In 1967, the folks at ITN travelled to a small, agricultural village in North Buckinghamshire known as Milton Keynes. Residence to 200 residents, the village and its surrounding areas had been designated to deal with a brand new city, a spot to accommodate a post-war overspill of individuals needing new properties and a brand new life. A reporter, taking the opinions of these already dwelling there, discovered a settled group, suspicious of change. “It’s the Londoners,” one lady mentioned with a smile. “We simply don’t like them.”
Quick ahead over half a century and inside that new city, in a 30,500-capacity multipurpose stadium, you may hear a chant. “No-one likes us, no-one likes us, we don’t care.”
Loads has occurred between ITN’s go to and the current day, from metropolis people shifting right into a model new city to a south London soccer membership following swimsuit. Whereas the locals’ mistrust of recent neighbours has lengthy since subsided, there stays loads of scepticism round England’s most resented soccer membership.
MK Dons: Exiting Wimbleon, pursued by a Womble
The ultimate rating was 2-1. In Might 2002, following an FA arbitration assembly, a three-man unbiased fee gave their choice. Two of them voted positively, one voted in opposition to. Wimbledon FC could be allowed to maneuver 60 miles north to Milton Keynes.
It was a second that rocked English soccer. Pete Winkelman, a former music government who’d lived in Milton Keynes since 1993, had been looking for a Soccer League membership to search out its place there. The city’s non-league membership had been mooted, however Winkleman noticed that route as too costly a challenge. Luton had been approached, QPR, Crystal Palace and Barnet too, however it was Wimbledon chairman Charles Koppel whose ears had been most pricked by an thought he felt was the one method to save the membership from monetary oblivion.
Winkelman’s plans included a contemporary new stadium, however whereas an appropriate short-term residence was sought in Milton Keynes, the membership remained at Selhurst Park for 2002/03, having performed there for greater than a decade. They completed tenth within the second tier that season, however indignant Wimbledon followers boycotted and crowds dwindled. Even their mascot Wandle the Womble abandoned them, after the Wombles model refused to increase the licence.
The membership had fallen into administration by the point Milton Keynes’ Nationwide Hockey Stadium was introduced as much as Soccer League customary to permit the transfer to occur in 2003, for the fifth residence recreation of the brand new marketing campaign. Wimbledon had been backside of the desk by then, with simply three factors from eight league matches – only one,054 folks watched their final recreation at Selhurst Park in opposition to Wigan.
With a synthetic pitch transformed into grass and short-term stands erected, the yet-to-be renamed Wimbledon drew 2-2 with Burnley of their first recreation in Milton Keynes – a 34-year-old Dean Holdsworth and fellow ahead Patrick Agyemang each discovering the web, in entrance of 5,639 supporters.
That day, the Guardian’s first line of their match protection learn: “English soccer’s first train in franchising couldn’t be much less glamorous.” Amongst these on the recreation was Matt Lazenby, a Middlesex-based fan who’d adopted Wimbledon since early childhood, watching the victorious 1988 FA Cup remaining time and again on VHS. Having grown up travelling to Plough Lane after which Selhurst Park, he felt inclined to proceed to comply with the membership after the transfer.
“The expertise was initially very uncomfortable, and I took little or no pleasure from these early seasons,” Lazenby says. “It was a hockey stadium not constructed for soccer, very bizarre, however my crew had been enjoying there and I wished to assist them. As soon as the whistle blew, it may have been wherever.
“It was unusual, however what was noticeable pretty rapidly was that there have been 6,000 and even 8,000 folks turning up watching this new factor of their city – you possibly can instantly really feel that there was a marketplace for it, an viewers for it, and that was one thing the membership hadn’t had for 11 years or so.”
Administration nonetheless clouded the skies as Wimbledon completed backside of the second tier, 22 factors in need of security. They gained solely two of their 20 video games in Milton Keynes that season.
It might be their final marketing campaign as Wimbledon FC – in June 2004, Winkelman’s Inter MK group purchased the membership and renamed it MK Dons, with a brand new badge and a brand new white package.
For Winkelman, what was wanted, if his membership was to be actually recognised, was a brand new stadium. Utilizing monetary help from Asda, who constructed a grocery store on adjoining land, the sector took spectacular form. “Nothing greater than a property deal,” was what number of followers noticed it, however Winkleman was fast to push again. “Folks assume it’s simple – you get an Asda and construct a stadium like this,” he mentioned. “We’ve carried out one thing extraordinary.”
MK Dons would spend three extra seasons on the Nationwide Hockey Stadium earlier than Stadium MK was able to open – narrowly avoiding relegation to the fourth tier in 2004/05, earlier than succumbing to the drop a 12 months later. In 2006/07, they misplaced within the League Two play-offs.
For 2007/08, the city Winkelman as soon as described as “the largest place within the south east of England, exterior of London” was in a position to boast among the best stadiums within the nation, which features a lodge and never one however 4 video screens – a determine unmatched wherever in England, till Tottenham Hotspur’s new area was constructed.
“I bear in mind the take a look at occasion in opposition to Chelsea that summer season,” says Toby Lock, an MK Dons fan who now covers the membership’s matches for the MK Citizen. “It felt like we had a soccer membership right here and there was an enormous change in mindset. Immediately it didn’t really feel misplaced or short-term. We’d been known as a plastic membership, a pretend membership. We’d performed for years in a half-built stadium designed for a very totally different sport, however now right here we had been, in a good looking place, and it was all ours.”
“Your floor’s too large for you”
The membership loved its first success that season: with Paul Ince as supervisor, MK Dons gained the Soccer League Trophy and had been topped League Two champions. Winkleman’s “challenge” had legs – the membership’s academy started to bear fruit, most noticeably with the emergence of Dele Alli, offered to Tottenham for £5m in 2015, the 12 months in addition they gained their first promotion to the Championship.
Alli had been among the many stars, with Will Grigg scoring twice, as MK Dons thrashed Manchester United 4-0 within the League Cup months earlier, in entrance of just about 27,000.
“Greatest night time of my life, little doubt about it,” says 20-year-old Ollie Charnock, a lifelong MK Dons fan – now, the membership have been in existence for lengthy sufficient for folks to genuinely say that. “I’ve by no means skilled one thing prefer it, and I don’t assume I ever will once more.”
The membership averaged greater than 13,000 within the Championship – the stadium additionally turned a favoured location for different matches, internet hosting the 2014 FA Girls’s Cup remaining, and 4 matches on the 2022 Girls’s Euros.
However MK Dons’ keep within the Championship was solely a one-year journey, earlier than they had been relegated again to League One. Since then, momentum has reversed. A drop into League Two lasted only one marketing campaign, adopted by promotion again to the third tier in 2019, however hopes of one other rise to the Championship had been dashed final 12 months after they misplaced within the League One play-offs, then star males like Scott Twine and Harry Darling departed.
With out them, beforehand spectacular boss Liam Manning struggled to get ends in 2022/23, changed by Mark Jackson mid-season, just for the alternative to be sacked himself this Might, when the crew had been relegated to League Two once more, the drop confirmed on the final day of the season at Burton Albion. Twenty years since their transfer to Milton Keynes, the membership went into the 2023/24 season two divisions decrease than after they began.
Attendances are in need of what they had been just a few years in the past – their common of 8,462 in 2022/23 was their lowest for any marketing campaign at Stadium MK other than the pandemic season and their League Two season, when crowds weren’t boosted by massive away followings as typically. Ipswich took greater than 6,500 followers there in February 2023.
For matches with fewer away supporters, and the stadium lower than a 3rd full, ambiance has generally been a battle. Early Carabao Cup video games had been watched by lower than 2,500; an EFL Trophy final 32 conflict with Newport by simply 635, that means fewer than one in each 48 seats was occupied.
Ambiance issues are one thing that fan Ollie Charnock acknowledges, however he insists there’s hope for the years to come back. “The nice factor is almost all of people that assist this membership now are underneath 25 – that must be an enormous constructive for the longer term,” he explains. “A variety of the followers earlier than us maybe got here out of curiosity and supported one other membership, and us youthful lot had been nearly outsiders. We got here with new concepts about singing sections and songs – whereas the ambiance nonetheless wants engaged on, there’s a youthful presence.”
Regardless of the age of those that watch soccer there, they’ve all needed to hearken to a constant degree of hate from supporters of different golf equipment, who proceed to see them as a bastardised model of Frankenstein’s monster. Notions of a franchise merely gained’t wash within the English recreation. “You possibly can’t change opinions, even after 20 years,” Charnock says. “The hatred in opposition to us is powerful, and we get it from everybody. ‘Your floor’s too large for you’ and different songs in regards to the ‘franchise’ are at all times there, however we embrace it. ‘Nobody likes us, we don’t care’ is our comeback.”
The outdated Millwall name to arms might sound misplaced in leafy Buckinghamshire, however the followers at MK Dons have created an us in opposition to them mentality that they stand behind. “We’re as hated as Millwall have ever been, however that creates a togetherness,” Lazenby says. “Each MK Dons fan will get into arguments with different followers in regards to the choices they’ve made. There’s a really loyal fanbase, galvanised by the ridicule and the disbelief from different followers, who can’t perceive that we’re real followers of our membership.”
The look ahead to the frenzy
To this present day, followers at AFC Wimbledon, the membership that rose from the ashes of Winkelman’s fireplace, would take difficulty with “real” and “our membership” – there’s a enmity that is still uniquely bitter. Simply attempting to get an AFC Wimbledon supporter to speak to FourFourTwo for this characteristic was arduous – many nonetheless refuse to acknowledge MK Dons’ presence in any respect. “I attempt to avoid the phrase rivalry,” says Gary Jordan, supporter and creator of Present Me The Technique to Plough Lane: The Outstanding Story of Wimbledon FC’s Return Residence. “It’s a membership we don’t recognise. It shouldn’t be in existence.”
The 2 groups had been again in the identical league in 2023/24, after AFC Wimbledon’s relegation in 2022, then a disappointing Twenty first-placed end within the fourth tier. Lazenby, having skilled the ultimate seasons of Wimbledon earlier than making the transition to assist a crew in Milton Keynes, nonetheless takes agency difficulty with the notion that MK Dons are the dangerous guys. “The transfer to Selhurst Park was the loss of life knell,” he says. “Wimbledon had no capability to make income apart from promoting gamers. What adopted was relegation and crowds stopped coming.
“I bear in mind going to Sheffield United away in 2002. There have been so few away followers that they closed the away finish and put us in a field. An government field. That claims all of it. It was me, just a few others, and our goalkeeper Kelvin Davis’ mum. We had no fanbase.
“I 100 per cent get that if I’d been an area south west Londoner, used to strolling via Wimbledon to Plough Lane, I might have been critically disgruntled. Ever for the reason that transfer although, there’s been a one-sided media agenda in favour of AFC over MK Dons. Take a look at the FA Cup. Yearly, AFC are talked about as having gained it in 1988. Nicely, they didn’t. MK Dons did. I resent that we needed to resign these titles.
“Don’t get me incorrect, I don’t wish to see what occurred to Wimbledon occur once more. It should not be a precedent, however the way in which it’s been considered, the angels and demons created off the again of it, it’s all incorrect.”
Wimbledon followers argue that they solely stopped attending matches after the FA panel confirmed the transfer in 2002 – followers like Gary Jordan imagine that, on the subject of MK Dons, time has confirmed them proper. “It’s an amazing stadium up there, however they obtained it incorrect,” he says. “You solely have to take a look at their attendances now and the way a lot of a big catchment space they’ve, and you’ll see it hasn’t labored. Winkelman known as it a ‘Frenzy of soccer ready to occur’, however they had been offered a dream that simply isn’t going to occur.”
Recommendations that the relocation hasn’t labored don’t sit effectively with those that attend Stadium MK week in, week out. “The most important disappointment in my soccer life is watching this crew fail to dwell as much as the infrastructure constructed round it,” Lazenby says. “It’s removed from a failure, although. We’ve been informed for 20 years by different followers that soccer is all about historical past – that we have now no historical past, so how may I assist them? Twenty years is simply too quick a time to attempt to declare a historical past, too quick a time to deem this challenge a failure.”
Like most golf equipment, fortunes on the pitch fluctuate. In numerous different means although, MK Dons aren’t like most membership – they proceed to try to pour cement round their unsteady foundations. Is it working? “Sure, the membership are very a lot part of the city now,” says Toby Lock. “They do work in faculties and the group. There’s a leisure complicated too, which makes it a focus for that a part of city. It’s taken time and numerous infrastructure however there’s a cinema, purchasing, a McDonald’s and a KFC. Whereas some would possibly chuckle at that, it’s necessary to how the city sees the membership – it’s how fashionable golf equipment must get alongside. Golf equipment down the pyramid must look into new income streams to assist construct the soccer aspect of issues.”
Twenty years on, MK Dons stay a membership striving to be one thing. They face ridicule wherever they go, however for younger followers corresponding to Ollie Charnock, who solely know them as their crew, supporting them is identical as some other. “It’s an amazing membership, it’s my membership,” he says. “I’m so grateful that there’s a membership close to my residence that I can go and watch – like numerous my technology, I didn’t wish to be merely an armchair fan. We’ve plenty of downs, however who is aware of what’s across the nook. Make my desires come true.”
To date, that hasn’t completely occurred, no less than not in the way in which that Winkelman most likely hoped again in 2003. The plan was by no means for MK Dons to be in League Two in 2023 – the place they’re one other 20 years from now will do a lot to outline the success or failure of the franchise. Immediately, similar to that FA panel again in 2002, opinion stays divided.