A Season With the Wombles Part 1.

It all started promisingly with our pre-season friendly against Watford. Our new goalkeeper George Long (on a season long loan from Sheffield United) looked like he was an excellent shot stopper and also had a prodigious boot on him. Cody McDonald our new striker scored two cracking goals and there were signs that some of our home grown players, notably Anthony Hartigan, Alfie Egan, Toby Sibbick and Egli Kaja could be pushing for first team places. Some of my predictions/hopes worked out – mainly concerning George Long, the rest well ……

As I have mentioned in other posts I started following AFC Wimbledon again last year following a four year break while Grace was being treated for Ovarian Cancer. I found that I was going to almost every match. The only ones I didn’t go to we’re the ones that I couldn’t get tickets for. So I decided to get a season ticket for this year. £340 well spent .. Possibly.

During the close season we had lost a couple of players who were fairly integral to the team. Tom Elliot (last years Player of the Year) was out of contract and although we offered him a new one, Millwall, who had just been promoted, offered him a better one. So our big lump with No. 9 on his back was gone. So to was our Duracell Bunny midfielder Jake Reeves. He wasn’t out of contract, but it turned out that there was a release clause in his contract and Bradford triggered it. Neither of them was properly replaced.

My first match proper of the season was our League Cup round 1 game against Brentford. No one expected too much from it. We have never got beyond the first round since we became a League club in 2011 (and thus eligible to enter). We did better than expected, holding then to a 1-1 draw at full time. Extra time proved our undoing with Brentford running out 3-1 winners. 

We had started our league campaign the weekend before with a creditable 1-1 draw away to Scunthorpe. The following Saturday saw us back in League action again, against Shrewsbury, the other team in League One who play in Blue and Yellow. We lost 0-1 which at the time felt extremely disappointing. In retrospect I don’t think it was quite as bad a result as I thought at the time. Shrewsbury turned out to be this year’s overachievers and have made it all the way to the playoff final. I would describe them as an efficient team. Very sound defensively, and able to nick a goal when the opportunity presents. However it was an indication of where we were going to be for much of the season. Difficult to break down, but finding it almost impossible to score. If we went behind there was the feeling that that was it, game over.

Fleetwood from the away end

Our next game against Fleetwood was my first ever away match. John and Stevie, friends I had made on one of our volunteers work weekends, go to most away games and told me that I should at least do one or two. So I decided that Fleetwood would be my introduction. The game was memorable for a couple of things. Not the football, we weren’t completely abject, but we were not very good. Fleetwood were not much better, but managed to bag a couple of goals thanks to mistakes (unfortunately becoming increasingly common) on the right side of our defence. No the two things that made it memorable were meeting a Canadian football studies researcher – I had no idea that such people existed – on Preston station while we changed trains. The other thing that made it memorable was the fish and chip shop outside the away end. They served some of the best fish and chips I have ever eaten.

That seemed to establish the pattern for the early part of the season, basically a series of disappointing losses and draws, interspersed with the occasional win to give us a bit of hope. But as every footy fan knows it is the hope that kills you.

Probably the most disappointing loss was the game I missed because of a family funeral back in Scotland. We played “The Team Who Shall Not be Named” on the evening of Friday (it probably should have been the 13th) 22nd of September. I tried to watch it on a very dodgy pirate feed whilst traveling back to London. The only two points that the feed stopped freezing were when Kwesi Appiah pulled up in their penalty area with the hamstring injury that would keep him out for most of the season, and when Lyle Taylor missed the penalty that might have gotten us back into the game. The train was stopped in Stevenage as the game ended, my thoughts were that we may well be back here next season.

Relegation was staring us in the face. I was having difficulty seeing where the next goal was coming from, let alone the next win. Our strikers were either out of form or injured, the midfield were reasonably enough defensively but we’re adding nothing going forward. On top of that I was becoming obvious that Paul Robinson, our right centre-back was playing one season to many.

To be continued…….. 

Songs I Love: We are Wimbledon

This is not the worlds finest song (musically at least).
Thirty years ago today on the 14th of May 1988, Wimbledon FC beat Liverpool 1-0 to win the F.A. Cup, or to quote John Motson “The Crazy Gang have beaten the Culture Club”. I wasn’t there. I was on the other side of the world (in the Solomon Islands to be precise) listening to the game on the BBC World Service very early on Sunday Morning.
This was our Cup Final song “We are Wimbledon”. We still play it, and sing it, at Kingsmeadow.

Away Day No.3 (The League Leaders)

This was my last Away Day for the season. I have been to more than three away games (ten in fact) but I only started writing about them a month ago. We (AFC Wimbledon)still have one more away match on Tuesday the first of May against Doncaster (the match that should have been played on Easter Monday) but I can’t make it due to work.

It was an early start, Wigan is a long way up the M6. We met up at Fat Boy’s for our normal pre-coach trip breakfast. Breakfast was fine but there was definitely a sense of foreboding in the air. Even Stevie our eternal glass overflowing optimist was saying things like ” If we can come away with a draw I’ll be happy.” the rest of us were more along the lines of “If we can avoid another 4-0 defeat we’ll be happy.” (They beat us 4-0 in the game at Kingsmeadow before Christmas). Wigan, who knocked Manchester City out of the cup, and are top of the league and already promoted could have tied up the title if they beat us and other results went their way. We on the other hand still needed at least two points from our last three games to be mathematically safe from relegation.

On to the coach for the five-hour trek up north. In retrospect I think we should have taken the train, and will do next time, but that won’t be for at least a couple of seasons.
We had a stop at a service station on the M6. As well as ourselves there were fans from quite a few other clubs grabbing a coffee. Brighton were traveling up to play Burnley, Portsmouth were off to Bury, and going in the opposite direction Rochdale were off to Oxford No hassle, but a bit of banter because Portsmouth and Rochdale are in the same league as ourselves. Brighton being a Premier League club just ignored us.

We arrived at the ground about one o’clock and got off the bus about one thirty because a jobsworth steward insisted that we couldn’t park in the place marked “Coaches” in big white letters. So we had another tour of the suburbs of Wigan to get to the place where we were allowed to park. Fred and Barry, who had come up by train saw the coach on its mystery tour and called us to say they were in a pub about five minutes walk from the ground so we wandered along to join them for a pre-match pint.

The ground, The DW Stadium, was the smartest (photo above) we’ve been to this season (apart from Wembley), but then it’s not all that long ago that Wigan were a Premier League side. The ground feels a bit big for them. It was their last home game of the season and they had the chance of clinching the title, but it was still only half full. They do share the ground with the local Rugby League team the Wigan Warriors who I think tend to draw bigger crowds.

Our team selection seemed to be dictated by the players we had fit. No Wardrobes*. Three attacking midfielders and our right-footed left back to provide a bit of muscle. As Stevie said “When Harry Forrester and Dean Parratt seem to be the defensive midfield we could have problems” I’m not sure either of them can spell the word “defend”. We lined up 4-4-2 or possibly 4-1-3-2. With Callum Kennedy (who is left footed) slotting in at left back.

The game started pretty evenly. They were trying to pressure us at every opportunity, but we seemed to contain their attack reasonably comfortably and we always looked dangerous on the break. Twenty four minutes in LTB** latched on to a slight mistake by their centre back, fed The Pig*** and The Pig did score. 1-0 to the Wombles.  To be honest I had not expected that. A few minutes later we could have gone two up, but their keeper produced a brilliant finger tip save to push Dean Parratt’s shot over the bar.  They came back at us, but we were fairly comfortable in defence, and George Long was having a magnificent game in goal. The first half ended with us 1-0 up.

At the start of the second half Wigan threw everything they had at us but our defence was holding, even if there were a few heart in the mouth moments. We could have gone 2-0 up at about the 60 minute mark. Harry Forrester made a good interception just inside our half, and had a clear run to the edge of the penalty box. He had Lyle Taylor unmarked to his right and Joe Piggot unmarked to his left, but chose to try a shot instead and put it over the bar.

They equalised shortly afterwards. I thought at the time our centre back Deji Oshilaja was fouled in the build up, and having seen the video replay a few times I am even more convinced that he was, but neither the referee nor his assistants seemed to see it. I’ll embed the video, see if you agree with me.  From my point of view (admittedly biased) the referee seemed to ignore a lot of Wigan’s fouls, but gave everything against us.

There was another twenty minutes of almost constant Wigan pressure to endure, but we held out for a hard-earned draw. Possibly we could have won, but given the pressure that Wigan put us under for almost all the second half a draw was a fair result. As Stevie said at Fat Boys we came a way with a draw and we were happy. Even happier when we discovered that The Franchise (AKA Milton Keynes)**** had been relegated.

It all made for a contented trip back to South West London

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*Our three defensive midfield players Tom Soares, Liam Trotter and Jimmy Abdou are collectively known as The Wardrobes, due to the perception of a certain lack of mobility among a section of our fans.
**Lyle Taylor (Baby) from the song we sing for him:
Lyle Taylor Baby, Lyle Taylor Woa oh o ( to the tune of “Don’t You Love Me Baby”).
*** Joe Piggot is (affectionately) referred to as The Pig.
**** The history of Wimbledon FC being uprooted and moved to Milton Keynes and the subsequent formation of AFC Wimbledon is well told in this Wikipedia article