The K's In Point

A Fairy Tale to Forget

By John Bangs15/11/2020 11:46Sun Nov 15 11:46:47 2020

Views: 11549

AFC Wimbledon make an ideal lazy journalist’s “fairy tale” story. After all it took them just under 15 years to move from having a kick about on Wimbledon Common to League One. There were an incredible six promotions on this journey.

Like many fairy tales though, there is a dark twist: in this case of just who Cinderella climbed over and trampled on to get to the ball. It was instructive to hear Erik Samuelson boast of having made £4 million profit on the sale Kingsmeadow. From this we can see that the payment to Kingstonian to vacate Kingsmeadow was not an act of beneficence but a business decision taken out of of self interest. Not only did the sale raise money towards Plough Lane 2 but this also avoided having running costs for two grounds which could not have been afforded.

It is true that many of Kingstonian’s woes were self inflicted but I think that only the most blinkered AFC fan can think that their club comes out of this smelling of roses.

The other harm done to the Kingstonian brand was importing the AFC circus into our Borough and positioning themselves as our local club Their undoubted success on the pitch did attract local people to their tent, making it more difficult for Ks to attract new fans. For this reason, I am very pleased that AFC Wimbledon have moved out of Kingston for good and are back in Wimbledon where they belong . Their exploits at Kingsmeadow will always be part of their folk law but that is part of Wimbledon’s history not Kingston’s.

We need to now move on and look forward to a time when, if the Directors plans come to fruition, Kingstonian will again have our own ground.
COYKs

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