page_title: Relocation of Wimbledon F.C. to Milton Keynes
section_title: Wimbledon at Selhurst Park; Dublin proposal
hierarchical_section_title: Relocation of Wimbledon F.C. to Milton Keynes / Wimbledon leave Plough Lane / Wimbledon at Selhurst Park; Dublin proposal
caption_attribution_description: English: Wimbledon Stadium. Used for greyhound racing (outer track) and the Stock cars (inner track).
context_page_description: Wimbledon Football Club relocated to Milton Keynes in September 2003, 16 months after receiving permission to do so from the Football Association on the basis of a two-to-one decision in favour by an FA-appointed independent commission. The move took the team from south London, where it had been based since its foundation in 1889, to Milton Keynes, a new town in Buckinghamshire, about 56 miles to the northwest of the club's traditional home district Wimbledon. Hugely controversial, the move's authorisation prompted disaffected Wimbledon supporters to form AFC Wimbledon, a new club, in June 2002. The relocated team played home matches in Milton Keynes under the Wimbledon name from September 2003 until June 2004, when following the end of the 2003–04 season it renamed itself Milton Keynes Dons F.C.
  Wimbledon F.C. spent most of its history in non-League football before being elected to the Football League in 1977. A series of club owners believed that its long-term potential was limited by its home ground at Plough Lane, which never changed significantly from the team's non-League days.
context_section_description: Merton Council had been recommending that Wimbledon move to a site in nearby Beddington, but this proposal fell through soon after the move to Selhurst Park. With the inflation in costs brought on by the foundation of the FA Premier League in 1992, the club soon began to lose money heavily. Rumours that the groundshare would eventually result in the Dons and the Eagles merging led Hammam to say "I’d rather die and have vultures eat my insides than merge with Crystal Palace". In 1992 the Greyhound Racing Association offered to redevelop Wimbledon Stadium (less than a mile from Plough Lane) into a 15,000-seater dog racing and football ground. Hammam was outraged two years later when the council, attempting to retain the Plough Lane site for public use, refused to sanction its sale for a supermarket redevelopment that Hammam said would finance a new ground at the dog racing site. Hammam angrily declared he would look elsewhere, and threatened to change the club's name and remove the double-headed eagle device, a symbol of Wimbledon Borough, from the team's badge. "We have been betrayed," he told the press. "The council say they want us back, but when it comes to taking action they don't want to know."
  Hammam later claimed to have looked at every possible stadium site in Merton. He initially sought to relocate within south London, examining "seven boroughs" including Tolworth and Brixton. He also began to consider selling the club. In 1994, Wimbledon's Irish manager Joe Kinnear contacted the football pundit and former player Eamon Dunphy to inform him of this and to put to him the idea of moving the club to Dublin. Dunphy was enthusiastic about the idea and became its main proponent in Ireland over the next three years. It was suggested that Wimbledon fans from London could be given free flights to Dublin for home matches, and that British Sky Broadcasting might pay to fly the opposing teams there during the first season.
  Opinion polls in the Republic showed consistently high support for the idea of Wimbledon hosting Premier League matches in Dublin, but the League of Ireland argued that this would endanger its existence, and in September 1996 about 300 fans rallied in Dublin under the slogan "Resist the Dublin Dons". Twenty Irish clubs "reaffirmed their opposition" to Wimbledon playing in Dublin the following month; a week later Reuters called the proposal "dead and buried". When Hammam requested talks with the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) top brass in April 1997, they refused to even meet him. Vocal opposition from Wimbledon fans emerged—after a friendly match in August 1997 fans holding "Dublin = Death" and "Dons Belong In Merton" placards refused to leave the stadium for two hours. Soon afterwards, Hammam met six leading protesters, who told him that in the event of a move they would start a new non-League club locally.
  Playing away from Merton at a supposedly temporary home, Wimbledon set a record for the lowest-ever English top-flight attendance on 22 August 1992 with 3,759 watching the clash with Coventry City, before breaking it twice more: 12 December 1992 against Oldham Athletic with 3,386, and finally on 26 January 1993, drawing only 3,039 fans to a Tuesday-night match against Everton, with reportedly 1,500 travelling from Liverpool. All ten of the Premier League's lowest attendances were Wimbledon home matches in the 1992–93 and 1993–94 seasons. However the general trend was one of a sharp rise—the club's average home attendance more than doubled at Selhurst Park from around 8,000 during the last years at Plough Lane to a peak of over 18,000 during the 1998–99 Premier League season. Wimbledon's fans were a blend between locals who had supported the club since its non-League days and supporters who had defected from other London teams. According to statistics compiled in 2000, 56% of Wimbledon season-ticket holders were locally born (the second lowest in the Premier League), and only 12% had fathers who were Wimbledon fans. Many attended Wimbledon matches as it was cheaper and safer than other clubs in th
caption: In 1992, the Greyhound Racing Association offered to redevelop Wimbledon Stadium (1995 image) for dogs and football.
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