Weeks ago I created a new Wikipedia page for Ashlee Hinckes, AFC Wimbledon Women’s captain who I have spoken to and has records in the women’s game. Today Wikipedia moderators have now removed the page after queries related to promoting the person, references being not good enough and acusation of bad use of an LLM. All of which I tried to address. Sorry Wikipedia you are a JOKE. And during Wikipedia She said month. Wow I will never try and edit / add to Wikipedia again now.

What does the word ‘ordinary’ mean to you? In this short-form podcast, Louise Siddons, Professor of Visual Politics at Winchester School of Art (part of the University of Southampton), invites artists to reflect on the role of the ordinary in art and life.

Conceived in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name, held at The Winchester Gallery, Winchester School of Art, UK from 2nd-25th November 2023.

overcast.fm/+BEtlj_e5… - should be landing in all your favourite podcatchers shortly too.

You’ll find my responses in episode 14

The audio and news from the Times of behaviour by our ex managing director Danny Macklin is inexcusable, misogynistic and violently abusive and completely unacceptable anywhere near our club or any where at all.

His actions have brought into question many of the values we hold dear for our club by seemly being one thing in public and yet another in private. We are a community club and his actions no matter what else are disgraceful and damaging.

There are many questions this whole incident raises none of them would make his actions ever ok and none of which I want to articulate as in no way would I ever want to condone any of this behaviour. I hope however the club is asking themselves many questions at this stage and how we can be better.

I am shocked and angry. The mission is never compete and we must do more.

Unfortunately, no matter what Disney+ or even the BBC will tell you the story of Wrexham is not a fairy tale.

There is no magic, the main character is not poor and underprivileged or the underdog triumphing over adversity, and it’s certainly not clear who is good and who is bad.

In fact, what this story really does is shine another spotlight on the poor state of the English football pyramid and that it can be easily manipulated by money.

Wrexham, have won the title and thus been automatically promoted out of the national conference league because two very rich Americans and a Disney+ deal paved the way purely by ploughing money into the club.

At this stage, this money is not an investment, it is an unsustainable business being bankrolled for now.

Players at Wrexham currently earn around 3 times other players in the same league and the squad costs will not doubt only increase in league 2 as the chairman suggests that “the sky’s the limit” to future success.

Although Wrexham didn’t pay much in transfer fees whilst in the conference (one season longer than they hoped). Ollie Palmer from Wimbledon was, in fact, one of the highest they did pay.

No doubt, however any future negotiations will get harder as Wrexham could be seen to have an unlimited playing budget. The owners are said to be worth £400m.

The owners have also spent a lot of money on ground, investments of over £10m already. With plans to spend over £90m.

However, for the promotion season the club in fact lost £1.17m which was an increased loss on the previous season.

The hope is that due to the international coverage and such they will draw people to watch Wrexham who never have. I know of one person who for the first time ever paid a subscription to watch important matches. This hope needs to result in a larger income next season from again the Disney+ deal, £300k+ per episode, more TV coverage (potentially Sky taking the EFL rights) and increased online subscriptions, perhaps Wrexham’s arrive might bring a competitor to the current iFollow?

However, this tale only ends with an exit strategy and that strategy will be for the current owners to get a return on their investment. This exit strategy is likely aiming for a big sell out once they reach the dizzying heights of the Premier League.

So, having bought Wrexham for £2million, losing over £1m a season and on going investment in the ground.

Lets for argument sakes, as most league teams are unsustainable, Wrexham in fact continue to lose more money every year as costs of maintaining a higher league position go up, and they invest the final sums they mention into the stadium.

We could say the total investment could wind up at at least £200 million maybe?

At this rate would mean the value of the club would have to be at least that of a mid-table Premier League team at that point.

The Newcastle take over bid was reportedly worth an estimated £300 million.

The population of Newcastle is about the same as Wrexham 60,000.

Be warned, this is not a fairy tale. The Brothers Grimm have an exit strategy, and it could well be in 6–8 years' time, but it will not be to the club’s benefit.

This whole story says more about the state of the pyramid and the need for the governance of football to be seriously looked at.

The more money that flows down the pyramid, the more investment into community, grassroots and more. The more the money flows up the pyramid into lining the pockets of a few, the worse things will get for all involved in these clubs and their communities.

I suspect there are a number of Wrexham fans who are concerned, who have raised a voice. As of today, the supporters trust website doesn’t even have an up to date SSL certificate, so it was hard to browse, and I know that the take-over was welcomed generally by the trust. The trust did save the club before however for the take-over they had to give up all control, which they did voted on and agreed to this. So they would have to fight again to regain control.

Aside

You could argue Wimbledons rise back from the combined counties league (that’s 5 leagues lower than the conference) all the way to League 2 was also the fact that we had more money than most other clubs in each league as we progressed. Getting out of the Conference was the hardest and certainly this is not a league I would relish a return too. However, we are the fairy tale. We own our club, our ground and have a stable sustainable base to build from especially since COVID-19 we have finally started to properly settled into our new stadium and all the benefits this brings.

We have now doubled our gates (even after being relegated from League 1) and have started to put in place a much more professional layers of staffing to run the football side of operations, some may say we have been a bit slow in this regard and perhaps that is part of what has put us into a really poor end of this season. But I am feeling optimistic about next season and will welcome Wrexham to Plough Lane and let the media see the real fairy tale still in the making.

Be interesting to see what happens with TikTok as Wrexhams sponsor as less useful being banned in the states and gov.uk. But that’s another post about terrible football sponsorship.

Proposers: Niall Couper and Melvyn Procter

I have been a Wimbledon fan since the 1980s and am a Season ticket holder with my Dad and Daughter.

I am standing again to be a member of the Dons Trust board, as I want us to be the best club we can be, both on and off the pitch. So, I would like to officially dedicate some of my time to this.

I work at the University of Southampton, and currently I lead a top ten games course. I work on digital education strategy for the university and am a fellow in creative research engagement for the research institute of Arts and Humanities, and previously led our department of Art & Media Technology.

I will bring my experience to the DT board to move AFC Wimbledon forward in two key areas.

• Our Unique Selling Point (USP)
• Our Education provision

A vote for me will be another voice on the DT board that will advocate for taking full advantage of our USP, that of a fan owned club.

This to me means a club about people and planet. Why? Because this is the right thing to do.

I believe we can and should take advantage of this positioning to attract new fans, both locally and globally. I am confident we can attract new sponsors and partnerships by clearly defining our position of being a sustainable, ethical, and environmentally focussed fan owned club.

This positioning will make us attractive to a global audience and global sponsorship.

94% of our members voted that we must be fan owned, but what is more important is to take advantage of this fact to progress on the pitch.

We can do this by increasing our income by striving to be different and showing what fan ownership really means.

Once we adopt this focus, we can build out a branding around our mission and take that to ethical and sustainable companies, partners, and organisations.

Our new shirt is made with Eco8 technology from Hummel meaning each shirt is manufactured from high-performing polyester produced from up to eight recycled plastic bottles.

Sports Interactive makers of Football Manager donate from every sale of their game to war child and have provided them to date with £1.5m to support children affected by conflict.

We can leverage more of these ties by making our positioning clear. I will bring my design thinking and leadership experience to help the board and club market our USP.

In Sept 2022 the education hub will start a new BTEC in eSports, I think our education offer, apprentice schemes and university year in employment schemes could be leveraged to attract younger and more diverse fans to AFC Wimbledon.

eSports is huge new market, in 2019 42,000+ people attended live eSports events in the UK and one event in the same year, the final of Fortnite, was watched by over 2 million people.

My background is not directly eSports; however, I will bring connections and experience from the world of gaming – the biggest entertainment industry on the planet that caters to over 4 Billion players – to the DT Board, club and stadium.

I will bring my experience of working with young adults in higher education for over 20 years to the DT board.

A vote for me will mean continued advocation for young, diverse people and gaming at AFC Wimbledon to the board increasing our income.

In terms of related practical steps.

We must make joining the Dons Trust much more attractive worldwide, through our USP, but also, I would push forward a membership opt in with season ticket renewal, I believe this is in discussion and I would advocate that we must do this.

I would ask for a rebranding of the Dons Trust in consultation and partnership with our younger fans and more diverse fans to make the membership as attractive as possible.

It doesn’t seem we utilise our whole fan base expertise, including our younger fans at all, so we need to look at how we improve our club volunteer offer and rewards programme.

I can directly bring a gaming and the environment event to Plough Lane centred around Daybreak a new board game made by the creator of Pandemic.

I will bring my enthusiasm, leadership, and experience to several other key areas specifically to help support better structures at the club, the paid roles at the club and where improvements should be made. I will use my experience of free and open-source software communities to ask the DT board and club to be as open and transparent as possible and improve all of its communication channels. I will at every turn ask the club to dare to be different.

To support inclusion, I have also uploaded a recorded audio version of this text with captioning onto YouTube. dctr.pro/dtm22

Visiting St Mary’s for the first time.

I attended the U18 premiership national final Southampton FC v Manchester City with my daughter, us both seasoned football goers. Have to say it started well, Man City played much better football through out the game, but Southampton scored first, which kept everyone happy however with no away fans and going on to lose it became a bit of a strange atmosphere I suspect the free tickets playing a roll.

It seems that lots of school kids, without adults and clearly didn’t know what it means to attend a game in person, many arrived late, left early, seemed to be mainly in the Northam stand, the one we were in. At first many started what appeared to be throwing rubbish but it became clear was actual attempts at paper aeroplanes started to throw them down the stands. A few kids were told to stop by the insane amount of stewards in place. However one kid clearly attempting to launch numerous planes at the pitch wasn’t stopped until projectile 3 all the time watched by the steward =who finally decided he had better as the kid to refrain 🤦🏻‍♂️

One person ran onto the pitch mid game thankfully not disrupting or attacking anyone but by the end of the game lots of kids where on the edge of the pitch at the bottom of the Northam stand, all stewards were moved to monitor this area but it was clear what was going to happen and they did little to stop what was then a mass pitch invasion after the whistle which was not great.

Southampton having lost, and the kids clearly reveling on just being on the pitch it seemed like this was perhaps a mass dare issued at local Schools that day, eventually the PA announced anyone caught invading the pitch would have a 7 year ban.

I suspect they never have or plan to go to another game anyway. I cant make any of the womens Euro games at St Marys (which is now a 20minute walk for me) but I plan to visit a pre season friendly as I suspect that will have a different atmosphere. Not sure my daughter will want to attend St Mary’s again. (to note someone behind her kept touching her hair, she told me afterwards and one close by kid needed a lesson in how to shower….)

Makes me even more appreciate our fan owned club and community stadium in Wimbledon.

• Kid here refers to teenage boys.

Football fans, those that see the community we have built, those that want to see how football can be done differently, to see how it feels to own your club, I encourage you to make the pilgrimage to see the new stadium, see our community and of course watch the real Dons. ⚽️

For all the people that will never get to see our return to Plough Lane this was read out before kick off yesterday over the PA.

As we gather here today, about to witness Wimbledon’s football club play a home game in front of fans for the first time in 30 years, we would like you to join us as we take a moment to remember those who cannot be with us on this historic day.

We’re talking about the players, the staff, the volunteers and most of all the fans who played their part in making sure Wimbledon still has a football team to call its own for future generations to enjoy in the years ahead.

They didn’t get to be here to see us make that dream come true, but friends, family and fellow fans live on in our hearts.

All of those who watched us, travelled the length of the country to support us, campaigned for us, wrote letters for us, raised money for us, gave their time and effort for us - we thank you and we will never forget you - and we hope you are proud of what we have become.

And thank you also, of course, to every single person here today and around the world who has contributed to the journey of Wimbledon’s football club. From Old Centrals to Wimbledon FC to AFC Wimbledon, this is the club that refuses to be beaten. The club that defies the odds. The club that is the greatest story in football.

Our legendary club Secretary, the late Eric Willocks explained what a football club is for when he said “our fans collect memories”. So we remember all those who’ve shared this journey with us and gives thanks we will all collect more memories back at Plough Lane.

The journey was long, some people were wrong, we’re AFC Wimbledon and you brought the Dons home.

We invite you all now to join us in a minute’s applause to remember all those who can’t be here.

We (AFC Wimbledon) are in a league higher than we can really afford at the moment. Part of our future growth is tied to our move to a brand new stadium we only just managed to finance ourselves without losing control, looking at the European Super League nonsense its even clearer why we must never cede control. But we found ourselves rooted to the relegation zone. We changed manager to Robbo and Wow the players are really playing like they really know what a fans club is all about. With 3 wins in row, but not just minor wins. 1-5 away 3-0 home & 4-1 home. Each game the attacking hasn’t stopped the energy of the players to do everything they can to win has been amazing. Numerous local and young academy home grown players now also making the first team. I think this clip of Nesta Guinness-Walker typifies the fight all the team now seem to have found, please note we are already winning 2-0, we went to win this one 4-1. COYD ⚽️

Your chance to join the debate on football, climate-change and sustainability. Point 10 from the Yellow and Blue Plan / Manifesto.

19 August at 6.30pm the inaugural Yellow and Blue Discussion Series asks a series of fundamental questions:

• Can football afford to be ethical?
• Is there an economic model that can make the ethical profitable?
• In a world full of financial uncertainty, can AFC Wimbledon truly afford to be environment-friendly and sustainable?
• Should caring about the future of our planet be part of football and AFC Wimbledon’s USP?

These questions and more will be put under the spotlight in the second of the Yellow and Blue Discussion Series by a high-profile panel of experts. The panel will also take questions from the audience.

On the panel are:

Lucy Siegle, renowned journalist and broadcaster, reporter for the One Show, and founder of the Observer Ethical awards

Dr. Russell Seymour, Chief Executive of the British Association for Sustainable Sport, and Sustainability Manager at Lords Cricket Ground

Paul Jeater, Chair of the Eastern Region of the Green Party and author of the Unique Solution: The first year of AFC Wimbledon

Read about point 10 and register for the event (held over Zoom) donstrustmanifesto.com

If you are interested in a Bond investment with up to 4% interest - check this email from the Dons Trust. This spells out how you could loan money to The Dons Trust and gain decent interest over a 5,10 or 20 year period. With these Bonds, you can achieve a financial return while helping AFC Wimbledon and the Dons Trust get the new community stadium completed in time for the 2020-21 season and preserve the fan-owned status of the club. We are a unique club with a unique history and ownership model designed to support the broader community. This new community stadium will have a huge impact on how much we can support people in and around Wimbledon. It’s more than Football, the AFC Wimbledon Foundation supports, Sport, Health, Education and Inclusion in various out reach activities, this new community stadium would be a focal point for this and allow more to be done. More details and the link to buy Bonds at https://ploughlanebond.com/

As a AFC Wimbledon fan a core of why I love the Club and set up is our Trust / Fans owned model. So counter to the greed and cash driven situation of most top flight UK clubs. This model of ownership means that we the fans and the community guide and steer the club to benefit the community, be it those directly connected to football or just by enabling our stars to visit and encouraged kids at hospitals and other community areas we can bring positivity. BUT right now we have a huge capital funding gap (£11million) to finish our brandnew community stadium. So here is how you can help.

You can invest into the newly announced bond scheme and gain a great intrest rate of up to 4%! (there is some risks obviously) but Please check out the Bond website for details on how you could help realise the final piece in the puzzle a stadium back in Wimbledon and this great community asset for Wimbledon whilst also having a very nice interest rate on your savings.

I had not seen this video before. With Hindsight it appears Ed Leek was clearly keen to sell out the club as he talked about changes to the ownership option being a restricted action and a need to change it. Again with Hinsight it also appears he knew a lot more than we the owners did. Also clearly his ambition is bigger means better. I assume he is still co-opt’d onto the AFC PLC board too. I personally would like to see a motion to remove Ed Leek and Mark Davis from the DTB urgently, very disappointed.

YouTube

Like a few AFC Wimbledon fans there is a number of people that have said well you’ve gone as far as you can with the fans model you need an investor who will plough money in year after year.

People said that to me when we where in the Combined Counties League. Yet we continued to rise and rise and we did it by balancing the books. This blog post puts a much better view on the finances and how we have always been prudent with our day to days funds. dctr.pro/2gf

Co-operative ownership of a Football club is still possible and can be run well however we currently have a huge capital funding gap which appears to have not been foreseen and we agreed to leave our current stadium without the guarantee that the new one will be completed, something we agreed not to do.

I am not sure how this has all really happened and I feel a number of the DTB have made major mistakes, however we should not be pursuing external take over (investment) just to plug the gap.

Yes I think we need to make some major changes to the way we operate the club to best support the Dons Trust Board, such as bringing in paid positions to support their work, after a completed re-election however, and I think we need to do much more work on corporate sponsorship.

Yes the shell stadium I think will be a nightmare to start but lets think progressively, can we set up local vans for food and drinks, like a box park, can we lean on some of our unique points and set up sustainable ways to finance finishing the stadium. I spoke to the Dons Trust tent on the weekend and made it clear I will not be bringing my family to a club taken over by individuals and I wasn’t the only one on the family section that agreed with me, this is a community club and needs to be owned by the community to give the best possible future for the community.

The Dons Trust Board need to stop wasting time talking about theses invisible investors, tell us what you are doing and sure why not just tell us who wants to take over our club but stop the road show of non information please.

There are so many options that we could have had presented that did not include outside investment that changes the ownership model this just hurts us, the fans, no one should have been entertaining in mind or person external investment that changes the ownership model, it changes the ethos of the club, it’s changes we are Wimbledon. I’m so disappointed.

Maybe we (AFC Wimbledon) need to just stop building New Plough Lane. Talk to Chelsea about a deal to play there for at least 1 more season, regroup with a proper plan to finance the stadium properly. Sure it will cost, we will look bad, we will be in some trouble around the site being left unfinished and will short term lose a lot of money but if that means we don’t sell the club out long term then so be it.

This seems plasable to me.

1. We need the exact amount required to fund the shell stadium. I don’t care how rubbish it is.
2. We raise this all ways bar external investment that changes ownership model.
3. Get the contractor to sign this agreement for shell stadium and work on that basis.
4. We attempt to raise more funds to enhance the build in the shortest period possible again without funding that doesn’t compromise ownership model.
5. We restructure the boards and work out more sustainable funding for good management going forward.
6. We manage our funds more sustainably and this initially will result in 1 or more relegations. We may not grow fan base until a lot later but that’s fine. We had a lot at Sutton.

The background noise at AFC Wimbledon and The Dons Trust board this week has been insane. I fully support the Open letter sent to the Football Club Board and Dons Trust Board. Open Letter

We (AFC Wimbledon) are a fans owned club, and are about to move to a new stadium (back) at Plough Lane, we had various levels of communication and meetings as to what this means and some hints towards costing the project and from what I gleaned over the last few years was this all seemed good, our main hurdles where permissions, many unfounded objections that slowed the project and the work of demolition of the old Grey Hound stadium. It was advised there would be a share issue, a loan, crowd funding and such. All seemed to be moving on and we had recently raised just shy of £2.5 million via crowd funding through Seedrs, I was waiting for my email to send details from my custom named brick. But then out of the blue we (the fans) are advised the club is struggling to get a bank loan needed and thus we haven’t been allowed to sign the final financial contract for the building works (although this has started). And we are advised we are £11million short.

The way to plug this gap is outlined in a number of options, which is then reported differently to Dons Trust members via members documents (I don’t think are shareable) from the Dons Trust Board and then as a Club statement. The wording seems to give the strong suggestion that we need to take external investment which from the way it is presented would only be accepted by those parties if we make changes to our ownership model.

I support this open letter as a Dons Trust member whole heartily. I am not prepared to vote for external investment that impacts the current model of the fans co-operative having the majority of control. I would rather we are relegated and have a smaller stadium than pass over majority ownership or control to an individual or group of investors.

I am worried about what appears to me as assurance over the last few years that we could afford this new stadium and now we are told that is not longer correct. I understand costs have gone up thanks to the numerous delays from a host of terrible protests against the building works. But the indication was this was all in hand and more importantly understood.

From the start things appeared to had all been costed sensibly from what I read and heard from Dons Trust Board meetings & the Club. I am a little confused as to what has actually gone wrong.

My own preference at this stage would be that we seek what the club statement has as option 1 to secure a loan as close to £11million and look to alternative models of investment to reduce and pay back that loan ASAP and keep the ownership the same. I understand obtaining a loan of this value has proved very difficult however there is plenty of different buisness models that a progressive football club could undertake and the old model of big external investment must be seen as not working. Do I need to mention Bolton or Bury?

If the majority ownership is not with the fans I would have to do some serious thinking. The model of UK football clubs with investors and money is dreadful and I don’t want my Club to be run with that in mind even if that appears at this time to forfeit a possible future role in the top league in the UK. No one thought we would get this far with this model. No one thought we could do what we have done. We must not throw the towel in at the last hurdle just to get the bigger stadium via external funding only.

Here’s hoping for more details and better consultation on this issue. Once beyond this we need to get more background and details as to what has gone wrong and how we look at the accountability and reporting from the Dons Trust Board and Football Club Board.

The ongoing nightmare for both Bolton and Bury in League 1 ⚽️ hurts everyone, delayed fixtures, uncertain futures and fans in turmoil. Both clubs should have never been allowed to get into this much trouble, the EFL needs to think about its role in this as much as they seem to currently be allowing time to hear positive news. Reminds me of why I love AFC Wimbledon so much, fan owned, run within budget and the league status is not as important as a community club. I hope Bolton and Bury find a way out and I would say to their fans don’t underestimate what a Fans Trust is capable of, just look at what we have managed. It’s not all about how much money 💰 you have (or borrow or gamble on having!). I am concerned that the crunching of fixtures will be unfair on teams like us whose season long fitness can be much harder to maintain due to smaller squad sizes, I will be looking very sternly in the direction of the EFL if this is becomes an issue. They will need to think very seriously about how they arrange the missing fixtures and not stick to timelines for the sake of timelines.

The ambition for us (@afcwimbledon) in 2018 has to be survival in League One.

I don’t believe our current position in the league is a management issue at all. I think @neilardley and his team are making good choices and decisions, although I sometimes question his substitution timings as a little predictable, but our current league position is a cash issue. You can link league positions to cash quite quickly which is disheartening but hey that’s another blog post.

Our home end is technically sold out every game and so this limits our income drastically, we know we have a larger fan base and could attract walk in fans, see Wembley gate, and the Spurs gate will no doubt say the same.

So crucial to our further progression is our New Stadium back at Plough lane, recently and finally all agreed to proceed, the Stadium will start by doubling our current capacity and then the potential to double that again. I think we need to survive in League One for our return to Plough Lane, this will provide us a very attractive start for ‘new’ fans and thus the increased revenue will set us up for another group of exciting years! Come on you Dons!

To be fair now my micro.blog is working so well is connecting to other services I will not moan about football and other general less wide issues here going forward. I don’t need to connect to Trolls. That’s what makes twitter rubbish. And not what the web is about. Sorry about that but I get worked up about football. I’ll notify people on specific major miles stones at AFC Wimbledon as an owner but I’ll keep my personal complaints to myself and not bore you to death 💀 👍😜

We (@afcwimbledon) are in the 3rd round of the English FA Cup, this is the round the Premier League teams join in.

I would love a “big club” away for the event. My youngest daughter often recounts our day out at Wembley as one of her best experiences ever. However I understand financially a big club at home would be better in terms of overall revenue. Just so long as we don’t get Franchise I’ll be happy.

I’m happy about the extra money 💰 this fixture injects into the Club, the fact as a fan/owner I am that informed about all of this is also another great thing too, well done AFC Wimbledon, we are an amazing community club. We budget to never progress in any cup so this means we will no doubt be boosted generally.

Now if we can just get that new Plough Lane stadium signed and sealed before we run out of puff in League 1 that would be even nicer. In fact if anyone can arrange this prior to the next round it might make for a awesome Match of the Day special feature 👍

Come on you Dons.