Dons fans drive message home

The owners want Milton Keynes, but Plough Lane is looming again

The Thomas Farley pub in Thornton Heath will do good business today, when the Sunday lunchtime regulars are augmented not only by Wimbledon and Nottingham Forest supporters en route to this afternoon's First Division game at nearby Selhurst Park, but by followers of between 40 and 50 other clubs, demonstrating against the possibility of the south London team being moved lock, stock and two smoking barrels up the M1 to Milton Keynes. It would somehow not be a surprise to see Vinny Jones and his shotgun at the head of the parade.

Previous Fans United days have involved clubs like Brighton and Chester, forced far from home (Gillingham and Macclesfield respectively) in what became temporary arrangements before they were restored to their natural habitat. Wimbledon supporters believe that after 10 years of sharing with Crystal Palace at Selhurst, where Ron Noades – still the owner of the freehold, although now chairman of Brentford – extracts a juicy pound of flesh from both tenants, the opportunity now exists to return to their derelict former home at Plough Lane.

The latest planning application for a Safeway supermarket there has just been rejected by the local council, Merton, whose support for their local club has waxed and waned over the years but is now shining as brightly as that of Islington Council, who voted by a large majority to accept Arsenal's plans for a new stadium in the borough last Monday, rather than face the possibility of losing them.

What needs to be done is therefore to persuade Safeway, who paid Sam Hamman £8m for the site, to sell it back at an affordable price. Talks will resume this week. In the meantime, according to a council spokesman: "Our wish is for Wimbledon to return to Merton, or close by. We'd be absolutely thrilled to the back teeth if the club was able to return to Plough Lane, and we'll do everything we can to encourage it."

A club source admitted yesterday that Plough Lane was an option, but left little doubt that Milton Keynes was the preferred one: "We'd get a brand new football stadium there, financed by surrounding commercial de- velopment. We're a homeless club and we need to secure the club's future. Milton Keynes is, I believe, Europe's largest conurbation without a professional football club. It represents a unique solution to a unique problem."

Not a solution, however, that English football has readily embraced; Arsenal's move 88 years ago from Woolwich in South-east London across the Thames is virtually the only example of permanent relocation to an entirely different area. Football League rules now prevent any such movement outside "the conurbation from which the club takes its name or with which it is otherwise traditionally associated" – which is why Wimbledon's application to head north was turned down in August. The club's appeal will be heard by a Football Association arbitration panel in the New Year.

If it is successful, the League and most supporters' bodies fear the start of a franchising system more common to American sports, in which clubs can be moved from one end of the country to the other. "Franchising would be a very bad thing for football," said Dave Boyle, vice-chairman of the Football Supporters' Association. "Fans support a club because of what it is and because it represents as particular area. If this got the green light, there would soon be others and we'd just have an American system. The League exists, in part, to regulate the clubs for the good of the game and if Wimbledon get this rule changed [by the FA] it's a recipe for anarchy. The football authorities do tend to bend in the wind, so to see them putting their foot down on this is very good and I'd hope the FA will as well.

"There's a suspicion that the Milton Keynes people want to circumvent the traditional way you get a football club into the League. They tried it with Luton and QPR and it's ironic that they're now using Wimbledon, which is the best model there is of how you get a small club up through the leagues."

Four years ago, even at a time when Wimbledon were enjoying the financial fruits of Premiership football and crowds of 25,000 for London derbies and visits from the big northern clubs, Hammam insisted: "We will not by staying at Selhurst Park. That would be suicidal." Subsequently, he took the money and ran, while the club stayed on under quickly disillusioned Norwegian owners. Relegation has sent average attendances tumbling to 6,800 and now a threat of suicide, by bankruptcy, may be their only way of convincing supporters and the authorities they must move. This afternoon, fans of 50 clubs will urge the Dons to come down from the roof.