May 05 2008
Big Weekend for Fan-Built Clubs
Football is supposed to be something for the fans — especially the fans that inhale half an orange smoke bomb and spend the next nine days developing a nasty hacking cough that won’t go away, but hey, our boys got the win and I’m not dead yet, so it’s all good…
But I digress. This turned out to be a big weekend for popular fan-built breakaway clubs — starting with FC United of Manchester, a club I wrote about a year ago. As you may recall, FC United was built from the ground up by Manchester United supporters who objected to Malcolm Glazer’s debt-heavy financing of the Premier League club. Well, FC United just took one more step toward the Football League themselves, winning their third promotion in three years by beating Skelmersdale in a promotion playoff. Next season, FC United will play in the Unibond League Premier Division, one level below 6th-tier Conference North.
Meanwhile, another supporter-run club has already made the climb into Conference football. AFC Wimbledon was promoted to Conference South on Saturday after beating Staines Town in a promotion playoff on a dramatic 83rd-minute goal. AFC Wimbledon was built by Wimbledon FC supporters after that club made its highly controversial moved to Milton Keynes and became MK Dons — who, ironically enough, won League Two and will play in 3rd-tier League One next season.
I get the sense, though, that MK Dons can’t climb fast enough to escape the fan-built juggernaut that bears their old name. AFC Wimbledon v. MK Dons would be a dream draw in the first round of the FA Cup next year, wouldn’t it?
Really happy that these teams are doing well. Football has simply been snatched away from the real fans, and their response has been to go it alone; well done to them!!
Where i live in Israel, the fans have formed a breakaway from one of the traditionally big teams, Hapoel Jerusalem. Hapoel have had some really bad luck with managers, and now have owners in charge who are awful, and really don’t have the best interests of the club at heart. The team have suffered successive relegations, and the fans are seemingly powerless to change anything.
So we have formed a breakaway team, Called Hapoel Katamon, which is owned on a share basis by all the fans who want.
This season has been a success of sorts, with average attendences over 2000 (average for the league - 4th division - is a couple of hundred max). Contrast that to the main team, who’s attendences have dropped well below ours! Unfortunately we failed to get promotion, but we’ll try again next year!!