Dave Beasant: AFC Wimbledon will go to Milton Keynes in 'gloating mood'

Ivan Speck9 December 2016

Many AFC Wimbledon fans see Saturday’s Sky Bet League One meeting with MK Dons - the club they still call Franchise FC - as the culmination of a 14-year redemption quest.

For former goalkeeper Dave Beasant, it is just another step along a journey that has more stops to make.

Beasant calls AFC his own even though the club for whom he starred for nine seasons, memorably saving a John Aldridge penalty in their FA Cup final triumph over Liverpool in 1988, no longer exists.

Or rather it does, morphed so callously into the Dons of Milton Keynes after a three-man FA panel granted Wimbledon FC permission to re-locate there in May 2002.

THEY'VE MET BEFORE....

MK Dons 2-1 AFC Wimbledon (FA Cup, December 2012)

MK Dons 3-1 AFC Wimbledon (League Cup, August 2014)

MK Dons 2-3 AFC Wimbledon (Johnstone's Paint Trophy, October 2014)

Had it not been for the determination of the club’s fans to create AFC from scratch that summer, Beasant’s Wimbledon might be the most romantic rags-to-riches story of modern times.

Instead, he believes that AFC are re-telling the tale aided by the building of a new Plough Lane stadium just 300 yards from the ramshackle ground he used to call home.

Beasant said: “It’s strange because our story, my Wimbledon, you never thought it would be replicated, not in today’s climate with the finances in football at the moment.

“For us to go from non-league football to the First Division and win the FA Cup within 11 years was a remarkable journey.

"And then suddenly AFC start on a journey that is as close as you can get to what we did but starting from further down.

“They are proving that when so much feeling and passion goes into a football club, you can dig deep and get the results you want.

In Pictures: AFC Wimbledon celebrate promotion after beating Plymouth Argyle

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“Whether or not they can emulate what we did and get to the top flight is a massive ask and one that be might be too far, but the next step - the fact that they are going back to Plough Lane - is in place already.

“It’s brilliant that Wimbledon will be coming back to their spiritual home in the Borough of Merton.

“They could double the gates they get at Kingsmeadow now if they had the room, so who knows what they can do when the new stadium is built.”

Work on AFC’s new Plough Lane stadium, to be built on the site of the current Wimbledon Greyhound Stadium, is scheduled to begin next summer.

It will initially hold around 11,000 fans, but the footings will be in place to convert it into a 20,000-capacity stadium in the future should the need arise.

Terry Brown, whose three promotions in five full seasons as AFC manager included taking the club into Sky Bet EFL in 2011, wants to witness Championship football there as a supporter in his dotage.

Currently in charge at Southern League Premier Division side Basingstoke Town, Brown said: “The sheer fun of winning in front of our great supporters was something that will stick with me forever.

Delighted: Terry Brown celebrates promotion to the Football League
Corbis via Getty Images

“The legacy goes on and the fact that AFC are moving through the Football League now and looking to move back to Plough Lane is going to be a massive jump for the club.

"It will be the springboard for the club to kick on. Where the club is at the moment, it’s full up every week. They could double the crowds to 8,000-10,000 at Plough Lane.

“Theirs is the first result I look for and it’s somewhere that I would like to spend my latter days watching Championship football.”

The immediate future is that first-ever league meeting on Saturday lunchtime between the phoenix club and the club which stole its identity.

Around 2,000 AFC fans will make the journey to Milton Keynes but there are just as many who won’t because they refuse to give MK Dons any money out of their pocket.

Those who do travel to Buckinghamshire will no doubt carry with them a copy of the Sky Bet League One table which shows AFC looking down on MK Dons.

Beasant believes they won’t be shy in letting MK and the club’s chairman Pete Winkelman know about it.

He added: “For the people who run AFC it’s another game. But for the fans, it’s a massive thing that at the time of the clubs’ first league meeting AFC will sit higher in the table than MK. They will go there in a gloating mood.”

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