Morecambe 0:4 Somebody Else

Shrimps visited by Cuckoos.

 I hate MK so-called `Dons’. The fact that they are in the EFL at all is a scandal and shows in one appalling example the corruption which exists at the heart of the Beautiful Game in this country. Good luck tackling that, Tracey Crouch. (Thinks: maybe she should start by taking some notes about Standing Up To Sleaze from her fellow Tory MP, Owen Paterson…)

In case you aren’t familiar with the way the team from Milton Keynes inveigled its way into the Football League, I make no apology for repeating what I wrote about them several years ago:

What is there to say about the Milton Keynes so-called `Dons’?

Quite a lot in all truth. This is the team which proved that a football club is a franchise, not a stand-alone unique institution. Every other team I know of in the EFL and further afield has its own distinct history and progression to or from the Big Time. Morecambe, for instance, have progressed from the Lancashire Combination to the Northern Premier League to the Football Conference to League Two. It has been a long and sometimes difficult process. Our neighbours Accrington Stanley went bust and were thrown out of the old Football League in the early 1960s. They reformed and started the long, hard slog to get back to where they started off right at the bottom of the Football Pyramid in England. Newport County also went bust and fell out of the League during 1989. Their re-birth was severely complicated by the Welsh FA’s (illegal) diktat that all non-league Welsh clubs must resign from whatever competition they were playing in and join the new Welsh League – or else. Or else not play in the Principality at all. So County (as part of the `Irate Eight’ clubs – including Morecambe’s former Northern Premier League fellow members Bangor City – who all opposed the edict from the Welsh FA) had to start all over again not just away from Newport but actually in a different country – hence the `Exiles’ tag. They did this because they realised that membership of the Welsh League would mean an end to any further progression: and they also wanted to get back to where they once were: the Football League. But despite enormous difficulties, they have also achieved this aim. Hats off to them.

So how come MK Dons have never had to do any of this?

How come indeed. Crystal Palace are the Eagles; Norwich City the Canaries; Brighton & Hove Albion the Seagulls. Milton Keynes should be known as the Cuckoos.  They are the team who – to their eternal shame – the football authorities in Britain allowed to initially masquerade as another club altogether and physically move seventy miles up the M1 from where that former club: Wimbledon – could once be found. In doing so, they by-passed the normal gruelling ordeal of winning successive promotions through the lower leagues until the final – and initially very distant – goal of EFL membership is achieved. It shouldn’t have happened, end of story. AFC Wimbledon – the Phoenix of the original club, we must remember – have had to do this the hard way.

Last time the Milton Keynes outfit crossed the path of Morecambe FC, I wrote nothing about them at all and I’m going to follow that example again today. I would like to say that my objection to the cuckoo club which was allowed to steal the old Wimbledon’s identity lock, stock and barrel is so powerful that I made an ethical stand today to boycott the match. But that would not be true. I was actually working on my Better Half’s stall at the Drill Hall in Ulverston all day as part of the Dickensian Festival in the town as I promised her I would long before I knew who the Shrimps’ opponents would be today.  But if I had to deliberately select a game I did not want to see this season, this would be the one.

Morecambe lost. Two-nil down at half time; four-nil down at the end. As a result, they fell to twentieth place in League One; two points above the drop zone.

As for the opposition – who cares?

I have only one thing to say about them:

LONG LIVE AFC WIMBLEDON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Morecambe: 20 Jökull Andrésson; 2 Ryan McLaughlin (22 Liam Gibson 45’); 3 Greg Leigh; 4 Anthony O’Connor (C); 6 Callum Jones; 7 Wes McDonald; 15 Ryan Delaney; 17 Jonah Ayunga; 19 Shane McLoughlin (Y); 25 Alfie McCalmont; 28 Courtney Duffus (24 Arthur Gnahoua 45’).

Subs Not Used:  12 André da Silva Mendes; 8 Toumani Diagouraga; 18 Adam Phillips; 21 Ryan Cooney; 31 Scott Wooten.

Ref: Rebecca Welch.

Att: 3,700.