So, farwell then, Terry Brown

When it comes to getting rid of TB, Defra have got nothing on AFC Wimbledon. Just seven league games into the new season, after a home defeat to Torquay that left us with one point from the previous six games, the board decided that enough was enough and gave Terry Brown and assistant Stuart Cash their marching orders.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to get to any games so far this season, so much of what follows may well be palpably ill-informed and about as much use as 99% of all blogs anyway, but that hasn’t stopped me before (unlike pure laziness which constantly thwarts my blogging efforts) so I’m going to throw my two penneth into the mix.

I’m gutted that Terry is leaving. Or rather, I’m gutted that it got to the point where the board felt they had no option. It obviously wasn’t just the poor league form (and two cup defeats) that did for Terry – a disastrous pre-season didn’t help, and the memory of the nightmare run of form at the end of 2011 will have left many fans keen to see a change at the top sooner rather than later. It’s a shame, though, that fans choose the start of that poor run as the starting point of their analysis of Terry’s reign. More logically, and rather than choosing a starting date that suits the ‘Brown out’ argument, we should look at last season as a whole, in which case a 16th place finish (averaging just over a point a game) in our first league season on a small budget is no disgrace. If we want to blame Terry for the bad run, we should also give him credit for the good run at the start of the season when a win at Morecambe put us in 3rd place after 12 games. Or we should look at the second half of the season, when we still averaged just over a point a game, but without the rollercoaster ride of the first half.

Terry had - somewhat infamously given our current struggles - asserted that there was plenty of ‘dead wood’ in league 2, which would make our survival in league 2 an easier task. Unfortunately, his assessment was a couple of years out of date. Now that the ‘2-up 2-down’ arrangement between League 2 and the conference has been in place for a while, and with a certain amount of money being invested in non-league clubs such as Crawley and Fleetwood, the supply of dead wood is drying up. As an example, last season saw the very poor Hereford and Macclesfield replaced by affluent, ambitious Fleetwood and a rejuvenated York City. Of course, in some ways, that underlines what an achievement it was to achieve promotion from such a tough league as the Conference, especially when Crawley had effectively bought first place, leaving it a race for the relative lottery of the play-offs. I believe that if we hadn’t won against Luton, a team stripped of Kedwell, Mohammed, and the prodigal Gregory wouldn’t have been promotion contenders the following season. Even this season, with Luton surely due to go up sooner rather than later, and the financial clout of Newport County and Forest Green, and strong teams like Mansfield, Wrexham and Grimsby in the division, it’s tempting to conclude that there’s still just enough dead wood around (I’m looking at you, Barnet and Dagenham and Redbridge) to make it easier to survive in League 2 than win promotion from the Conference. Fortunately for us, we took our chance and last season we saw a combination of a miracle start, some inspiration from loan signings that snapped us out of a bad run, and the presence of enough remaining dead wood combine to keep us in league 2.

Personally – and I admit this is partly influenced by the facts that a) I think Terry is a decent, honest bloke, and b) I haven’t witnessed first-hand how bad we’ve been this season – I’d have liked him to have been given longer to put things right. As a general rule I’d make ten league games the minimum before sacking a manager, and wouldn’t have complained if Terry had been given an extra five games on top of that to allow for the fact that he was rebuilding the team and had suffered from a series of injuries to key players. 15 points from 15 games would have represented a reasonable target to set Terry and his team. Whilst fans can afford to be subjective about such things, for the most part those running a football club - and therefore responsible for managing the manager - should set objective and measurable targets, as would/should happen in most other industries. “Play nice football” doesn’t come under either “objective” or “measurable”, and any manager would tell you that the last thing they want is a chairman or board of directors who think they know how to manage a football team.

So what could justify pulling the trigger at such an early stage? Firstly, there is the fact that for all my talk about objective targets, the people running a football club are normally fans as well as directors (which is more true for us than any other club), and if the performances of the team really have been as dire as some reports suggest, and the performances of certain of Terry’s signings (I’m looking at you, Warren Cummings) have been as bad as some reports suggest, then I wouldn’t blame the board for deciding that there is no realistic prospect of TB and his team achieving their targets. Secondly, there’s the possibility that the board already have a replacement in mind. Any good company will know how they would go about replacing a key employee should the need arise, whether it be because the person has been sacked, resigned, or walked under a bus. It may be that the board acted quickly so as not to miss out on the opportunity to recruit the person already identified as Terry’s successor. If that is the case, we might have a new manager in place fairly quickly. Conveniently enough, Andy Scott - who managed Brentford to the League 2 title in 2009 - was in the ground last night as a guest of Torquay boss Martin Ling. “It would be disrespectful to talk about Terry’s position until anything has been confirmed," he was reported as saying by the Croydon Guardian. "But I am out of work and would be interested in any job that became available in League One or Two. I dearly want to get back into the game." Read into that what you will.

Whoever the new man (or woman, let’s not be sexist) is, he/she will face the task of pulling the team together, and getting the most out of the players who remained from last year, and those brought in this year. The good news is that he (let’s be realistic) has plenty of time in which to do that. There are 39 league games left, in which he has to keep us ahead of at least two other teams in the division, whilst also giving us confidence that in future seasons we can do better than simply relying on being not as bad as dead wood in order to prosper in the division. Even with such a bad start, that shouldn’t be beyond a squad that includes the likes of Mat Mitchel-King, Pim Balkestein, Steven Gregory, Sammy Moore, and Jack Midson. Not all of Terry’s signings have been a roaring success (yep, you again, Cummings) but let’s not forget that all the good players of recent years, including the remaining players I’ve just listed, were all TB signings.

So – was it the right decision to sack Terry? I hate coming to this conclusion, and much as my heart says we should have given him more time, it probably was. Today is all the sadder because it’s impossible to overstate the contribution Terry has made to this club, and if ever anyone deserved to be able to walk away from a job on their own terms, it’s Terry Brown. But football is a results business, and as much as any of us wanted Terry to succeed, he wasn’t producing results. Even a club with as friendy an image as the fan-owned AFC Wimbledon can’t allow sentiment to get in the way of tough decisions, as we’ve seen today. Terry has said he’ll be at Wycombe on Saturday, where I’m sure he’ll get a fantastic reception from the travelling Dons fans who will appreciate everything he’s done for the club.

By guiding us to three promotions in four years Terry Brown has earned a prominent place in the history of Wimbledon football as a decent, honest, and above all hugely successful manager who led us back to where we belong - the Football League.

If the benchmark of success for a football manager is that he leaves the club in a better position than when he arrived, then there are surely very few more successful tenures than that of Terry Brown at AFC Wimbledon.

We found a team even worse than us! (Dons 2 Daggers 1)

Some match reports contain dull things. Like facts. Fortunately, because I don’t take notes during a game (though that might have relieved the simultaneous boredom and tension of having to watch this god-awful excuse for a football match) and because I’m writing this 2 days after the game, raw facts are few and far between. Besides, if that’s the sort of thing that turns you on, there’s the OS report or the brief highlights and report on the BBC website from where you can find out that we had more of the possession, but they had more shots on and off target, and more corners. At which point there’s probably room for a cliché about “the only stat that counts” being 2-1 in our favour. 

 

But, enough facts, and time for some opinion. As you may have already gathered, I wouldn’t put this game forward as a great advert for the beautiful game. It was tense, nervous, and scrappy. So I suppose there’s another cliché to roll out, which Terry Brown duly did in his post match interview: “it didn't matter about the performance, didn't matter about anything other than gaining our first three home points for a matter of time”.

So, given that we have three points to celebrate, I won’t dwell too much on how this performance was easily as poor as those against Herford and Plymouth, and how although players didn’t do too badly individually, they really didn’t look like a team, for which TB’s selection must take a lot of the blame. I’ve previously posted on how Jolley and Harrison don’t seem able to play together (see Team for Daggers ), and whether you call Saturday’s formation a 4-4-2 or 4-3-3, it didn’t look remotely cohesive.

Instead, I’ll concentrate on the positives, which are:

1. Everyone rolled their sleeves up and got stuck in, with Billy Knott and Sammy Moore putting in a hell of a shift in the centre of midfield. The effort, and enthusiasm for a challenge really couldn’t be faulted. Which leads to...
2. Judging by the way the players went to the bench to celebrate the goals, TB certainly hasn’t "lost the dressing room"
3. Jack Midson – another tireless effort, lots of intelligent movement, and a cracking left foot finish for his 18^th goal of the season. Other teams might get more chances than us, but with a quality finisher like Jack in the team, we’ve always got a chance.
4. Sam Hatton – best I’ve seen him play for a long time, and just shaded Midson for my man of the match.
5. Kieran Djilali – let’s hope his return can give us a bit more creativity so that that Midson chap doesn’t have to continue feeding off scraps for the rest of the season.
6. Pim Balkestein looks a quality defender. He and MMK (if they can last more than 45 minutes together) should make one of the better centre-half pairings in league 2. All we need now is a similar quality central midfielder...
7. Three points! 9 points clear of the relegation places.
8. And last but not least, the fans. From my viewpoint in the KRE, I couldn’t detect anything other than whole-hearted support from another big crowd. By now, Blackburn fans would have run out of paint and sheets with all the banners they’d have made calling for the manager, the board, the kit man, uncle Tom Cobley and all to be sacked if they were in our position. So give yourselves a pat on the back.

I think that pretty much covers it, but I’ll throw in some player ratings just to pad this out even further:

Brown:  Keeping 8 Distribution 4. If only we could somehow transplant Jack Turner’s distribution skills onto Seb, we’d make a fortune when we sold him in the summer.

Hatton: 8

Gwillim: 7.

MMK: 6

Balkestein: 7

Toks: 5. Not his best game this season. Strangely, for such a left footed player, he seems more comfortable playing on the right.

Knott: 7.

Sammy Moore: 7

Jolley: 6. Looked more threatening when moved up to partner Midson, and may well be just one goal away from the confidence that will get him back to his early season form

Midson: 8

Harrison: 5. Not sure what the problem is here. Let’s hope it’s not that we’ve bought a pup.

Subs: Johnson 6 (did OK without looking quite up to the pace of League 2); Djilali 7 (6 for playing OK, plus one for scoring the winning goal, even if their keeper should have saved it)

And that's about it, except to say that having seen this game, and tried some team selection myself in my aforementioned Team for Daggers post, it's not central defenders that we need, it's central midfielders. No really, how many genuine central midfielders have we got? Sammy Moore, er, Ricky Wellard? Maybe loanees Knott and Moncur can play there, as Knotty did to some effect on Saturday, but I don't see them as genuine central midfielders. But maybe that's for another post, as this one feels like it's been going on for long enough.
Next up, Bradford. Which will probably be dire as well, but that probably won't stop me easing myself out of my armchair (which currently resides on Hayling Island during the week) and up the A3 to witness another League 2 relegation 6-pointer in all its glory. Come on you Dons!

Team for Daggers

OK, I know it's been fucking ages a while since my last post but there are very good reasons for that. Mostly they involve laziness, but getting a job has also used up a lot of time that could have been better spent pondering the subtle nuances of such things as the diamond formation, Terry Brown's future at the club, and James Mulley's Twitter feed.

So, now that I've bothered to put pen to paper fingers to keyboard, here, complete with some dodgy formatting after a disappointing effort to copy-and-paste from Microsoft Word, are some thoughts on team selection:

Every football fan likes to do the manager’s job and indulge in a little bit of team selection every now and then. From the safety of the home/office /pub/rehab clinic, free from any repercussions should their team actually start a game, they offer forth a selection of selections that range from the eminently sensible to the wildly optimistic which - while initally sounding brilliant - often do, on closer scrutiny, actually contain 15 players without a left back among them. From intricate Christmas trees to dynamic diamonds to stifling defensive formations, the fan can let his creativity run riot, safe in the knowledge that the bumbling fool of a manager whose job the fan could do oh-so-much better if given the chance will never actually field the eleven that the fan selects. But even if the manager does select the fan's team and, by a series of unlucky bounces, one-in-a-million goals from the opposition, misjudged substitutions and dodgy refereeing, the fan’s team loses, the fan can quietly skulk away from his proudly announced selection, safe in the knowledge that no-one will remember what he said in the first place any longer than it takes someone to ask what the travel arrangements are for the next away game. And if, joy of joys, the team actually wins, the fan has a free pass to smugville until at least the next game.

With that in mind, I’m going to be foolish enough to commit my team for the Dagenham and Redbridge game to writing, and post it on the Great Source of Truth that is the Internet, so that all and sundry can come from miles around (figuratively speaking, obviously) and mock my pitiful attempts at football intelligence.

But – I’ve decided not to settle for just one team. I’ve picked a few, each with their own pros and cons, just to explore what different options are available to Terry Brown. And quite possibly, when they all turn out to be bobbins, to highlight just how deep in the Brown stuff we really are.

First up, solid and defensive:

                                              Brown

Franks                  MMK                    Stuart                  Gwillim

Hatton                  Moncur                 S. Moore             Bush

                             Midson                  L. Moore

I could easily have chosen C-Mac or Brett Johnson to partner MMK, but I’ve included Jamie Stuart just for an extra bit of determination and psychosis. And I wasn’t sure as to who would partner Midson up front. Christian Jolley has shown an ability to launch himself into the occasional ill-advised lunging tackle, but he’s not disciplined enough to win a place in this team. Euell staked a claim with a Jolley-esque lunge that bought him a yellow card on Tuesday night, but I’ve gone for Luke Moore on the basis of the consistently waspish nature of his performances this season.

Pros: Solid. As full-backs themselves, Bush and Hatton would know to track back and help out FF and GG. Sammy Moore has been excellent in the holding role, and if he and Moncur can forge any sort of understanding, we should have a very well protected defence.

Cons: FF isn’t totally comfortable at right back – he didn’t exactly cover himself in glory when he played there at Port Vale, being substituted at half time. Three of the four midfielders would be playing in positions they don’t normally occupy. Very little attacking threat. 'Solid' by Wimbledon standards is the same as 'Normal' by most other teams' standards.

Who’s missing? I think Toks has been one of our better players this season, and has been unlucky to lose his place with the arrival of the loanees, and he’d miss out again in this team. And there have been times when Billy Knott seems to be playing a different game to everyone else on the pitch, such is his quality, but there’s no place for him if we’re trying to grind out results.

Next up, the super attacking dazzling diamond formation:

        Turner

Hatton                  Johnson                C-Mac                   Bush

                                             S. Moore

          Yussuff                                                             Knott

                                             L. Moore

                               Midson                 Jolley

Now that everyone is fit again, TB has, for the first time in a long time, the option of selecting what is essentially the team with which we had so much success for the first twelve games of the season, but with MMK in place of Jamie Stuart, and Billy Knott in place of Lee Minshull. Which isn’t a bad swap really, is it?

Pro: If it all comes together, we’d run rings around Dagenham and Redbridge

Con: Given our poor form and low morale, it probably wouldn’t come together. And it’s just too lightweight – Daggers would bully us off the ball before we’d even got to tiki, never mind taka.

Pro: There would be goals

Con: For Dagenham

Who’s missing? For the purposes of this exercise, Jack gets the nod ahead of Seb for his better distribution skills, although Seb is always going to be the first choice keeper. GG could easily come in for Bush as Billy is more attacking than Minsh ever was, but I’ve gone for the more positive option. Again, the centre back pairing is a tricky one to call but I’ve chosen the two that I think are the best ball players. And let’s face it, our defence has looked pretty shonky whoever we’ve had in the centre and this pairing’s only outing ended with a 3-1 victory over what was then an in-form Gillingham team. So captain Stuart and big signing MMK miss out in favour of a giraffe and someone who’s played very little league football for us. Toks gets the nod over Moncur, though in my mind there’s very little to choose between them, nostalgia for the early days of the season just clinching it for Toks.

The Wellard 4-5-1:

        Brown

     Hatton              MMK                     C-Mac                   Gwillim

                                            S. Moore

Yussuff                                                     L. Moore              Knott

                                Wellard                    

                                            Midson

As you can probably tell, I had trouble working out how to show this formation but, in broad terms, it revolves around Wellard playing “in the hole” with midfielders getting forward to support Midson whenever possible, or holding back if we’re protecting a lead. Yeah, right, as if we’d ever take the lead.

Pros: Looked good for 45 minutes against Oxford, to be thwarted only by Andy D’Urso’s refusal to award blatant penalties. Even though his contribution when we haven’t got the ball isn’t strong enough to get him a place in a four man midfield, Wellard’s link play, passing, and close control means we should be able to have the lion’s share of possession.

Cons: With just Midson up front, and goals from a shot-shy midfield a rarity, we might not make much use of that possession.

Who’s missing? Again, Toks edges it over Moncur and with Knott on the left, the more solid GG edges it over Bush. No place either for Christian Jolley, who’d be an “impact substitute” in this team. Or he could play wide left in place of Billy Knott in a team that didn’t include any loanees.

4-3-3 with both Harrison and Jolley:

Anyone who saw the Hereford game will understand why I won’t even bother writing this one out.

Conclusions etc:

Jason Euell doesn’t get a place in any of the teams. While his arrival created a buzz and lifted spirits, I haven’t seen or heard of anything that justifies him getting a starting place ahead of, say, Luke Moore. And neither does Byron Harrison feature. Not because I don’t rate him, but Midson is the first name on the teamsheet and if you’re going to have two up front, then it’s got to be Christian Jolley, no?

So, after all that, what would be my selection? I really don’t know. I’m just glad I don’t have to make the decision for real. Oh, all right then, I’ll stick my neck out and say that I'd go for the Wellard 4-5-1, but if it turns out he's not fit enough to start, I'd go for this:

                                                Brown

Hatton                  MMK                    C-Mac                  Gwillim

L. Moore              Moncur                 S. Moore               Knott

                             Midson                  Jolley

Subs: Harrison, Toks, Johnson, Turner, Wellard

Which means Euell, Djilali, Stuart and Bush would miss out altogether.

Discuss.

Dons 2 Bristol Rovers 3. And stuff.

Before the game I had been entertaining the notion that with us already having played a competitive match, with the momentum from our promotion, with the emotion of the day, we might just conjure up a win against one of the bookies' favourites for promotion and find ourselves top of the league for an hour or two. As it was, a combination of nerves and three serious lapses meant that despite a brave comeback, we found ourselves bottom of the league for an hour or two.
There are accounts and footage of the game aplenty online - The Anonymous Don, SW19's Army have reports on the game, and the BBC have brief highlights - so there's not much point in me repeating everything they've said. Instead, here are a few random thoughts and opinions on our return to league football:

1. Jamie Stuart shouldn't be captain because he's not guaranteed a place in the starting eleven. Mat Mitchel-King hasn't been bought to be a substitute, and for all the fact that Brett Johnson was responsible for two of the Gas' goals, I'd still have him in the team ahead of Stuart, whose lack of inches looked a real handicap against a tall Bristol Rovers team.
2. The tickets were rubbish. I'm not surprised there was talk of fake tickets - it's not difficult to forge something where the original looks like a bad photocopy anyway. And why no stubs so we could keep our intact tickets as a memento of the day?
3. Kedwell and Gregory haven't been replaced, making us a worse team than we were last season. Midson and Porter have to fill their boots, despite having been bought to play with, rather than instead of, the departing duo.
4. Mo has been replaced - Charles Ademeno looked the business when he came on. Difficult to know who to relegate to the subs bench though, as Jolley also looked dangerous, and I can't see Ademeno playing up front on his own. Also, with his injury record, it would be dangerous to build a team around him.
5. It won't be long before Bush is first choice left-back
6. The referee was a twat, but at least he got the big decisions right (though I'd have preferred it if he'd got the last one wrong).
7. Marcus Bent is not the answer. And I don't care what the question is.
8. Nor is Jason Euell.
9. Having said all that, based on this game, we've got nothing to fear from this division
10. I'd forgotten just how bad the view from the John Smiths stand is
11. How much would it cost to buy one of those machines that can pour numerous pints at once?
12. Is the meat in the burgers really halal? In fact, is it really meat?

As a final talking point, here's another possible line-up, in a 4-4-2 formation (fitness permitting):
Brown; Hatton, Mitchel-King, Johnson, Bush; L Moore, Minshull, Porter, Jolley; Midson/mythical new signing, Ademeno. Subs: Turner, Stuart, and now we see a bit of competition in midfield. Three places left, and Wellard, Toks, S Moore and Mulley to choose from. For my money, Sammy Moore would be the man to miss out.

AFC Wimbledon win 4-3 on penalties (play-off final match report)

At approximately 5.50 p.m. on Saturday 21st of May, 2011, Danny Kedwell marched to the penalty area in front of the Wimbledon fans, and proceeded to smash the winning penalty into the Luton net, establish himself even more firmly in Wimbledon folklore, and propel AFC Wimbledon into the football league less than nine years after an open trial on Wimbledon Common marked the first heartbeat of the club.
At the time, the match itself was, quite possibly, one of the least enjoyable 120 minutes of football I have ever endured. That's not because it wasn't exciting - if anything, it was almost too exciting for my nerves to take. Whenever Luton had the ball, I was convinced that I couldn't relax for a second, as if it was my concentration, my willing Luton not to score, that kept the ball out of the Dons net. In fact, I'm sure it was my brainwaves that caused Jason Walker's 89th minute header to hit the inside of the post and rebound into Seb's hands rather than into the goal.
Having said that, I have to point out that I couldn't have done it without a certain 14 footballers in Wimbledon blue who played their hearts out in order to give Wimbledon football its finest hour since Dave Beasant lifted the FA Cup at Wembley in 1988.
Not least among the heroes was Steven Gregory, who gave another commanding performance at the heart of the Dons midfield. Injured after being caught a fraction late in the 70th minute, he returned to the pitch with a heavily strapped right ankle, but continued to be an infuential figure until the injury finally got the better of him in the fifth minute of extra time, when he was replaced by Lee Minshull.
Similarly, Mo went down injured early in the last period of extra time, and would surely have been substituted had TB not been forced to use his last substitution because of Gregs' injury. However, he stayed on and, despite a marked reduction in his mobility, still made an almighty nuisance of himself playing wide on the left.
As for playing through the pain barrier, Gareth Gwillim lasting 60 minutes is all the more remarkable when one considers that he was playing with a fractured hip.
Other than the injured heroes, every other player gave everything. Hatton, Gwillim, and Johnson (when Brett moved to left-back after GG's substitution) repelled everything Luton's dangerous wide men could throw at them. Toks had one of his best games in a Wimbledon shirt, constantly worrying the Luton defence by taking the ball and running at their left flank. Jamie Stuart, predictably, was pumped up and put his feet, head, and body in where it hurt time and time again to repel Luton attacks. Brett Johnson was imperious at the back and showed no little skill and control when bringing the ball forward. Ricky Wellard wasn't at his penetrating best as against Fleetwood, but many of the Dons' best moves still featured him at some point and he showed far more enthusiasm for a physical challenge than many fans would have previously have given him credit for. Luke Moore was at his waspish best, harrying Luton all game long and providing a skilful focal point for many Dons attacks. And Danny Kedwell was, well, Danny Kedwell. As for possibly the biggest hero, Seb Brown, we'll come to him later.
Predictably, there were controversial moments. James Adcock, 27,  refereed the game with an impressive air of calm authority for one so young, but that doesn't mean he got every decision right. If, 10 minutes before half-time, he had interpreted Keith Keane's two-footed, both-feet-off-the-ground, studs-first foul on Ricky Wellard as a two-footed, both-feet-off-the-ground, studs-first foul, then the Dons would have been playing against 10 men for the rest of the game, and we wouldn't have witnessed another moment of refereeing controversy when, in the 87th minute, Jason Walker cut in from the right and bore down on the Dons goal in front of the massed ranks of Luton fans at the South end of the stadium. As Seb came out and spread himself for the shot, Walker slipped the ball past him across the six-yard line, the resulting collision leaving the striker in a heap on the floor. I've watched the TV replay of the incident a number of times to try and work out if it was, in fact, a penalty. Possibly the referee thought that Walker had pushed the ball too far, and not quite in the direction he was running, but if the situation was reversed, and it had been Danny Kedwell brought down by Mark Tyler, then every Dons fan would have been screaming for a penalty. It's possible the referee even played advantage, because the ball fell to Barnes-Homer six yards from goal with Seb Brown hopelessly out of position, but he was denied by a miraculous Sam Hatton block, which was followed by a sprawling Jamie Stuart denying Jake Howells in an almighty goalmouth scramble that the Dons somehow survived. When, 2 minutes later, Walker put his header against the post from no more than six yards out, I started to think that maybe, just maybe, it might be our day after all.
Whilst the match was nerve-wracking for the supporters, it would have been exciting for the neutral. The large pitch was, as expected, in perfect condition, favouring good football. If the Dons didn't take full advantage of this, it was as much due to Luton's pressing high up the pitch as any understandable nerves. The result was a fast and frenetic game, with high levels of effort, and no small amount of technique and skill on display. In fact, the game had everything but goals, though how it remained goalless through 120 minutes of attack and counter-attack is anyone's guess. After just seven minutes Wellard broke from midfield and fed Mo on the left, who cut inside and shot at goal. Tyler parried the shot to Kedwell, who dispatched the rebound into the net. Cue delirium among the Dons fans, who took a few seconds to realise that a linesman's flag had ruled out the goal (TV replays later showed the official to be correct - Danny was a good couple of yards offside when Mo took his shot).
Further chances came and went. Seb Brown gathered Howells' deflected cross at the second attempt, Wilmott blasted a free-kick over the bar after Brett Johnson had gone in late on Walker, Mo was an inch short of heading Kedwell's cross into the net, and Gnapka's shot from a tight angle was saved by Seb when the Luton winger should really have pulled the ball back for a teammate. And that was all in the first twenty minutes. On the half-hour mark, referee Adcock made his first mistake of the afternoon when failing to notice Pilkington's assault on Kedwell right on the edge of the Luton penalty area. A minute later, Gnapka sent a free header inches over the bar, having won the free kick himself thanks to a challenge that earned Brett Johnson a yellow card.
The second half ended with the Dons on top, but with the fans - never mind the players - in dire need of a break to regather themselves and prepare themselves for the second half.
The second half started off at the same high pace as the first, although clear-cut chances were harder to come by, and challenges started to get a little feisty. Alex Lawless saw yellow for hacking down Gregs, and a little bit of afters between Luke Moore and Keith Keane had TB on the touchline telling his man to calm down. On the hour mark, the Dons produced the best move of the game thus far, which commenced with the outstanding Steven Gregory breaking up a Luton attack by the right corner flag. After dummying a Luton attacker, he exchanged passes with Sam Hatton, and the move ended with Toks pulling a ball back to Keds, whose cross was intercepted by Zdenek Kroca's big toe just as Mo was about to pull the trigger. Although Luton were starting to get on top, the Dons still managed to come close when Yaks, on for Gwillim, and Brett Johnson seemed to get in each others' way from a left-wing corner when a decisive contact would surely have put Wimbledon ahead - instead the ball bounced off a defender's knee for what the ref gave as a goal kick.
The only other incident worthy of note before the heart-stopping last 5 minutes was when Luke Moore, who'd just been booked for a foul on Keane, held off the same player from a bouncing ball on the edge of the Luton box. Keane went down as if shot, and the linesman flagged for a foul. To the relief of the Dons' fans, the ref saw that the arm-to-face contact was accidental, and let Luke off with a final warning. From then until full-time, the Dons defence held firm as Luton turned the screw, albeit with a little bit of help from the inside of the post (and the combined will of 6,000 Dons' fans). Luton may have been on top at the end of the second half, but the final action of normal time was a Kedwell drive charged down by the Luton defence. As if we hadn't suffered enough, it was time for extra time.
The first minute of extra time saw another worrying moment for the Dons when the ref wrongly decided that Brett Johnson had fouled Gnapka again. Despite Gnapka's protests that he was denied a good attacking position, the ref again kept his card in his pocket.
For the first ten minutes of extra time, Luton carried on where they left off at the end of normal time. But the Dons defence simply would not be beaten, and it started to look as if Luton had punched themselves out. With Minshull adding extra energy and presence (if not the same range of passing as Gregory) to the heart of the midfield, and Mulley's pace down the flanks worrying the Luton back line, the Dons started their own period of dominance.
The Dons had five excellent chances to win the game in the second half of extra time, but the footballing gods had obviously decided that the match was destined to finish goalless. First, Mulley's snap-shot was saved by Tyler at his near post after the former HandY man had been played in by Toks. Then Luke Moore pulled the ball back for Mo, and with the Dons fans expecting a repeat of his semi-final goal at Fleetwood, the injured Mo could only side-foot his shot against the outside of the near post with Tyler a mere spectator. Minutes later, Keds fired a low cross across goal only for Luke Moore to be denied by an excellent chanllenge by Luton right-back Dan Gleeson. With two minutes left, Gleeson was in the action again. After a Dons corner had been cleared, the ball was passed in to Yakubu, eight yards out and straight in front of goal, but the pesky Gleeson just nipped in first, and it was Luton's fans turn to have their hearts in their mouths as the defender's touch took the ball (in slow motion, naturally) towards and then just past the outside of the post. There was still time for one last glorious Dons chance. Again it was Yaks, this time at the back post as a cross from the right floated invitingly onto his forehead. With the goal at his mercy, Yaks somehow mistimed his header high and wide, much to the animated disappointment of the nearby Dons skipper. And with that, and with me thinking that maybe it wasn't to be our day after all, the ref blew for full-time and we were to be subjected to football's ultimate instrument of torture: the penalty shootout.
After negotiation, a coin toss, scissors/paper/stone, or whatever it is they use to decide these things, it was determined that the spot kicks would be taken at the end where the Wimbledon fans were seated, but that Luton would have first whack. But not, thanks to Seb Brown, the first successful penalty. The England 'C' keeper dived low to his right to keep out Alex Lawless' kick, and raise expectations once more among Dons' fans - expectations that would rise further with Sam Hatton and Luke Moore's clinical spot kicks. But deep down, not even the most optimistic of Dons fans would have expected a comfortable progression of successful spot kicks, and when the injured Mo (why was he taking a penalty anyway) sent his side-footed kick comfortably within range of Mark Tyler, both teams had scored two out of three penalties. Fortunately for Dons' fans nerves, Seb Brown came to the rescue once again, with an even better save than the first one. Walker's chipped kick was passing above Seb as he dived to the right, but he stretched up his left hand to paw the ball away, sparking further delirium in the North stand. Then came Yaks, who I don't think many people were expecting to take a penalty, but after a pause and a deep breath, he sent Tyler the wrong way leaving the Dons one kick - one kick! - away from the Football League. Jake Howells scored to keep Luton in it, but the muted cheer from their fans betrayed their dwindling hopes, especially with a certain D. Kedwell to take Wimbledon's fifth penalty. With Dons fans not daring to hope, Keds calmly strolled up, placed the ball on the spot, and proceeded to smash the ball past Tyler's right hand with such ferocity it almost broke the net. In case you've forgotten how that looked, this should remind you.
And that was that. All that remained were the formalities of the trophy presentation and a night on the town in Manchester. You have to feel a little sorry for Luton who, lest we forget, have also suffered at the hands of incompetent owners and the game's administrators, and who may well have been promoted with us but for the recently and mysteriously acquired financial might of Crawley Town. As for the City of Manchester Stadium, it really is a splendid stadium, large but with a good atmosphere, even if various issues (not least ticket prices) hadn't kept the attendance down to a slightly disappointing 18,195.
But that wasn't going to worry anyone associated with Wimbledon on Saturday night. For me, three images sum up the afternoon. First, lifelong Wimbledon fan and penalty-saving hero Seb Brown crying tears of joy after the game; second, Danny Kedwell's penalty kick - a satisfyingly emphatic finish from our talismanic captain who had done more than any other player to get us to Manchester in the first place; and finally, Terry Brown's victory celebrations, including the miming of a successful penalty kick and subsequent goal celebration. Widely regarded as the best manager in non-league football, he now gets a well-deserved crack at the Football League. When a match is won by such a narrow margin, you start to realise how even the smallest detail is important, and that therefore the time and effort put in by TB and his management team to provide his players with the best possible preparation (which included practising penalties in the weeks before the play-offs) was probably the key factor in the Dons now being a football league club. And in contrast to the big-boned manager of a certain Sussex club, Terry has always conducted himself with the utmost dignity, making him that rarest of people - a nice guy who is also a winner.

This is where the playoff final preview should be

Bit Really f**king nervous. Hope Gwillim's fit.
Having booked a hotel, I'll either be having it large in Manchester or crying into my room service soup tomorrow night.
Obviously I hope we win, but if we lose I hope it's after a good game free of controversy (I don't care how much controversy there is if it goes in our favour).
That pretty much covers it. What were you expecting with less than 24 nerve-wracking hours to go before 90 nerve-shredding minutes? Incisive analysis? I can barely concentrate on watching Deal or No Deal, never mind string coherent sentences together. Come back on Monday, when I may or may not have a meaningful match report.

Play-off Final Tickets rubbish

With two days to go, as well as looking forward to a (potentially very) historic day for AFC Wimbledon, many of us are musing on how to best use the words "brewery", "Conference" and "piss-up" in the same sentence. Along with their partners in crime See Tickets, the Conference Board - and in particular the sub-committee who set the the ticket prices for the Play-Off Final - appear to be doing their level best to exploit, alienate, and generally get on the tits of as many fans as possible.

Predictably, the first problem is the price. The cheapest ticket is £36 (plus a mandatory £3 booking fee and a transaction fee). Thirty-six pounds to watch a non-league game of football. To put that in context, let's look at the cheapest tickets available for some other matches this season:
League 2 Play-Off Final (Old Trafford):  £26
League 1 Play-Off Final (Old Trafford): £30
Championship Play-Off Final (Wembley): £36
Johnstone Paint Trophy Final (Wembley): £24
FA Trophy Final (Wembley): £30

The Conference argues (in response to my polite enquiry as to why tickets are so expensive) that the "average price is below the average charged by the Football League" for the League 2 final. Which brings me neatly on to the second problem - the pricing structure. For all the other finals, be they at Old Trafford or Wembley, there is a wide range of ticket prices available. The most expensive of the five price levels for the League 2 final is £56, giving a range of £30 between cheapest and most expensive (compared to the range of just £5 between the cheapest and most expensive tickets for the Conference final). This means there are tickets available for people who can afford a good seat in the middle tier at the side of the ground, while there are also tickets available for those fans whose resources are more limited. Fans who can't afford, say, £36 for a ticket can therefore buy cheaper seats which, although they won't have the best view in the house, will allow said fans to attend the match, cheer on their team and be able to say "I was there". Unfortunately for us, it seems the Conference sub-committee either didn't consider such an obvious concept, or simply don't want poor people to attend their game.
Having a range of ticket prices not only takes into account the varying levels of wealth among fans, but also acknowledges another familiar concept that seems alien to the Conference, namely that some seats offer a much better view of the game than others and are therefore worth charging more for. Ticket prices for the Conference final are determined only by the tier they are in, and not their position relative to the pitch. Lower tier, row A, at one end of the ground? £36. Lower tier, 20 rows back, by the halfway line? £36. It all makes you wonder if any of the infamous sub-committee have ever been to a football match.
Having already noted that the Conference appear to be trying to keep poor people away from the game, I've identified more groups that seem to have incurred their wrath. Namely, the evil-doers that are the young, the old, and the unemployed. The Conference's way of keeping young people away from the good seats is to only make under-16 tickets available for the cheap seats in tier 1. So if you want to take your wife (or husband - no sexualism here) and two children to the game and sit in good seats, it will cost you four full-price tickets. Plus booking and transaction fees, naturally, thus making the cost of the trip over £170 before you've even got to Manchester and bought the overpriced commemorative programmes/burgers/drinks etc. As for senior citizens, and the unemployed, the Conference doesn't seem to want these doddering, shiftless, workshy losers in the stadium at all, never mind the good seats. Because there are no concessions at all for these groups, even in tier 1. Presumably they can all go to the same pub as the poor people and watch the game on Premier Sports - assuming there is a pub somewhere in the country that actually has Premier Sports, which is doubtful.
And the mistakes don't stop there. Because of the need to sell a large number of tickets in a short space of time, the Conference chose to use a ticket agency. That's fair enough, but unfortunately the chosen agency (See Tickets) aren't every fans' favourite right now. For a start, there's the way they offer you the 'best tickets' available for your selected block, but unfortunately they believe that the closest seats are automatically the best, with the result that for the lower tier, the best seats are deemed to be in the first few rows (which, for the other play-off finals, are in a lower price range than the rest of the lower tier). After the website offered me seats in row D, I rang the ticket hotline, at which point I was offered exactly the same seats. When I asked if there were any seats available further back, I was told that they could only offer me the seats suggested by the computer, and couldn't look to see if others were available. This led to a bizarre game of online ticket-purchasing chicken, whereby I would occasionally check to see if other poor souls had snapped up the lower seats thus leaving me with the option of buying better seats further back, but at the same time worry that if I was too late checking there could have been a rush and all the tickets would be gone (in the end I chickened out altogether and spent an extra fiver to have seats in row B of the second tier). What doesn't improve my mood is that I've just checked to see if this is still the case and an extremely helpful gentleman at See Tickets gave me a full choice of available seats for me to choose from. The bastard.
Even when fans have successfully purchased tickets, there are still palpitations to be had due to the late stage at which the tickets are sent out. While this is normal practice for most events, and while I'm sure there will be very few, if any, undelivered tickets come Saturday, it does not help to send a football fan an email on Wednesday telling him his tickets for the final have been dispatched and will arrive in "2-3 days".
And one final cheery thought on See Tickets - judging by the Luton message board last night, it seems that the See Tickets website temporarily stopped working for them and some Luton fans announced that they proceeded to buy tickets for the Wimbledon end instead. Hopefully that's just a bit of 'hilarious' trolling on someone's part, as most of the respondents to that thread said they had no such problems.
All in all, the attendance is going to be lower than it could - or should - have been, though by how much is difficult to tell. Posts on the message boards indicate that there are people who cannot afford to go, or cannot afford to take their children, and many have said that they have mates who didn't support the Dons but would have considered going along if it wasn't for the exorbitant cost. But mostly, fans will be going because although they think the tickets are too expensive, they can't afford not to go. It is this loyalty that is apparently being exploited by those that set the ticket prices.
So what have the Conference said about all this? Have they apologised or attempted to rectify the situation? Er, no. Conference spokesman Colin Peake, who is not going to win any popularity contests any time soon, has come up with a number of mealy-mouthed statements. Here's a few:

"The Conference sub-committee decided the pricing but Manchester City are running the game. We have to comply with them and they dictate things." (Also note this from the AFC website "At a Conference meeting on Thursday 12 May, the Board was notified that the arrangements [for ticket pricing] were in the contract with the City of Manchester Stadium which has been signed.") So, Colin, you set the price but Man City are dictating things? How are they dictating things, exactly? What say do they have in determining the ticket prices that were decided by the Conference sub-committee? I asked Manchester City the same questions but unfortunately they haven't got back to me yet (probably busy answering questions from less important organisations like the Guardian, The Sun, the BBC, SW19's army etc).

"If tickets were half [the price], people would still complain." (As quoted in this week's Non-Leage Paper) No, Colin. No they wouldn't.

"They weren't far off this price last year but it didn't stop 30,000 Oxford fans going to support their team" (Again, as quoted in this week's Non-Leage Paper). That was Wembley, Colin. With all due respect to Eastlands, it's very different for a fan (of any team) to be able to say "I saw us win at Wembley" compared to being able to say "I saw us win at Eastlands".
On the subject of cost of venue, when cuddly Colin was on BBC Radio London's Non League Football Show, he refused to answer questions from Dave Anderson on whether Eastlands was the same price to hire as Wembley, claiming that he wouldn't know the full cost until August. Just like the DA, I couldn't believe what I was hearing - was no price agreed in advance? Or are Manchester City free to invoice the Conference for as much as they please? If Eastlands isn't the same price as Wembley, why are the tickets not similarly reduced in price? If it is the same price as Wembley, then the Conference has been well and truly diddled.

To make matters worse for us Dons fans, our Chief Executive didn't do himself any favours with his appearance on this week's Non League Football Show, by refusing to criticise the pricing structure. He may be somewhat hamstrung in the views he can offer as he has a seat on the Conference board, so hopefully the suggestion that he is keeping his powder dry until after the event (and hopefully after our promotion at which point he will have nothing more to do with the Conference board) are true.

I'll leave you with one final quote from my favourite Conference spokesman from his appearance on last week's Non League Football Show "One of the things that you will get in the promotion final which you did not get with the FA Trophy final at Wembley on Saturday - you'll be able to watch ours on the television[...]for £6.99"