AFC Wimbledon 1 - Milton Keynes Dons 0
Curtis 90' + 4'
Four minutes into extra time, Ronan Curtis scored a stoppage-time winner which in the scheme of League Two, merely puts a temporary dent in the hops of MK Dons' automatic promotion hopes. In the grand scheme of English Football though, this was more than just a goal and a win in the fourth tier of English Football.
This was proof that the game always did belong to the people and that it always will do. This was proof that money can not buy some things. Money does not buy tradition. Money does not buy class. Money does not buy history. Money does not buy community.
To put this in perspective, here is a potted history of the last 40 years:
May 1983: Wimbledon are Fourth Division Champions and are promoted to the Third Division.
May 1984: Wimbledon are Third Division Champions and are promoted to the Second Division.
May 1986: Wimbledon come 3rd in the Second Division and are promoted to the First Division.
May 1988: Wimbledon win the FA Cup Final 1-0 against newly crowned league champions, Liverpool.
May 1991: After the publication of the Taylor Report (following the Bradford, Heysel, and Hillsborough disasters) which following recommended all-seater grounds for top-flight clubs, Wimbledon left Plough Lane after 79 years to groundshare with neighbours Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park.
May 1997: Wimbledon chairman Sam Hammam sold the club to two Norwegian businessmen, Kjell Inge Røkke and Bjørn Rune Gjelste; who intended to bulldoze Plough Lane and turn it into a supermarket site.
Aug 2001: The new chairman, Charles Koppel, announced that Wimbledon intended to relocate to Milton Keynes. The English FA refused the move.
May 2002: A Independent Commission appointed by the English FA approves the relocation of the club to Milton Keynes.
Feb 2002: The English FA declared that it was "not in the wider interests of football" to have a club based in Wimbledon
https://web.archive.org/web/20120205212904/http://www.wisa.org.uk/cgi/l/files/20020530_fa.pdf
Aug 2003: "Wimbledon" plays its first matches at the National Hockey Stadium in Milton Keynes.
Jun 2004: The name of the club plying its trade at Milton Keynes changed its to reflect it's relocation.
The rest of the story of AFC Wimbledon, which is a new club for the fans, , and owned by the fans is long and complicated of itself but the relevant parts here are:
Nov 2020: AFC Wimbledon play their first game at the new Plough Lane
Mar 2024: Ronan Curtis scores a 94th minute winner as Wimbledon record their first-ever win at Plough Lane against the club from Milton Keynes.
The match itself, played out in fading sunshine on a still crisp spring afternoon in Southwest London, has a two minute highlight reel and really that's all that there was. This was two sides playing relatively neutral football, who were both being cancelled out in the centre of the pitch; both shifting between 4-4-2 and 4-5-1, with not enough presence up front to make use of any firepower. As almost a neutral, watching this match for me was like watching two boxers with one glove tied behind their backs. Curtis's goal which came as the last actions of extra time, was the brightest spark of the whole match.
The two sides have met before on a number of occasions. The two sides have even met this season. This particular match was not about getting one up over the club who used to be you before it was stolen away but something deeper.
Wimbledon FC, that is the club with a century of tradition and which held aloft the FA Cup after beating Liverpool in the Cup Final, once upon a time played at a ground further up Plough Lane. AFC Wimbledon, that is the club which was born out of the ashes of the supporters base of the old club, and became a club for the fans and by the fans, only very recently moved back to Plough Lane after playing out of other club's grounds. This is the final chapter in the story of the club coming home and to win at home against the club who used to be you before it was stolen away, is special.
This is not merely a geographical rivalry like Arsenal and Tottenham, or City and United in Manchester. This is as bitter a rivalry as Liverpool and Everton would have been in the 1890s, after the former was formed after the then new owner bought the ground and then had to buy 12 players to put in that new ground. In every respect, what the new owners of Wimbledon FC did, in taking a club and ripping it out of the community where it had been for more than a century and moving it 135 miles away, is magnitudes more horrible, heinous, and horrid, and far worse hateration and holleration.
Herein lies the reason why this goal and this 1-0 result is more important than any other mere derby result and possibly more important than a cup final. AFC Wimbledon is not just a phoenix club that rose from the ashes of a previous club which went into administration and bankruptcy but had to be built anew after people with money stole a club away. This 1-0 result is the club owned by and for the fans, demonstrating that you can never buy the heart and soul of the game.
1-0 in a club owned by the fans, in a ground owned by the fans; against the franchise currently plying its trade elsewhere because people with money had no regard for the fans, is the demonstration that community matters more than many billions of pounds.
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