Well, I wrote a pretty long piece on the Dons Trust AGM part 2 : The Auditor’s Revenge, but realising that I’m on legit iffy ground ATM, has prohibited me saying what I genuinely feel ATM. Perhaps I ought to step down so you can find out what I’m thinking 🙂
So instead, I’ll issue my own personal statement: AFCW relies on everyone – that’s me, you and the bloke who stands with you at games – because we don’t have anyone else. Obvious mission statement. Now, like every other voluntary organisation, the potential for fallout is amazing, and I think at AFCW we’re starting to witness something not particularly pleasant if left unchecked.
It is a VERY dangerous game for public mudslinging in an arena such as ours. Accusing one side of being “undemocratic” is highly subjective (you can interpret what side you want on this, I bet you can guess mine – and I stick by it), and with past events is open to very real charges of hypocricy. That’s how splits in clubs occur. Remember that there are certain sets of people who do a lot for the club anyway, not just the celebrated ones and if they were to sit on their hands AFCW would have a real problem.
Some of the shit that has been flying around recently – and come to think of it, the DT questionnaire – has really made me wonder if Uncle Ron was right after all : that fans couldn’t run a bath without wanting to kill each other. While the subject matter(s) over the last 48-72 hours, whilst on the surface are a bit insignificant but in reality is something that is quite genuinely important, it should be dealt with with the minimum of fuss, in the spirit it was intended etc. Unfortuately, we don’t seem to be capable of doing that these days, and knee-jerk reactions, sniping and outright hostility seems to be the order of the day amongst a small but significant section of our support.
I know where I stand, and I am increasingly on the side of those who don’t want anything to do with the rancid stench and underhand comments so vulgar that even Koppout would have shyed away from them. Are we really any further forward? Sometimes I doubt it.
Meanwhile, it seems like civil wars rationally formed debates are breaking out everywhere else in AFCW land. A molotov was hurled today by our manager in today’s Wimbledon News at a popular fan website (not SW19, I did say “popular”), which needless to say has gone down very well with the residents of said site. Now, this has to be the first time that I have heard a manager speak out like this, and it’s threatening to draw a CCL-top-of-table style gap between the manager and some sections of the fanbase. If it hasn’t already.
The problems seem to have come from sniping on the site after the Sandhurst game. The same game that saw one of the more surly moods ever seen at an AFCW game, and I wonder if there are problems on that level that are deeper than we know about. Or want to know about. I genuinely don’t fancy losing TE because of personal politics, his record is generally far better than we would have hoped for when he first joined, and as far as I am concerned he is the best man for the most important job at the club. And I don’t mean the person selling the teas at half time either.