1995–96). Millwall have the most wins in a row in the derby with five (twice). Charlton have won two games in a row (four times). The teams didn't play each other for 13 years, competing in different leagues between the 1996–97 and 2008–09 seasons. Millwall are currently on a ten-game unbeaten streak against Charlton, with five wins and five draws between 2009–2017.
Wimbledon, London
It is home to the Wimbledon Tennis Championships and New Wimbledon Theatre, and contains Wimbledon Common, one of the largest areas of common land in London along with a Wimbledon Tennis Club. The residential and retail area is split into two sections known as the "village" and the "town", with the High Street being the rebuilding of the original medieval village, and the "town" having first developed gradually after the building of the railway station in 1838.
Wimbledon F.C.
Due to Plough Lane's modest capacity and Wimbledon's unprecedented rise from non-League football to the First Division in under ten years, the club had a much lower level of support than its top-flight rivals. During Wimbledon's first season in The Football League, Wimbledon's average attendance was only 3,135 – however, by the club's appearance in the top flight nine years later the average attendance had risen by 149% to 7,811. Attendances did not immediately change much following the move to Selhurst Park in 1991 – however, the larger capacity gradually started to be used. Average crowds peaked at 18,235 in 1998–99, and during the next season, the team's final year in the FA Premier League, home crowds averaged 17,157. With relegation, attendances dropped catastrophically to an average of only 7,897 during 2000–01. Wimbledon averaged 6,961 during the final season before the club's relocation to Milton Keynes was confirmed.
AFC Wimbledon
Following the F.A.'s announcement of their decision, a group of Wimbledon supporters led by Kris Stewart and fellow founding members Marc Jones and Trevor Williams met in The Fox and Grapes pub on Wimbledon Common to plan what was to be done next as part of the protest. It was agreed that as there was no right of appeal, the only option was to start the club again from scratch. On 30 May 2002 the idea was put forward in a Wimbledon Independent Supporters' Association meeting to create a new community-based club named AFC Wimbledon and an appeal for funds was launched.
AFC Wimbledon
AFC Wimbledon made an equally slow start to the 2017–18 campaign, managing just five wins in their first 20 league matches between August and December. On 3 December 2017, the club recorded a 3–1 win over South London derby rivals Charlton Athletic in the second round of the FA Cup. The club were subsequently rewarded by being drawn away against Tottenham Hotspur in the third round with the match being played at Wembley Stadium on 7 January 2018. On 13 December 2017, the club received a further boost after being granted permission to begin work on constructing a new 11,000-seater stadium (which could be expanded to hold up to 20,000 in the future) on the site of Wimbledon Greyhound Stadium. The new ground will be only away from the original Plough Lane, Wimbledon's home from 1912 until 1991. The club was eventually able to secure another season in League One with a draw in their penultimate game, meaning that for the first time, AFC Wimbledon would be playing in a higher division than the Milton Keynes Dons, who were relegated that season.
Wimbledon F.C.
The club's nickname was the Dons, though the club were also often referred to in the media as the Wombles from the mid-1970s onwards. Following the FA Cup victory in 1988, the term Crazy Gang also started to be applied; originally to the players, though over time to the club as a whole. The club introduced a character mascot in 2000, a Womble named Wandle the Womble. However, following the relocation of the club in 2003, the owners of the Wombles brand refused to renew the licensing agreement in protest at the move. Three years later, a deal was agreed that saw a similar character named Haydon the Womble appear at AFC Wimbledon.
Kingsmeadow
AFC Wimbledon have played at the stadium since they were founded in protest in 2002; Wimbledon F.C. moved 56 miles north-west to the town of Milton Keynes in September 2003 and became Milton Keynes Dons in June 2004. They were in the Combined Counties League at this time, but in 2016 reached Football League One.
After one season as tenants of the Khoslas, AFC Wimbledon undertook to buy the leasehold to the ground. The club's owners, the Dons Trust, launched a share issue to finance the purchase, which was closed the following summer. The club subsequently arranged for a commercial loan to clear the remaining debt to the Khoslas. Upon taking over the ground, its name was changed to the Fans' Stadium which remains the nickname of the ground today.
Relocation of Wimbledon F.C. to Milton Keynes
Sections of MK Dons' fans continue to relate to their club's former identity as Wimbledon. When AFC Wimbledon and MK Dons met on the playing field for the first time in 2012, some MK supporters wore scarves bearing the Wimbledon name, and Wimbledon F.C. shirts. Others have attempted to reclaim the "Franchise F.C." label for their own use, chanting "you're getting beat by a franchise" during matches.
Wimbledon F.C.
Nothing came of the plans for a new ground and at the end of 1990–91 the club's board decided that Plough Lane was beyond redevelopment to meet the new FA rule requiring all-seater stadiums. Consequently, the club moved to Selhurst Park before the 1991–92 season, ground-sharing with Crystal Palace. Harford suddenly resigned in October 1991, to be replaced by Peter Withe. Withe lasted until just after the turn of the new year, when Joe Kinnear was promoted from the role of youth team coach, initially taking over as interim manager. After guiding Wimbledon to 13th place in the First Division and booking a place in the inaugural FA Premier League, Kinnear got the manager's job on a permanent basis.
Milton Keynes Dons F.C.
In 1991, after the Taylor Report was published recommending the redevelopment of English football grounds, Wimbledon left Plough Lane to groundshare at Crystal Palace's ground, Selhurst Park, about away. Sam Hammam, who then owned Wimbledon, said the club could not afford to redevelop Plough Lane and that the groundshare was a temporary arrangement while a new ground was sourced in south-west London. A new stadium for Wimbledon proved difficult to achieve. Frustrated by what he perceived as a lack of support from Merton Council, Hammam began to look further afield and by 1996 was pursuing a move to Dublin, an idea that most Wimbledon fans strongly opposed. Hammam sold the club to two Norwegian businessmen, Kjell Inge Røkke and Bjørn Rune Gjelsten, in 1997, and a year later sold Plough Lane to Safeway supermarkets. Wimbledon were relegated from the Premier League at the end of the 1999–2000 season.
Starting in 2000, a consortium led by music promoter Pete Winkelman and supported by Asda (a Walmart subsidiary) and IKEA proposed a large retail development in Milton Keynes including a Football League-standard stadium. The consortium proposed that an established league club move to use this site; it approached Luton, Wimbledon, Crystal Palace, Barnet and Queens Park Rangers. In 2001 Røkke and Gjelsten appointed a new chairman, Charles Koppel, who was in favour of this idea, saying it was necessary to stop the club going out of business. To the fury of most Wimbledon fans, Koppel announced on 2 August 2001 that the club intended to relocate to Milton Keynes. After the Football League refused permission, Wimbledon launched an appeal, leading to a Football Association arbitration hearing and subsequently the appointment of a three-man independent commission to make a final and binding verdict. The league and FA stated opposition but the commissioners ruled in favour, two to one, on 28 May 2002.
Wimbledon High School
During World War I, the school endured a difficult time. The timetable was suspended for older students as girls and teachers joined the war effort and made respirators for the troops. A fire broke out in 1917 and gutted the main building. The girls were moved to a temporary location resumed their activities. The new building was formally opened by old girl, the Duchess of Atholl, in October 1920 and included a gymnasium and two new laboratories. The facilities have now been much expanded upon. The school's sports fields, at Nursery Road (off Worple Road) were until 1923 the site of the All England Club, before it moved to its present location in Church Road. Today, students are often selected to be ball girls at the Wimbledon Championships.
Milton Keynes Dons F.C.
At its AGM on 5 June 2006, the FSF again considered a motion proposed by the FSF Council to allow Milton Keynes Dons Supporters Association membership if the honours and trophies of Wimbledon FC were given to the London Borough of Merton. In October 2006, agreement was reached between the club, the Milton Keynes Dons Supporters Association, the Wimbledon Independent Supporters' Association and the Football Supporters Federation. The FA Cup trophy plus all club patrimony gathered under the name of Wimbledon F.C. would be returned to the London Borough of Merton. Ownership of trademarks and website domain names related to Wimbledon F.C. would also be transferred to the borough. As part of the same deal it was agreed that any reference made to Milton Keynes Dons FC should refer only to events subsequent to 7 August 2004 (the date of the first League game of Milton Keynes Dons FC). As a result of this deal, the FSF announced that the supporters of Milton Keynes Dons FC would be permitted to become members of the federation, and that it would no longer appeal to the supporters of other clubs to boycott Milton Keynes Dons' matches. On 2 August 2007, Milton Keynes Dons transferred ownership of all Wimbledon FC trophies and memorabilia to the London Borough of Merton.
Relocation of Wimbledon F.C. to Milton Keynes
MK Dons initially maintained that any debate was pointless as their club was simply a renamed Wimbledon F.C. Winkelman was unequivocal when answering readers' questions in "FourFourTwo" magazine in November 2004: "MK Dons and AFC Wimbledon share the same heritage, but we're the real child of Wimbledon", he wrote. One reader asked: "Now that you have renamed the team, and changed the badge and colours, do you agree that AFC Wimbledon now carry the true spirit of Wimbledon?"; Winkelman replied that AFC Wimbledon's founders had betrayed their club and "left their team before their team left them". In another answer, he poured scorn on suggestions that he might give Wimbledon F.C.'s trophy replicas to AFC Wimbledon, writing that the fans had "abdicated their right to it when they all walked away." "The fans who have continued to support us from London—they're the ones who've had to put up with this shit for so long," he concluded.
Ron Noades
Noades then took over Wimbledon, who were elected to the Football League in 1977. They won promotion from the Fourth Division in only their second season as a Football League club, although they were relegated after just one season. He then entered tentative talks with the Milton Keynes Development Corporation with a view to relocating the club to the new town some 70 miles away in Buckinghamshire, but nothing came of this. Ironically, Wimbledon would ultimately be relocated to Milton Keynes more than 20 years later.
Seven Sport
Wimbledon
AFC Wimbledon
An early ambition of the newly formed AFC Wimbledon was to be able to play back in the London Borough of Merton, where the district of Wimbledon is located. This intention was formalised in a statement of August 2012, in which the club revealed initial proposals to build a stadium on the site of Wimbledon Stadium, located on same street as Wimbledon F.C.'s home from 1912 to 1991, Plough Lane. A planning application for an 11,000 capacity stadium, along with 600 residential units, retail and commercial space, and a leisure club, was submitted in November 2014. Permission was granted in December 2015.
Wolverhampton Wanderers F.C.
In the 2000 edition of "The Rough Guide to English Football", the history section on the Wolves page begins: "The very name Wolves thunders from the pages of English football history". As with several other clubs, Everton for example, Wolves had humble beginnings shaped by the twin influences of cricket and the church. The club was founded in 1877 as St Luke's F.C. by John Baynton and John Brodie, two pupils of St Luke's Church School in Blakenhall, who had been presented with a football by their headmaster Harry Barcroft. The team played its first-ever game on 13 January 1877 against a reserve side from Stafford Road, later merging with the football section of a local cricket club called Blakenhall Wanderers to form Wolverhampton Wanderers in August 1879. Having initially played on two different strips of land in the town, they relocated to a more substantial venue on Dudley Road in 1881, before lifting their first trophy in 1884 when they won the Wrekin Cup, during a season in which they played their first-ever FA Cup tie. Having become professional, the club were nominated to become one of the twelve founder members of the Football League in 1888, in which they played the first Football League match ever staged (against Aston Villa). They ended the inaugural season in third place, as well as reaching their first FA Cup Final, losing 0–3 to the first "Double" winners, Preston North End. At the conclusion of the campaign the club relocated for a final time when they moved to Molineux, then a pleasure park known as the Molineux Grounds.
Wolves lifted the FA Cup for the first time in 1893 when they beat Everton 1–0, and made a third FA Cup Final appearance in 1896. The club added a second FA Cup Final triumph (a 3–1 win against Newcastle United) to their 1893 success in 1908, two years after having dropped into the Second Division for the first time. After struggling during the years either side of the First World War to regain their place in the top division (a period that was punctuated by another FA Cup Final appearance in 1921), the club suffered a further relegation in 1923, entering the Third Division (North), which they won at the first attempt. Eight years after returning to the Second Division, Wolves regained their top-flight status as Second Division Champions under Major Frank Buckley after twenty-six years away. With Buckley at the helm the team became established as one of the leading club sides in England in the years leading up to the Second World War, as they finished runners-up in the league twice in succession (1937–38 & 1938–39), as well as reaching the last pre-war FA Cup Final, in which they suffered a shock defeat to Portsmouth. One of the things Major Buckley and his Wolves side attracted a lot of attention for in the last two full seasons prior to the outbreak of the Second World War was Buckley's insistence that his players be injected with monkey gland extract to enhance their stamina and performance, a practice that the Football League elected not to sanction.
Wimbledon F.C.
From the mid 1980s, the club's main rivals were considered to be fellow south London club Crystal Palace (who were their landlord from 1991 to 2003) and west London-based Chelsea; however, neither of these rivalries was seriously reciprocated. Wimbledon were in the same division as Palace for a total of 11 seasons between 1984 and 2004, and in the same division as Chelsea for all but one season between 1986 and 2000.
Plough Lane
Plough Lane was a football stadium in Wimbledon, south west London. For nearly eighty years it was the home ground of Wimbledon Football Club, from September 1912 until May 1991, when the club moved their first team home matches to Selhurst Park as part of a groundshare agreement with Crystal Palace. Both clubs' reserve teams then used Plough Lane as their home ground until 1998, when the site was sold to Safeway. Whilst site redevelopment plans were negotiated, the stadium remained derelict for several years until it was finally demolished in 2002. The site then became a private housing development known as Reynolds Gate, completed in 2008.
Relocation of sports teams in the United Kingdom
The Norwegian owners of Wimbledon F.C. proposed to move the club from South London to Milton Keynes in 2001. The proposal received FA approval in 2002. Those Wimbledon fans who were unhappy with the proposal withdrew their support and created a new team in called AFC Wimbledon; Wimbledon F.C. went into administration in 2003. The club was bought out of administration by Inter MK Ltd., transferred to Milton Keynes and subsequently renamed Milton Keynes Dons F.C. in 2004. Twelve years before the move to Milton Keynes, Wimbledon had already left their London borough of Merton home for Selhurst Park in (the London borough of) Croydon. Plans to move Wimbledon F.C. had been discussed as early as 1979.
Wimbledon RFC
The club moved to its current clubhouse on Barham Road, Wimbledon in the 1987–88 season, coinciding with the setting up of amateur league rugby in Britain.
Wimbledon F.C.
The Plough Lane ground remained comparatively basic, and by the time the club had risen to the First Division the stadium had not changed greatly from Wimbledon's recent non-league days. At the time of the club's acceptance into The Football League in 1977, applicants had only to meet minimal stadium criteria, and once in the League these same criteria sufficed regardless of whether the club subsequently found itself in the Fourth or First Division. However, following the Hillsborough disaster and the subsequent Taylor Report, the football authorities introduced far stricter safety rules, which gave top-flight clubs specific deadlines by which to redevelop terraced grounds or to build new all-seater stadiums. The board of the club decided that Plough Lane could not be made to comply with these new requirements economically and, in 1990, they announced plans to temporarily groundshare with Crystal Palace at their Selhurst Park stadium.
Relocation of Wimbledon F.C. to Milton Keynes
Merton Council had been recommending that Wimbledon move to a site in nearby Beddington, but this proposal fell through soon after the move to Selhurst Park. With the inflation in costs brought on by the foundation of the FA Premier League in 1992, the club soon began to lose money heavily. Rumours that the groundshare would eventually result in the Dons and the Eagles merging led Hammam to say "I’d rather die and have vultures eat my insides than merge with Crystal Palace". In 1992 the Greyhound Racing Association offered to redevelop Wimbledon Stadium (less than a mile from Plough Lane) into a 15,000-seater dog racing and football ground. Hammam was outraged two years later when the council, attempting to retain the Plough Lane site for public use, refused to sanction its sale for a supermarket redevelopment that Hammam said would finance a new ground at the dog racing site. Hammam angrily declared he would look elsewhere, and threatened to change the club's name and remove the double-headed eagle device, a symbol of Wimbledon Borough, from the team's badge. "We have been betrayed," he told the press. "The council say they want us back, but when it comes to taking action they don't want to know."
Hammam later claimed to have looked at every possible stadium site in Merton. He initially sought to relocate within south London, examining "seven boroughs" including Tolworth and Brixton. He also began to consider selling the club. In 1994, Wimbledon's Irish manager Joe Kinnear contacted the football pundit and former player Eamon Dunphy to inform him of this and to put to him the idea of moving the club to Dublin. Dunphy was enthusiastic about the idea and became its main proponent in Ireland over the next three years. It was suggested that Wimbledon fans from London could be given free flights to Dublin for home matches, and that British Sky Broadcasting might pay to fly the opposing teams there during the first season.
Adebayo Akinfenwa
AFC Wimbledon
AFC Wimbledon
On 13 June 2002, a new manager, a playing strip and badge based on that of the original Wimbledon FC, and a stadium were unveiled to fans and the media at the packed-out Wimbledon Community Centre. In order to assemble a competitive team at very short notice, AFC Wimbledon held player trials on 29 June 2002 on Wimbledon Common, open to any unattached player who felt he was good enough to try out for the team. The event attracted 230 hopeful players, from whom the club's squad for their inaugural season was eventually chosen.
London Borough of Merton
However, a new Wimbledon club - AFC Wimbledon - was formed to represent the local area in 2002 by fans of the original club after the move to Milton Keynes was given the go-ahead. The new Wimbledon club's progress was rapid, and after just nine years in existence they won promotion to the Football League in 2011. The club currently plays at Kingsmeadow Stadium, the home of Kingstonian F.C., but in 2016 it gained permission to build a new stadium back on Plough Lane, using the former Greyhound Stadium around a hundred yards from its old stadium site and still within in the London Borough of Merton. In 2018 the final agreements were signed off and demolition work started on the site (for both stadium and 600 flats) in April 2018. Building is expected to be completed by end of 2019.
West Ealing
In 1882, the Ealing Lawn Tennis Club was founded on land between St. Leonards Road and the Great Western Railway (GWR). The club quickly became the most successful women's lawn-tennis club in the world. Three Ealing-born club members (Blanche Bingley, Charlotte Cooper and Dorothea Douglass) won a total of thirteen Wimbledon Singles titles between 1886 and 1906. In 1906, the club moved to Creffield Road in Ealing Common.
South London derby
Some Wimbledon supporters formed a new team, AFC Wimbledon, in 2002, based at Kingsmeadow in Kingston upon Thames. The non-League club started in the Combined Counties League, and played their first competitive South London derby on 9 November 2009, losing 4–1 away at Millwall in an FA Cup first-round match. Having worked their way up through the non-League with five promotions in nine seasons, AFC Wimbledon were promoted first into Football League Two for the 2011–12 season, and then into Football League One for the 2016–17 season, where they are competing in the same league as Charlton Athletic and Millwall.
List of AFC Wimbledon records and statistics
In October 2006, an agreement was reached between Milton Keynes Dons F.C., the MK Dons Supporters Association, the Wimbledon Independent Supporters Association and the Football Supporters Federation. The replica of the FA Cup plus all club patrimony gathered under the name of Wimbledon F.C. would be returned to the London Borough of Merton. Ownership of trademarks and website domain names related to Wimbledon F.C. would also be transferred to the Borough. It was also agreed that any reference made to Milton Keynes Dons F.C. should refer only to events after 7 August 2004, the date of the first league match played as Milton Keynes Dons. As a result of this deal, the Football Supporters Federation announced that the supporters of Milton Keynes Dons would be permitted to become members of the federation, and that it would no longer appeal to the supporters of other clubs to boycott MK Dons matches. The replica trophies and Wimbledon F.C. memorabilia were returned to Merton on 2 August 2007.
Milton Keynes Dons F.C.
Having campaigned against the move, a group of disaffected Wimbledon fans reacted to this in June 2002 by forming their own non-league club, AFC Wimbledon, to which most of the original team's support defected. AFC Wimbledon entered a groundshare agreement with Kingstonian in the borough of Kingston upon Thames, adjacent to Merton. The original Wimbledon intended to move to Milton Keynes immediately but were unable to do so until a temporary home in the town meeting Football League criteria could be found. The club remained at Selhurst Park in the meantime and in June 2003 went into administration. With the move threatened and the club facing liquidation, Winkelman decided to buy it himself. He secured funding for the administrators to keep the team operating with the goal of getting it to Milton Keynes as soon as possible. The club arranged the temporary use of the National Hockey Stadium in Milton Keynes and played its first match there in September 2003. Nine months later Winkelman's Inter MK Group bought the club out of administration and announced changes to its name, badge and colours—the team was renamed Milton Keynes Dons Football Club.
Wimbledon Stadium
Wimbledon's tenure in the top flight came to an end in the 1980s and the Greyhound Racing Association (the owners of the stadium at the time) decreed that speedway would end at the end of the 1986 season. However, a London stockbroker, David Pickles, gathered together a consortium in the 1986/87 close season who ensured that the famous Dons would continue to run. They employed the ex-England team manager John Berry and enjoyed reasonable success on and off the track in their first season. After a disagreement with Berry and the other members of the board, Pickles dramatically resigned as chairman of the club during the match with Exeter in September 1987, selling his shares back to the other members. With a few reshuffles at board level and the leaving of Berry, the remaining members eventually took Wimbledon back to the British League Division One in 1991, but the move proved disastrous and with only a couple of months of the season having been ridden, the financial losses proved to be so great that they were forced to disband the team. In June 1991 Wimbledon rode their final meeting, which was eventually curtailed due to the weather. Although there was no longer any league racing at the Plough Lane stadium the team continued their league fixtures for the 1991 season moving to Eastbourne and were known as the Eastbourne Dons.
1996–97 Wimbledon F.C. season
During the 1996–97 English football season, Wimbledon competed in the Premier League. The season marked 20 years since Wimbledon's election to the Football League and was their eleventh successive season of top division football. It was one of the most successful of the club's history as they finished eighth in the Premier League and reached the semi-finals of both domestic cups.
Alan Cork
Cork's very substantial contribution to the team over more than 14 years helped Wimbledon climb the football league pyramid and eventually gained them entry into the First Division, playing in every division of the Football League in the process. Initially the club's first choice starting striker, Cork also played sixty minutes of Wimbledon's famous FA Cup triumph over Liverpool on 14 May 1988. Four days later, his testimonial match was held at Plough Lane against an All Stars XI from various club sides, to mark 10 years of Cork's service to Wimbledon.
Wimbledon F.C.
In August 2001, the club announced its intent to relocate to Milton Keynes. Despite opposition from the majority of Wimbledon fans, The Football League, and The Football Association, they were given permission to do so on 28 May 2002 after a 2–1 vote by the three-person, independent commission appointed by the F.A. The approval of the decision to move the club caused supporters who were against the move to found a new club, AFC Wimbledon, to which a majority of Wimbledon F.C. fans switched their allegiance.
Development of stadiums in English football
On their foundation in 2002, AFC Wimbledon moved in with Kingstonian at Kingsmeadow, purchasing the ground. They do have long-term plans to relocate the club to the London Borough of Merton, the traditional home of Wimbledon F.C., from whom they originated. There was speculation that the club might try to build a new ground at the Wimbledon Stadium site, currently used for greyhound racing, which was put up for sale in September 2007.
Wimbledon F.C.
Still in south London, 1980–81 saw Wimbledon regain Third Division status at the first attempt, at the end of an eventful season which saw chairman Ron Noades walk out of the club to take over Crystal Palace, taking manager Dario Gradi to Selhurst Park with him. At Plough Lane, assistant manager Dave Bassett was promoted to manager. Under Bassett, Wimbledon were relegated in 22nd place. Just before the survival battle was lost, injured defender Dave Clement committed suicide. Wimbledon once again regained Third Division status at the first time of asking, triumphing as Fourth Division champions in 1982–83, and in the next season the Wimbledon players continued to excel as they achieved a second promotion to the Second Division after finishing runners-up with 97 league goals.
Dave Bassett
Wimbledon's life as a Second Division club began with a notable 2–2 home draw against promotion favourites Manchester City on the opening day of the 1984–85 season. Wimbledon finally managed a secure 12th-place finish.
AFC Wimbledon
AFC Wimbledon is a professional football club currently based in Kingston upon Thames, south west London, England, which has played in League One, the third tier of the English football league system, since promotion in 2016. Their home stadium is Kingsmeadow, a ground shared with Isthmian League club Kingstonian F.C. until 2017 and Chelsea Football Club Women from 2017.
Relocation of Wimbledon F.C. to Milton Keynes
Wimbledon's success as a club in the top flight of English football was founded on unorthodox financial management and judicious dealings in the transfer market. Rumours of a move or a merger with another London side persisted, leading the club's chief executive Colin Hutchinson to resign in 1987 amid talk of an amalgamation with Ron Noades's new club Crystal Palace or a groundshare at Queens Park Rangers' Loftus Road ground in Shepherd's Bush. Wimbledon were granted planning permission to build a 20,000-seater ground in their home borough of Merton in 1988, soon after they won the FA Cup, but the site was instead made into a car park by a newly elected Labour council in 1990. Wimbledon's desire to move was made a necessity a year later, when the Taylor Report, which ordered the extensive redevelopment of football grounds, was released.
Relocation of sports teams in the United Kingdom
Opinion polls in the Republic showed consistently high support for the idea of Wimbledon hosting Premier League matches in Dublin, but the League of Ireland argued that this would endanger its existence, and in September 1996 about 300 fans rallied in Dublin under the slogan "Resist the Dublin Dons". Twenty Irish clubs "reaffirmed their opposition" to Wimbledon playing in Dublin the following month; a week later Reuters called the proposal "dead and buried". When Hammam requested talks with the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) top brass in April 1997, they refused to even meet him. Vocal opposition from Wimbledon fans emerged—after a friendly match in August 1997 fans holding "Dublin = Death" and "Dons Belong In Merton" placards refused to leave the stadium for two hours. Soon afterwards, Hammam met six leading protesters, who told him that in the event of a move they would start a new non-League club locally.
Playing away from Merton at a supposedly temporary home, Wimbledon set a record for the lowest-ever English top-flight attendance during the 1992–93 season, drawing only 3,039 fans to a Tuesday-night match against Everton on 26 January 1993. However the general trend was one of a sharp rise—the club's average home attendance more than doubled at Selhurst Park from around 8,000 during the last years at Plough Lane to a peak of over 18,000 during the 1998–99 Premier League season. Hammam sold Wimbledon to two Norwegian businessmen, Kjell Inge Røkke and Bjørn Rune Gjelsten, for a reported £26 million in June 1997, while remaining at the club in an advisory role. In December that year, Wimbledon were reported to be considering the football and greyhounds option again. Ownership of Plough Lane was transferred from the club to Rudgwick Limited—a company founded in 1993 with Hammam serving as director. With political control of Merton Council having changed, Hammam secured the £8 million sale of Plough Lane to Safeway supermarkets in 1998. He unsuccessfully attempted to gain permission to redevelop a former gas works in Merton during the same year, and soon after entered abortive negotiations over a site in Beddington.
Wimbledon Stadium
In 2007 the stadium was purchased by development company Galliard Homes Limited when the Greyhound Racing Association was put up for sale (along with all of its assets) by parent company Wembley PLC. Following this, the local professional football team AFC Wimbledon expressed interest in building their new football stadium on the site of the greyhound track in collaboration with Galliard Homes. A joint planning application made by Galliard Homes and AFC Wimbledon to build the new football stadium, together with 600 residences, on the site of the greyhound stadium was approved by the London Borough of Merton in December 2015. Attempts to prevent the closure of the stadium failed; a £20 million rival planning bid to build a new greyhound stadium, submitted by Irish businessman Paschal Taggart, the owner of Shelbourne Park Greyhound Stadium, and a bid by pressure group 'Save Wimbledon Stadium Action Group' to have the stadium granted listed status by Historic England both came to nothing. The stadium was finally closed on 25 March 2017, and demolition of the stadium and associated buildings commenced on the 16th March 2018.
Wimbledon, North Dakota
Wimbledon is a city in Barnes County, North Dakota, United States. The population was 216 at the 2010 census. Wimbledon was founded in 1892. It was named for Wimbledon, London, which was the birthplace of John H. Gibson, who homesteaded the land the town was built on.
Pete Winkelman
He is noted for his involvement in the decision in 2001 by the directors of Wimbledon Football Club to relocate to Milton Keynes, around 60 miles from their traditional south London base. The club went into administration in 2003, and played their first match in Milton Keynes in September, controlled by the administrator. At the end of the season, the club was bought out by a consortium led by Winkelman, who became the team's chairman. The new board relaunched the club as Milton Keynes Dons FC, also giving the side a new all-white strip and a new badge bearing the year "MMIV" (2004).
Wimbledon F.C.
Wimbledon originally played on Wimbledon Common, using the Fox and Grapes public house in Camp Road as the team's headquarters and changing room. The club moved to Plough Lane in September 1912. During the 1930s and 1940s, crowds of between 7,000 and 10,000 were not uncommon at the ground. Wimbledon's highest attendance at the ground came on 2 March 1935, when 18,080 people were attracted to an FA Amateur Cup tie against HMS Victory. Floodlights were first used on 3 October 1960 in a London Charity Cup match against Arsenal.
2002–03 AFC Wimbledon season
The 2002–03 season was the inaugural season for AFC Wimbledon following the FA's decision to allow the relocation of Wimbledon F.C. to Milton Keynes. Former Wimbledon F.C. player Terry Eames was appointed as AFC Wimbledon's first manager on 13 June 2002. The club competed in the Combined Counties League Premier Division. The new team attracted a crowd of 4,657 supporters for their first ever game, a pre-season friendly against Sutton United on 10 July 2002 in which they were beaten 4–0. Glenn Mulcaire, known as ""Trigger"" by fans, scored AFC Wimbledon's first ever goal in a pre-season friendly against Bromley on 17 July 2002, which ultimately ended as a 2–1 defeat. Kevin Cooper scored the team's first ever league goal in the first game of the season in a 2–1 away victory at Sandhurst Town, with an attendance of 2,449 on 17 August 2002. The first home game of the season against Chipstead, ending in a 2–1 defeat on 21 August 2002, had an attendance of 4,142. The team started slowly but won their last eleven league games of the season, finishing third in the league, and only narrowly missing out on promotion to the Isthmian League First Division. Their average home attendance at league fixtures exceeded 3,000 – higher than the average attendance in the same season of Wimbledon F.C., who were still playing in the First Division (now the Football League Championship).
English Football League
Just after the end of the 2001–02 season, South London based Wimbledon were given permission to move to Milton Keynes, some 70 miles from their traditional home. A relocation on this scale was unprecedented in English football, and led to the majority of the club's fans switching their support to a new fan-formed club, AFC Wimbledon, who joined the Combined Counties League. The club's move to Milton Keynes was completed in September 2003, when they became tenants of the National Hockey Stadium until a new permanent home was completed four years later, and the club's name changed to Milton Keynes Dons in June 2004.
Bjørn Rune Gjelsten
After rejections from the Football League and the Football Association, the decision was eventually passed on to a three-man arbitration panel, the outcome being two to one in favour of the move. Wimbledon fans, outraged with the decision, agreed to form a new club to support, AFC Wimbledon, and declared a boycott on their former team. The following season, Wimbledon FC would go on to play in front of record low crowds, including just 664 for a League Cup game against Rotherham, before finally completing the move in 2004, becoming Milton Keynes Dons.
Warren Barton
A lot had changed at Wimbledon Football Club since Barton had last played for them nine years earlier. They had survived in the Premier League for five seasons after his departure, finally going down in 1999–2000. The decision to relocate the club to Milton Keynes was approved in May 2002, after the Dons narrowly missed out on the Division One playoffs for the second season running. In spite of some of the lowest attendances in the league after the majority of the club's fans defected to newly formed AFC Wimbledon (at non-League level), the Dons had managed a respectable 10th-place finish in 2002–03, but then they went into administration and were forced to sell most of their key players. As a result, their fortunes on the pitch suffered and the move to Milton Keynes in September 2003 (initially in the National Hockey Stadium until a new permanent stadium was built) did little to solve matters. By the time Barton arrived at the end of February, the club was still in administration and relegation (if not complete closure) was almost certain. Barton appeared in just five games for the Dons as they went down in bottom place with a massive 33 defeats (one of the worst Football League records ever) and on 17 September 2004 he finally departed from the club, who for the 2004–05 had been re-formed as Milton Keynes Dons to reflect their new location. At the age of 35, Barton's senior career was over.
Phoenix club (sports)
Wimbledon F.C. became Milton Keynes Dons F.C. in 2004, two years after the foundation of AFC Wimbledon; see Relocation of Wimbledon F.C. to Milton Keynes.
Relocation of sports teams in the United Kingdom
Despite his early optimism, Noades soon came to the conclusion that a League club in Milton Keynes would not draw crowds much higher than those Wimbledon already attracted in south London. "I couldn't really see us getting any bigger gates than what Northampton Town were currently getting at that time, and, in fact, are still getting", he recalled in 2001. "I really couldn't see any future in it. I can't actually see that there is a means of drawing large attendances to Milton Keynes." Abandoning his interest in MK City, Noades sold Wimbledon to Hammam in 1981. Later that year Noades bought nearby Crystal Palace and briefly explored merging that club with Wimbledon.
Relocation of Wimbledon F.C. to Milton Keynes
Wimbledon rose through the professional divisions unusually rapidly in what has been called a "fairytale", and by the end of the 1980s were playing at the top of the English game. In 1991, after the Taylor Report ordered the redevelopment of English football grounds, the team entered a groundshare at Crystal Palace's Selhurst Park stadium, about east of Plough Lane. This was supposed to be a temporary arrangement while the Wimbledon chairman Sam Hammam sought a new stadium site in south-west London, but this search proved frustratingly long, both for Hammam and the club's fans. Much to the anger of most Wimbledon supporters, Hammam proposed new locations for the team outside London, including the Irish capital Dublin. He sold the club to two Norwegian businessmen, Kjell Inge Røkke and Bjørn Rune Gjelsten, in 1997 and the following year sold Plough Lane for a supermarket redevelopment.
AFC Wimbledon
When AFC Wimbledon was formed, it affiliated to both the London and Surrey Football Associations, and entered the Premier Division of the Combined Counties League, the ninth tier of English football. The club has since been promoted six times in 13 seasons, going from the ninth tier (Combined Counties Premier) to the third (League One).
Relocation of Wimbledon F.C. to Milton Keynes
Starting in 2000 a consortium led by Pete Winkelman proposed a large retail development in Milton Keynes including a Football League-standard stadium, and offered this site to Luton, Wimbledon, Barnet, Crystal Palace and Queens Park Rangers. Røkke and Gjelsten appointed a new chairman, Charles Koppel, who announced on 2 August 2001 that Wimbledon intended to relocate to Milton Keynes. Koppel said the club would otherwise go out of business. After the League refused permission, Koppel launched an appeal, leading to an FA arbitration hearing and subsequently the appointment of a three-man independent commission by the FA in May 2002 to make a final and binding verdict. The League and FA stated opposition but the commissioners ruled in favour, two to one. The vast majority of the team's fans switched allegiance to AFC Wimbledon in protest. Wimbledon F.C.'s relocation was delayed for over a year by the lack of an interim ground in Milton Keynes meeting Football League standards. In June 2003 the club went into administration; Winkelman's consortium injected funds to keep it operating and paid for the renovation of the National Hockey Stadium in Milton Keynes, where the team played its first match in September 2003. Winkelman's Inter MK Group bought the relocated club in 2004 and concurrently changed its name, badge and colours. The team's new ground, Stadium mk, opened three years later. MK Dons initially claimed Wimbledon F.C.'s heritage and history, but officially renounced this in 2007. AFC Wimbledon received planning permission for a new ground on Plough Lane in 2015. These plans have been criticised as having major negative repercussions for the future of Kingsmeadow and Kingstonian F.C..
Culture of England
The rules of football were first drafted in 1863 by Ebenezer Cobb Morley, and England has the oldest football clubs in the world. Recognised by FIFA as the birthplace of club football, Sheffield F.C., founded in 1857, is the world's oldest football club. The first ever international football match was between England and Scotland in 1872. Referred to by the sport's governing body FIFA as the "home of football", England hosted the 1966 FIFA World Cup, and won the tournament. With a 32.3 million viewing audience, the 1966 final is the most watched television event ever in the United Kingdom. The English Barclays Premier League is the most-watched football league in the world. Its biggest clubs include Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea, Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester City. In 2016, Leicester City, who were 5,000-1 outsiders at the start of the season, became champions. By some measures it was the greatest sporting upset ever: multiple bookmakers had never paid out at such long odds for any sport. As is the case throughout the UK, football in England is renowned for the intense rivalries between clubs and the passion of the supporters, which includes a tradition of football chants, such as, "You're Not Singing Any More" (or its variant "We Can See You Sneaking Out!"), sung by jubilant fans towards the opposition fans who have gone silent (or left early).
The modern game of lawn tennis originated in Birmingham, England, in the 1860s, and after its creation, tennis spread throughout the upper-class English-speaking population, before spreading around the world. Major Walter Clopton Wingfield is credited as being a pioneer of the game. The world's oldest tennis tournament, the Wimbledon championships, first occurred in 1877, and today the event takes place over two weeks in late June and early July. Created in the Tudor period in the court of Henry VIII, the English dessert strawberries and cream is synonymous with the British summer, and is famously consumed at Wimbledon.
Ian Cooke (footballer)
Cooke later became a director of AFC Wimbledon, the club founded by supporters in 2002 after approval had been given to Wimbledon F.C.'s relocation to Milton Keynes.
Wimbledon College
The Old Wimbledonians Association (OWA) is an almnus network of former Wimbledon College and Donhead pupils. Officially established in 1923, the OWA can trace its roots to 1905. It runs regular sports fixtures from its grounds at Coombe Lane (separate to those of the College), which also include a bar. Additionally, the OWA organises the Sinnott Society, a biannual group which meets to hear talks from other alumni alongside current Sixth Form pupils.
AFC Wimbledon
AFC Wimbledon currently hold the record for the longest unbeaten run of league matches in English senior football, having played 78 consecutive league games without a defeat between February 2003 and December 2004. They are the first club formed in the 21st century to make it into the Football League.
Wimbledon, London
In 1792 the Rev. Daniel Lysons published "The Environs of London: being an historical account of the towns, villages, and hamlets, within twelve miles of that capital" in which he wrote: "In the early part of the present century there were annual races upon this common, which had then a King's plate." However, he gives no further details and does not say how successful the horse racing was or how long it lasted.For many years Wimbledon Stadium hosted to Greyhound racing, as well as Stock car racing and Speedway. Speedway began at Wimbledon Stadium in 1928. The local team, the ""Dons"", was successful over the decades. It started out in 1929 as a member of the Southern League and operated until the Second World War. The track re-opened in 1946 and the Dons operated in the top flight for many years. In the 1950s the track was home to two World Champions: Ronnie Moore and Barry Briggs. In the Dons' last season, 2005, the team finished second in The National Conference League, but after the collapse of lease-renewal talks with the Greyhound Racing Association (owners of the stadium), the high increase in rent required meant the team was wound up. Greyhound racing and stock-car racing continue there.
Municipal Borough of Wimbledon
Wimbledon Local Government District was formed in 1866 when the parish of Wimbledon adopted the Local Government Act 1858, forming a local board of 15 members to govern the area. The Local Government Act 1894 reconstituted the area as an urban district. The town was granted a charter of incorporation to become a municipal borough in 1905. A borough council consisting of a mayor, six aldermen and eighteen councillors replaced the urban district council. The original Wimbledon Town Hall was built on The Broadway. This was replaced by a new Town Hall on the corner of Queen's Road and Wimbledon Bridge in 1931.
London Borough of Merton
The borough gained a football team in 1889 when Wimbledon Old Centrals were founded, and were soon a member of the local football leagues. The club later adopted the title "Wimbledon FC" and moved into a new stadium at Plough Lane in 1912, where it would spend the next 79 years. As the 20th century wore on, the club enjoyed considerable success in non league football. The club was elected to the Football League in 1977 and enjoyed a great run of success when began in 1983 with the Fourth Division title, and saw them reach the First Division in 1986 - a mere nine years after joining the Football League. They quickly established themselves in the highest division of English football, and as clear underdogs, pulled off a shock win in the 1988 FA Cup Final against Liverpool, England's most successful and dominant club side in Europe during that era. They were founder members of the FA Premier League in 1992 and survived at that level until 2000, before relocating to Milton Keynes, some 70 miles away in Buckinghamshire, in a controversial move in 2003, being rebranded as Milton Keynes Dons in 2004. The club had left its Plough Lane stadium in 1991 to ground-share with Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park, with numerous plans to build a new stadium in a number of different locations (including back in London and even in Dublin or Cardiff) being considered over the following decade before the club's owners chose Milton Keynes as their destination.