…Â Carl Cort.
OK, it isn’t. It’s Drewe Broughton, who’s come to us all the way down from Lincoln. As you can probably guess, he’s on loan with us until the end of the season, so time will tell whether we have the new DK on our hands or the new Nathan Elder.
Getting in a loanee striker is always a tough challenge – because of the nature of the position, any prolific goalscorer isn’t going to be loaned out by their parent club. It’s no co-incidence that the position is always the most expensive one to have, so barring spending out £250k on Richard Brodie we’re rather limited with what we’ve got.
So, what about Drewe? Well, he’s a big bastard, for starters. I’m hoping that he doesn’t suffer Elder’s problem, namely our manager admitting we can’t afford him and Danny Kedwell expressing to prefer playing with Jon Main.
His goals ratio isn’t that good, although when you consider the love that some Prem fans still have for Emile Heskey, that may not be an entirely bad thing.
Of course, the stat that has caused so much (ahem) heated debate isn’t his goals tally. It’s the fact that for 13 games in 2008, Drewe Broughton played for……… them.
Yup, we have an ex-Frenzy on our payroll. You can therefore imagine the over-reaction in some quarters, which is a bit like finding out your mum has been sodomized by Wankie and you’ve just found their sex tape on your favourite porn site.
Let’s get a few things straight here : he’s not the first AFCW player to be involved with Franchise. Jermaine Darlington spent some time with them, and lest we forget Jon Main had a trial with them too. That’s the great Jon Main, a man who many an AFCW fan would sacrifice their first born for.
I’m not suggesting the hypocricy measuring device is about to blow right now, although the average AFCW fan scores highly most days on it 😉 But it’s clear that some people just haven’t moved on – at a time when perhaps they really should do.
It’s not as though TB has personally phoned up Wankie either. Look at Drewe’s list of clubs since Franchise : he went to Wrexham on loan, then he went to Rotherham for two years and played about four times as many games for the Millers as the Frenzies. He then went on loan to Lincoln, then permanently, and played more games for them than he ever did at the Wankiedome.
So we’re not talking about a dyed-in-the-bleached-white-wool Franchise supporter who has a tattoo of a roundabout stamped on his arse. We’re talking about a journeyman professional footballer who has merely accepted just another wage to pay his mortgage off. Same as about 98% of every single player, including those at AFCW.
Any talk about getting the Dons Trust board or whoever to discuss this kind of thing and to issue diktats about signing ex-Frenzies is bordering on self parody. While fans may have a right to run the club, they have as much right to tell the manager how to do his job as Hammam did with Harry and Bobby Gould.
Think about it : TB’s aim this season is to get us into the Football League, his job description is to get us there at some point in the next five years. He and his scouts have identified a player who is coming to us on the terms we need, and presumably with wages we’re prepared to pay.
If he’s then being told by people who, with the greatest respect know jack shit about managing a squad of players, he can and can’t sign (for what are  purely non-footballing and financial reasons), then I wouldn’t blame him for walking.
Seriously.
What exactly are we trying to say with such talk? That a certain percentage of our fans just can’t handle somebody who once played for them? That even now there’s a level of insecurity about supporting AFCW that makes some people become an emotional wreck whenever this crops up? This same insecurity may also explain why there’s a definite strand of OCD when it comes to Crawley and their spending too, although that’s another story.
What Drewe Broughton will do with us is going to be overshadowed in the eyes of many simply because he wore a Franchise shirt a few times. He hasn’t said anything untowards, in fact here’s his comments to the OS:
“I know that some fans won’t like the fact that I played for them, but I’ve talked to Terry Brown and the club officials. All I can say is that I now understand the AFC Wimbledon story and the club’s heritage and I want to be part of its return to the Football League.â€
Typical footballer stuff of course, but at least he now knows what’s what. Although no doubt some will complain because he didn’t renounce his time in Buckinghamshire or have blood from a deceased AFCW fan pumped into him. Why he should have to beats me, although I’m merely an AFCW fan who just wants the best for the club.
I expect given a game or two, this will have all blown over. At least I hope it will, because if it rumbles on a bit, it will prove why fans shouldn’t run football clubs after all.
As you can tell, I’m not that bothered about signing ex-Franchise players – not only does it appeal to my sense of irony, but we’re in professional football and we should be acting like a professional football club. There are many factors why I wouldn’t want a particular player, being ex-Franchise isn’t one of them.
In fact, I’ll go one step further – I want to see us sign somebody directly from Franchise, preferably for money too. At least the fallout will be highly amusing…
Anyway, as nobody else seems to be doing so, SW19 would like to welcome Drewe to KM, if only for this season. We’ve needed a jolt up front for a while, and with luck this will prove to be it.
Ex-Franchise scum Jon Main is at Dartford for another month, and Nokkers never really proved himself did he? This could go badly wrong, but then it could go so brilliantly right too. Unlike last year, at least Drewe can train full time with us.
Oh, and he was born on your editor’s third birthday…