Erik Samuelson, AFC Wimbledon's chief executive, left, talks with the manager, Terry Brown, on the training pitch. Photograph: Tom Jenkins for the ObserverNine years ago AFC Wimbledon began a story that continues to flare as a beacon in football's era of greed and commercial imperative. When Terry Brown sends out his side against Bristol Rovers for their debut in the Football League on Saturday, a quest that was dreamed up in the Fox and Grapes on Wimbledon Common on 28 May 2002 will have been achieved.
The odds they had to overcome were immense, but the determination of hardcore Dons fans was unbending and the mood of the sporting gods favourable. AFC's passage to League Two was secured on 21 May when Danny Kedwell, the captain, thumped home the deciding penalty to defeat Luton Town 4-3 in the Blue Square Premier play-off final at Eastlands, following a goalless game.
That Tuesday nine years ago had begun with a Football Association commission voting two to one to allow Wimbledon FC, the alma mater of the Crazy Gang and the 1988 FA Cup winners, to be ripped from south London where they had been since 1889, and relocated to Milton Keynes as the MK Dons.
The bitterness regarding a decision taken by Raj Parker, a solicitor, and Steve Stride, a former Aston Villa director, still lingers (FA Council member Alan Turvey voted against). Adam Crozier, then the FA chief executive, described the decision as "appalling".
Dave Boyle was recently forced to resign as the chief executive of Supporters Direct after sending offensive tweets to Parker when AFC's promotion was confirmed, with the Premier League threatening to withdraw its ?1.2m funding to SD due to the row.
Yet beyond the disgust is the glow of deserved satisfaction. Erik Samuelson, the club's chief executive, says: "Looking back I feel an immense amount of pride on behalf of everybody involved. And a sense of wonder: that we did it, somehow. If you think about where we started, on Wimbledon Common, and ended up, about to step out for our very first game in the Football League."
AFC's first match was a friendly on 10 July 2002 in front of 4,654 at Sutton United's Gander Green Lane. It featured Glenn Mulcaire, of phone hacking infamy, who is feted as the scorer of the club's inaugural goal. The starting XI sent out by the manager, Terry Eames, in a 4-3-3 formation reads: Andy Hunt; Drew Watkins, Simon Johnstone, Kevin Tilley, Dave Towse; Neil Northcott, Mehmet Mehmet, David Fry; Joe Sheerin, Dean Martin, Mulcaire.
AFC lost 4-0 but the result hardly mattered. Tilley, then 43, recalls: "I'd played for the side in the 70s that had kicked, bollocked and bit and got itself in the Football League. Terry called me out of the blue and asked if I could help out. I did a bit of pre-season training and then played at Sutton. It was really just to get the club going, proving the name doesn't die."
They began in the ninth tier of the pyramid, five promotions from professional football. How did the club rise so quickly? "In the early years we were [one of] the most powerful clubs in the Combined Counties and in the two leagues of the Ryman," Samuelson says. "We had financial muscle and we were able to build a really strong team. In the first season the original budget for the team was ?700 a week. Our average crowd was 3,000 and the adult cost of getting on to the terrace was ?9. It doesn't take you long to work out we had quite a lot of money to spare. We got 111 points that season and didn't get promoted because two other teams outspent us.
"In the second season we weren't extravagant, but thought: 'We are not having this.' So we made sure we won the league. When we started to stall [between 2005 and 2007] it was a combination of getting the right manager [Brown], making sure that he felt absolutely supported, and that the fans understood completely what we were trying to do so that everyone stayed on board.
"One of the things we said all the way through was that we wanted to do things properly. Whether it be getting into the Football League: get in through the pyramid. Or when dealing with the fans and public: do it properly."
Brown has guided AFC to three promotions since taking over in May 2007, with AFC still playing at Kingstonian's old ground, Kingsmeadow, which they bought after initially sharing. Samuelson says: "It was obvious that we would only really thrive if we owned our own ground. We paid ?2.4m for an established stadium that was capable of being upgraded to league standards."
Kris Stewart, AFC's founding chairman, who will be at Kingsmeadow on Saturday, speaks of the "weird" and "sad" atmosphere on that evening at the Fox and Grapes before the crusade for renewal replaced potential oblivion. There are now 2,500 members in the trust who own AFC, so could another club ever be uprooted in a similar, harrowing fashion? "Probably not. But then it probably wouldn't have happened in the first place. There was a very unusual set of circumstances that allowed it," Stewart says. "There is still that culture that exists [at the FA] of the independent commission nonsense that says: 'Here is an important decision about football, let's find people who don't really know what they're talking about and devolve our responsibility for running the game to them.'
"One of the most annoying things was that those people who made the decision will never have to account for it. The FA should have the guts and the balls to run football in this country."
Now, though, an odyssey can be enjoyed while Brown blends his summer recruits Max Porter, from Rushden & Diamonds, Jack Midson (Oxford United), Matt Mitchell-King (Crewe Alexandra), and Charles Ademeno (Grimsby Town) into the squad.
Sheerin, part of that original AFC XI and rated the club's finest player, suggests the heritage of the Crazy Gang is intact: "The spirit was what kept me at the club for three seasons – we probably got away with more stuff because we were non-League. I'm trying to think of something that's not X-rated. We did once have a naked protest on the back of the coach because the driver wasn't allowed to stop at the off-licence after a match. I don't think that company used us again, and the chairman at the front was not too pleased."
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