Well, thanks to a mixture of laziness, collapsing servers and all round bugger all to do, a nice if belated round up of what’s going on, SW19 style
Firstly, now that the dust has settled, DA’s appointment is taking shape nicely. His backroom staff is looking remarkably like the Hendon one that he just left, and while rumour and counter rumour about who he’ll bring in/out will continue to abound until we actually play a game under him, it’s expected that the squad will be one more akin to Ryman standards than CCL standards. As of time of writing, nobody has left yet or indeed come in.
Quite interesting that according to his OS interview, he’s going to be heavily into the fitness side of things (apparently the gym at KM has had many new members since DA joined….). Last time we had a manager who came from outside and said he wanted to work on fitness, mutiny erupted. Hopefully our amateurs are more professional.
Obviously, NE’s remainder is a boost, and as the parade last Sunday showed, he’s still a part of things.
Speaking of the parade last Sunday, seemed quite a mixed response to it. This mainly depended on where your vantage point was. I could only make the SM4 bit, and it felt a bit anti-climatic, though I was later told that there wasn’t supposed to be an SM4 bit. Which considering the blurb beforehand seemed to suggest that there was a planned event in SM4 made me all the more disappointed. OK, I know that most of our middle class liberal lot won’t be seen dead in downtown Morden (we don’t have Starbucks here for a start, and it’s only the PC council workers who go into the Tarrio coffee shop) but again, the turnout might have been a little bit less than optimistic for the average passer by
Enough pessimism, by all accounts the Wimbledon leg was either fantastic (if you were by Centre Court) or shite (if you were by the Theatre). From the pics I’ve seen, a neutral looking at the crowds outside CC would have been well impressed. Enough has been written about the debacle outside WT, and it seems neither AFCW or the police are accepting responsibilty.
Organisation mishaps aside, I think the thing it has done most of all is thrust AFCW back into the awareness of your average Merton resident. It’s interesting to note that talk of KM being medium term as opposed to long term has started up again : if we’re being honest, you can’t really redevelop KM that much, and by the time we become a Conference team I don’t think an expanded-to-6k KM will be big enough. Look at it this way, we get 3k from being at level 8, with relative little exposure locally, certainly nationally. Project that upwards, and for the second time in our history, a possible ground vacation for size of crowds is on the cards.
So, am I suggesting that a return to Merton is viable? Depends. For now, we can get away with being at KM, it’s reachable by bus from Wimbledon and until we start getting major sponsorship in we’re not going to have too much dough to play with. But thinking long term we’re going to have to start cultivating Merton again : I’m not too sure if we’re really attracting that many from the local KM area, and the Merton support is there, if the pre-MK stuff we came out with is to be believed (with readjustments). Of course, logistics and finance are in our way at the moment, but it’s little things like this that can get the ball rolling.
And remember, this time we’re not going to need a 20k stadium
Finally, you may notice that 28th May is coming round again. There’s going to be a little, ahem, meeting outside Soho Square on this very day, 12-2pm. Just a little reminder for those who have forgotten……