THE CONCRETE ROUNDABOUT (TCR)

If you were a ten year old kid taken to your first game at the NHS in 2004 then by the time you’re twenty five you’ve pretty much seen everything there is to see in the game:

(in no particular order)

- A league title won at a canter with players far too good for the level they’re at.

- A promotion won on the final day with news coming from elsewhere that the unlikely was happening.

- A hundred goals in a season

- An all-time record equalling number of away wins.

- A dispiriting (character building?) relegation or two.

- A last gasp survival on the final day with a screamer to win it.

- Your team walk out on a sunny spring day and win a cup at Wembley.

- Crushing play-off defeats.

- A day in which the whole world wanted you to lose, only to nick it with an outrageous iconic goal that will never be repeated.

- An attention grabbing cup upset that reverberated around the world and one it’s victims are still reminded of.

- A local young lad come though the ranks and rise to a level where he can genuinely be considered world class.

- loans of future stars of tomorrow that would go on to achieve international recognition.

- loans of awful players who’ll never be heard of again.

- The arrival of former greats of the game who still had something to offer.

- An annual change of manager.

- A longstanding manager who implemented a style of football that was lovely to watch.

- A brief appointment who who’s football was no more than functional but bought in the players to build the club.

- A manager who went on to lift the Champions League.

- A move into a new stadium that’s everything the chairman promised it would be (koi carp & fountains not withstanding).



That’s a lot more than any other club has crammed into fourteen years, isn’t it?

Brilliant post !

Met a friend today whom I sent this link to, and his response was "yes...but AFC have also achieved a lot in such a short time too, coming up from nothing to where they are in L1 too."

He has a point of course, and I think all of us on TCR would say (with a fair mind) that AFC have indeed done well....any team which started from nothing to get to L1 going up the leagues is a great achievement.

I think the difference with us though, is the breadth of what we have achieved in the same time, as outlined in the original post on this thread. Mind you, I suppose a critic of MKD would say something like "ah, but you were in the position to play and beat Man United, as you were handed a league place on "a plate" and so got a route into the League Cup, in contrast of having to start right at the very bottom, like AFC did." "

Trying to stand back and be as impartial as possible, in the final analysis, I would admit that AFC have done very well to get to where they area....but likewise we have done a load of success too in such a short time. Both clubs are "winners" from the ashes of the original Wimbledon...though right now you would not think it seeing we are both in a relegation scrap

As my friend added, imagine the bitterness if it comes to the last weekend of this season, and our result sends AFC down...or vice versa ! If they did it to us, and send us down, we would NEVER hear the end of it !