EXTRA TIME

Pleasure at Plough Lane

March 23, 2025 at 8:47 am Leave a comment

…cut short at the last minute of added time

However, it was a nice day in the south of London, first at beautiful Wimbledon Village and afterwards at AFC Wimbledon’s ground at Plough Lane.

The “Dons” took the lead in the second half with two beautifully taken goals of the home team. And when the score was “Dons 2 Barrow 0” with less then five minutes of regular time, the supporter sitting next to me watching from the Ry Stand was sure that the 2-0 meant “game over”.

But as he didn’t know (albeit I should have known better according to my past experience with Wimbledon on two occasions when unexpected things had happened…) the win against Barrow wasn’t wrapped at all.

Two times my attempts to watch an AFC Wimbledon game at Plough Lane were unsuccessful because both matches of this Club with its remarkable history had been postponed on short notice. And this time also out of nothing the Dons got into trouble. Shortly after the second goal their opponents from Cumbria pulled one goal back in the 88th minute.

Now promotion-chasing Wimbledon got increasingly nervous when a “minimum of six minutes of added time” was announced, and the seemingly inevitable happened: the dreaded equaliser was conceded when a Barrow man in the very last minute of injury time got the ball at the edge of the box and was able to put his free strike into the back of the net.

The travelling fans in the away end got delirious and much contrary to this the home supporters left quietly in a mood of deflation. They will have to wait for a win at least until next week and maybe another season until they get promoted to League One.

Nevertheless AFC Wimbledon will always be a very special Club because it was only founded a little more than two decades ago in 2002 by supporters of the former Wimbledon FC. This former club had been founded in 1899 (the same year in which SK Rapid officially was founded), but was relocated to Milton Keynes, a town about 60 miles north to Wimbledon, in 2001 and is now called MK Dons. Most of the Wimbledon supporters were very strongly opposed to moving the club so far away from Wimbledon, feeling that a club transplanted to a distant location would no longer represent Wimbledon or the club’s historic legacy and tradition and founded a new Club called AFC Wimbledon.

The club has since been promoted six times in 13 seasons, going from the ninth tier (Combined Counties Premier) to the third tier, being promoted to League One in 2016. In 2022 the Dons got relegated for the first time in their short history and are now playing in League Two.

AFC Wimbledon currently hold the record for the longest unbeaten run of league matches in English senior football, having played 78 consecutive league games without a defeat between February 2003 and December 2004. They are currently sitting in third place in League Two.

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