Wimbledon: the other side of the tracks
Wimbledon remain an impressive club and Plough Lane is a very impressive venue, but on this occasion their team fell short on the pitch.
It's standing room only on the 10.28 from East Worthing to Hove, for the first leg of my trip to SW19 for the League Two match between Wimbledon and Newport County. For the last few months this has only really been the case when the Albion have been playing at home, but even though they're not playing anywhere today we're cheek-to-jowl on this train. There's a bit of tsking and harumphing, all the more so when the ticket inspector comes through, doing his job.
The reason for this state of nervous excitement seems pretty clear. BREAKING NEWS: THE SUN HAS GOT HIS HAT ON. It's been a miserable winter, weather-wise. Earlier this week I was to be found, for at least the fifth time since Christmas, doing another ‘drowned rat’ impersonation after having deposited the kids at their respective schools, while just a couple of months ago it was bitterly, bitterly cold to the point that we (briefly) even had snow settle in Worthing for the first time since I moved here, nine years ago.
The news from around the world has been either profoundly depressing, somewhat frightening, completely infuriating or just plain weird, so for the last few months we've all been huddled inside with our screens, still worrying about the gas and electricity bills, pulling faces at stated inflation percentages when we've all seen how much food costs have really increased. It's been an anxious, agitated winter, and it feels as though there's a crackle in the air, a pent up energy to just get out of the house and into the Brighton sunshine. It'll be carnage, by chucking out time.
Hove Station is bustling. A young lad with a baseball cap and a moustache made of spiders’ legs pushes through the crowd with an unlit joint hanging limply from his lips. It's 10.48 in the morning and he's the highest roller in town. I will not stand all the way to London I will not stand all the way to London I will not stand all the way to London… SCORE! Not only a seat without anyone next to me, but also the holy grail of medium-distance train travel; a plug socket and USB port, both working.
A couple of minutes after I sit down, a man—slightly older than me but similarly dressed, a ghost of my Christmas fairly-near future—sits diagonally opposite me and tries to hide his disappointment at not getting any plug socket action. But he doesn’t do anything about it either. I'm the Sheriff of Juice Junction, and I'm here all the way to Clapham Junction.
If he asks me whether he can use it I will, of course, mock-humbly say, “Oh yeah, sure! Of course!” with a rictus grin as I die slightly on the inside. I may even chuck in a quick “You should have asked earlier!”, should I feel that I need further convincing of my own humility. But he doesn't ask. Instead, he just sends gripey WhatsApp messages about it to his wife on his phone, the battery of which will not last as long as mine.
Five minutes later, another inspector checks our tickets. I tsk and harumph.
I have history with Wimbledon. The first time I came across them was an FA Cup Second Round match at Enfield in December 1981. This particular month brought a cold snap which would bring a white Christmas and the coldest winter of my childhood. Enfield were having a successful first season in what's now called the National League, while Wimbledon were bottom of the Third Division. In the first season of three points for a win in the Football League, they were already eight points from safety.
The match was called off on the Saturday afternoon but was somehow deemed playable at night, just three days later. My dad got us tickets for the stand and we took a flask of Bovril. We usually stood, and this was the first time I'd been up there. I'd never seen football live from the same angle that you saw it on the television before; it was a very peculiar experience. (I still feel that a little now, on the rare occasions that I’m sitting high in a stand.)
As Herb Alpert ramped up and the teams took to the pitch, there was a low rumbling noise from the stand's wooden floorboards. “Don't worry about that,” said my dad. “The old boys don't like getting their hands out their pockets when it's this cold, so they stamp their feet instead.” From our elevated vantage point, you could clearly see that the pitch was like an ice-skating rink, frozen solid and in no fit state to play. Enfield won 4-1.
I went to Plough Lane—the original Plough Lane—once, to see them play in the First Division in about 1988 or 1989; Manchester City, I think. It was an unusual experience. I'd been to quite a few First Division games by this point, to White Hart Lane, Wembley, Stamford Bridge, Villa Park, Vicarage Road and more besides. I'd also watched a lot of non-league football.
What I hadn't seen before was top flight football—the sort of match which would definitely have its goals shown on the TV later accompanied by synths, a bombastic electric guitar solo, and a pithy voiceover from Elton Welsby—being played at what was ostensibly a non-league ground. To say this is not to throw shade upon Plough Lane. Just over ten years earlier it had been a non-league ground.
I saw them play a few times at Selhurst Park, and one visit turned out to be one of the most memorable games they played there. In 1995, I played football with a guy who supported Leeds United, and this was how we came to be in the away stand, full of booze and with a smell of the ole Mary Jane hanging heavy in the air, directly below Barry Davies as Tony Yeboah scored a career-defining hat-trick as Leeds won 4-2. Funnily enough, the goal that was celebrated more than any of Yeboah's three by the Leeds supporters that afternoon was the other one, pinged into the top corner from twenty yards by Carlton Palmer, of all people.
I saw Wimbledon on numerous occasions at Kingsmeadow, in the Isthmian League and the National League South. The world had changed a lot by the time I went for the first time in December 2005. Neither Plough Lane nor Southbury Road still existed. Wimbledon FC were AFC Wimbledon, while Enfield FC had been superseded by Enfield Town. A lot of water had passed under a lot of bridges, a lot of tears had been shed, and a lot of trust in the systems the govern football had been lost over those intervening ten years, but a fair few connections were built at the same time, many of which have survived the best part of twenty years.
Public transport in London is a whole other order to other parts of the country. I know it's not breaking new ground to say this, but even for someone who was born and brought up in this city, it's striking. At Clapham Junction, the next train to Wimbledon looks congested and I don't much fancy that. Three minutes later, another one rolls in and I have two seats to myself again. I've been unable to maintain my position as The Sheriff of Juice Junction because they don’t have charging points on these Southeastern trains, but I'm in Wimbledon shortly after noon, where the weather is pleasant and I have enough time to get some tourism in.
I get my bearings outside the entrance to the railway station and decide to head north. As I scale Wimbledon Hill Road—a task which doesn't quite require crampons, though it's close—everything around me starts to drip with money. Wimbledon Village is minted. Almost every shop is artisan. Open top coupes and oversized, hermetically-sealed SUVs roll past at such glacial speeds that you wonder why they didn’t just walk instead.
I’d downgraded my original plan to go Womble-hunting to Womble-spotting on the train into London. What did it say about me that I’d reflexively reached for the blunderbuss rather than a pair of binoculars? Going to Wimbledon Common, however briefly, does feel a bit like a pilgrimage. The Wombles was, alongside Vision On and Picture Box, one of the first television shows that I remember watching as a child. I liked the names “Orinoco” and “Tobermory”, even though I knew nothing of the South American river or the Scottish island. Even to three or four year old me, recycling sounded like a good idea, while Bernard Cribbins’ narration was like being dipped into distilled avuncularity.
But I didn't see any Wombles on the common this time, even though they're not nocturnal. And I didn't want to stray too far from the beaten path, get lost, and be found in a decade's time having spent the previous ten years foraging in order to stay alive. “Reports suggest that he survived this long by making good use of the things that the everyday folks left behind.”
I march down an ominously steep hill towards the place where they do the tennis. The All-England Club? That place. It's closed, of course (my impersonation of John McEnroe on centre court complaining to a referee with a full-throated “Ayyy donnnn’t belieeeeeeve it” will have to wait for another day), but there’s still a bustle around the place.
It’s also bigger than I think and not as big as I think. On the one hand, it’s about as well hidden as you could hope that more than 42 acres of tennis could be in London. But on the other, it’s still more than 42 acres of tennis. I double back to walk down towards Plough Lane.
AFC Wimbledon are from the other side of the tracks, literally. None of this is to say that I'm walking into the ghetto, or anything like that. House prices anywhere in London make me emit a noise only audible to dogs, so those who live around here are mostly doing okay for themselves. The cars parked outside the houses closer to Plough Lane still cost several times what I earn in a year. But by the time Gap Road turns into Plough Lane, the houses are more or less the same size as mine.
That a football club owned by its own supporters should have built a modern stadium in 21st century South West London, that this club should have been built from practically nothing bar a desire to watch a team play football, and their rise from the level of football ordinarily covered of a weekend on this Substack all the way to the EFL, remains English football’s greatest fairytale of the 21st century, and possibly of all-time.
And this stadium is certainly striking. Tucked within huge walls of brown brick walling, it feels like a central part of its community. Moreover, it immediately feels like somebody’s home. There are still volunteers outside the ground selling programmes, just as they have for years. These homely touches mean that Wimbledon remain recognisable as the club that kept failing to get out of the Isthmian League, all those years earlier.
On the inside, there’s one larger stand and three sides of blue and yellow seats. The inside of the main stand starts filling up soon after two. There’s a well-stocked shop and a museum which I don’t have the time to visit. Outside, there’s a mural of celebrity greyhound Mick the Miller and a slightly frightening wooden statue of Dave Beasant and Roy Law, captains of the 1988 FA Cup and 1963 FA Amateur Cup winning teams, standing back to back with their trophies. These reminders of how they got here are everywhere, even the gates from the old Plough Lane ground, with “Womble Till I Die” spray-painted across their middle.
Walking around underneath the main stand inside this perfectly functional, beautifully modernist stadium, it's difficult not to think, “How much do they love this club to have got this built in the first place?” I'm not going to retell that story again, just offer a reminder that the very existence of Plough Lane is proof in and of itself of what football supporters, even just a few thousand of them, can collectively achieve if they're pulling in the same direction, and with a clear vision from the club itself.
The Newport County travelling supporters are in good voice. “We're sheep shagging bastards, we know what we are” and a striking rendition of the Conga come from the away end, a proportion of whom you'd presume have had light ale or two on the way here. But it's Wimbledon who make the early running on the pitch. They shoot over after 36 seconds, force a little squawking in the heart of the Newport defence from a long throw two minutes later, and bring a save from the goalkeeper after five. Their first corner comes a minute after this, but the chance drifts away.
And then, as if to show me exactly what I know, Newport take the lead. It's really the first time the ball has been particularly near the Wimbledon goal and notably it's their Welshest sounding player, Bryn Morris, who scores with a crisp, low shot. The goal is a sudden reminder of what's at stake. At kick-off, Wimbledon were in the play-off places and five points ahead of Newport. But the early goal shakes the home supporters. That play-off place, which looked pretty comfortable at 3.00, looks somewhat less so by ten past.
And the goal perks Newport up. They're on the front foot now, a little snappier in the tackle, a touch sharper on the break. Wimbledon look better when they keep the ball on the floor, but too often their passing from defensive midfield is caught somewhere between over-ambitious and foolish. On twenty minutes, John-Joe O'Toole is booked for leading with an arm and it feels like a cry of frustration as much as anything else. And the home defence does look brittle at times. Just after the half hour, Offrande Zanzala breaks through the left channel but sees his shot well saved.
I've heard this increasingly frustrated raising of voices before. I started going to watch Wimbledon semi-regularly during the spell when they were in the Premier Division of the Isthmian League. It was a nice place to watch football. I knew a handful of people who went there. It made sense.
It was also an unbearably frustrating time to be watching the team. Promotion into the Conference South was proving tougher than had perhaps been anticipated, and when things were going wrong against Chelmsford City, or Hornchurch, or Staines Town, there would be this increasing backdrop of anguished sounds, rising in volume as the seventh, eighth or ninth consecutive cross failed to beat the first defender.
Back in 2024, Wimbledon have chances. A deflected shot that spins just over the Newport crossbar. A header from a corner comfortably claimed. With just under ten minutes of the half to play, John-Kymani Gordon wriggles through and is pulled down, only for the referee to only award a yellow card. Ronan Curtis gets the resulting free-kick round the wall, but his shot is too tame for Townsend, who saves comfortably again. There are two minutes of stoppage-time, to no avail.
After ten minutes of early second half huffing and puffing, Newport double their lead when a curling cross into the Wimbledon penalty area evades everyone and Kyle Jameson scores at the far post. Wimbledon do try and come back. Just after the hour Josh Kelly, who's only been on the pitch a couple of minutes, hustles his through on the left but sees his lob drop onto the top of the Newport crossbar. Kelly has added a bit more grist to the Wimbledon attack. Five minutes later he holds up, holds up and holds up, before whistling a shot narrowly wide. At the other end, Will Evans breaks through but has his shot blocked.
By the time 85 minutes have been played, the home supporters are starting to head for the exits. “Is there a fire drill?”, sing the mischievous Newport supporters in the corner away to the left. They've been running down the clock for the previous half a hour, with little to leave them worrying that there might yet be a nailbiting finish of some sort or another. Wimbledon are out of ideas, and the final whistle is greeted with something approaching a resigned shrug.
The mood at Haydon Road railway station twenty minutes after the final whistle blows is subdued. This was by no means a catastrophic result for Wimbledon. The top half of League Two is too tightly packed for any one result to be a disaster just yet. They remain in seventh, the final play-off spot, but there are now five teams within three points of them—not including Newport—and all bar one of them have at least a game in hand.
At this point of the season, three points dropped at home is a missed opportunity to have put a bit of breathing space between them and that chasing pack. Newport were very good, or at least highly effective. They took their chances and deserved their win. They're well placed in that chasing pack.
The All-England Club and the artisan butchers already feel like years ago by the time my train trundles back into Clapham Junction. Nothing like all of London is as opulent as Wimbledon Village. Not all of the London Borough of Merton is, either. London is a city of haves and have nots in a country of haves and have nots. But Wimbledon, just on the other side of those tracks, have at least found their home. They can never be just another football club, but it does feel as though they’re back where they belong, and in more than one sense.
There’s only a wait of a few minutes before I can start getting back to the coast, and by 7.30 I'm home. So are Wimbledon. This remains one of football’s greatest stories of horror and redemption, one which really made the entire game in this country stop and think about what a football club actually means. This club is always about so much more than the result of one mere match; it just might not always feel like it at five to five on a Saturday afternoon.