If you listen very, very carefully tonight, especially from a certain corner of South London, you may pick up the slight but distinct sound of WFC’s bluff being called. Don’t know what I’m on about? All right then, LBM have been in the news, effectively saying that regardless of what Charles Koppel tries to concoct, they’ll build a stadium on Plough Lane and find somebody else to play there. Could be another soccer team (oooh, what irony), probably more likely to be somebody like the Broncos. But the hat has truely been tossed into the ring now via LBM, and you can bet your alleged free travel to Bletchley that somewhere deep in either deepest Bucks or Lincoln Inn Fields Koppout and co are stressing over just exactly how they can (not) spin their way out of this one.
The obvious reaction aside, the timing couldn’t have been better. Firstly, it’s publically known now – Ceefax, Guardian and other such reliable meeja sources, plus Teamtalk know about it now and it has gotten quite wide coverage. “Work to start on Plough Lane” the Ceefax headline, or something. Totally blowing out the planning permission bollocks the club were spouting, which was getting a bit too much coverage for my liking. Secondly, and to save the quote “Valentine’s Day Massacre” being used, the Football League are meeting tomorrow. I doubt if they’ll be looking at Koppout’s surely dwindling wank fantasy, but news like today’s can’t exactly convince the FL to scrap their rulebook. The only, totally lame, way that Koppout can turn down PL now is by saying that he won’t be making any money out of it. Perhaps that explains the “we’re not making £20k” comments. I presume this will be easily countered by those who care – hell, everything else from WFC has been countered rather effortlessly.
As for the news itself, needless to say I am hopeful though very cautious. Until the first pillar is laid, until the first sod is sown, until …. hey, until the damn thing opens, I’m not going to dance up and down and cause myself permanent liver damage. But this is definitely a step in the correct direction, and let’s face it, after all the shit over the last decade and more, we need good news more than ever. PROPER good news. We still have many battles to overcome, the biggest being those who purport to run this club and their immediate removal. Remove these cancer cells and who knows?
Meanwhile, I haven’t commented much on the Dons Trust recently as I’ve been a bit too tied up ATM. Major positive reaction, at least £30k raised thus far and a strongest sense of urgency and (to use the current buzzword) community that I haven’t experienced since at least 1991. Probably earlier than that, if I’m being honest. People ARE wanting to get involved, there were people helping out on Sunday that I never have seen help out on anything before (no disrespect, you know what I mean). Loads of fun, certainly, on Sunday, including an incident involving three WFC females in the Wibbas Down. To paraphrase Airplane, I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.
Oh, and it’s Palace on Saturday. Bring your weapons.