SW19 : This was the last ever article written in the WFC days, and perhaps the most poignant.
When we say now that we really believed we would be standing victorious then, we didn’t comprehend that maybe, just maybe, it would go against us.
Draw your own conclusions from this article.
As an album title by a popular US band states, is this it?
It is really quite breath-taking to think that WFC really may not exist come the end of this month. If you believe current press, the FL have decided to chicken out of their responsibilities and give THE most destroying move in footballing history the go-ahead, and may be decided in the middle of April. No official words have been made, and in truth the Football League probably has more important things to worry about – like the threatened implosion of half of the other clubs due to ITV realising the hard way that football isn’t quite as popular as the meeja made out
So what? Well, it’s clear that things are definitely happening, and indeed will come to a head. The battlelines in the printing field have already been drawn : whilst some newspapers have been plugging that the FL have bottled out and a defeat is inevitable, other [and dare we say more “reliable” sources?] are stating that a major announcement will be made very soon about Plough Lane. Certainly, recent stories in the Wimbledon area press state that at least three interested parties (not WFC, quelle surprise) have spoken about becoming permanent tenants in a rebuilt Plough Lane stadium. Is it coincidence that such stories are coming out? Hardly.
It’s difficult what to make of all this, but once again these are nervy times. No point in explaining why it’s nervy for the fans, but indeed Koppout himself is quite clearly feeling it. It’s been said before but it’s worth repeating – Koppout is a despicable human being, on a par with Hammam, but without 0.0001% of the charm of the Lebanese Sheep Shagger. Koppout clearly needed a quick result on MK and didn’t get one. His main hope for getting the move again – the FA panel – didn’t produce the result anyone wanted. In the interim, his stewardship of WFC has seen him lose a major kit supplier and – if WISA are to be believed – Maximuscle aren’t overly impressed either. Doubless that Koppout is now believing he’s back in apartheid South Africa – indeed, his contact lenses are probably tinted in such a way that all he sees are people with darker coloured skin to himself….
For the fans of course, the somewhat long and lousy 12 months could get longer and lousier still. We all know how we acted in the weeks before the panel sat, and there are still plenty of people who have been psychologically damaged by all this. Send all damages claims to C R Koppel, if you can find him. The work put in by WISA has been immense, and especially on the ground front has been exceptional. The next step, as we all know, is the planned boycott of season tickets. Partly as a PR exercise, but also as a pip-squeezing exercise on Koppout. It could well be that such a move may be rendered irrelvant soon anyway, as the longer Koppout goes without a result on MK, the more perilous his position looks.
Thing is, will a boycott work? There are definitely pockets of resistance on this particular boycott, many would doubtless see it as a step too far. But the actual support for it is pretty sizable, though it could well cause a damaging split in the WFC fanbase, a split that could well be fatal. Still, the moment has indeed come for a majorly significant move on behalf of the fans : already, serious talk about flying over to Molde to grab hold of KIR to, as they say in South London, “sawh im ahht” is taking place. A potential bid for Plough Lane itself has been mooted by WISA and associates, though of course that remains to be seen. And the likelyhood of the biggest non-renewal of season tickets is currently bubbling under.
Going back to the Plough Lane tenancy issue as mentioned previously, there is a often-overlooked scenario here which may get people thinking big time. If WFC were to move to Milton Keynes, it would not stop there, as we all know. One of the possible suitors for PL is a football club, thought to be Brentford. There are two major ironies here : the first is that what Koppout didn’t consider good enough for WFC (read: not going to bring in any money) is good enough for a much more established team within the London area. The second is that a Football League club could well be playing at Plough Lane under the name of Wimbledon. Would it be “right”? No, of course not. Would people want to be associated with such a venture? Don’t be so sure they would, when a bitter taste in the mouth occurs, it stays there. Would certainly be interesting if Wimbledon 2003 FC were to play Milton Keynes Clubstealers though.
As the past has shown, hands do tend to get forced on these sort of occasions. Given all that is happening at the moment, it’s a case of waiting for the Major Big Thing to happen. We all know what we hope it will be, we all know what we hope it WON’T be. Too much is happening now for things to be in limbo, the same limbo that has destroyed WFC this past decade. Is armageddon coming? Looks like it, though let’s make sure that it’s us, and not the parasites, who are left standing.