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Show Me the Way to Plough Lane: The Remarkable Story of Wimbledon FC's Return Home
Show Me the Way to Plough Lane ultimate story of football fan power. It is the story of how Wimbledon reclaimed its football club and brought it back to the heart of its community after years of nomadic existence. It retraces the club's history from its genesis on Wimbledon Common to Plough Lane, the place Wimbledon FC called home for the best part of a century. After rumours of mergers and relocations, the club ground-shared after the Taylor Report. A decade passed with the fans sold lie after lie until the club was ripped from its community and re-sited many miles away. Not only was the club homeless, it was now dead. A group of fans who were at the heart of protests against the move decided to start again - from the very bottom if necessary. And they vowed to bring football back to Wimbledon, to where it all started. After an absence of almost 30 years, the side finally returned home - just a long ball away from where the original ground sat, in Plough Lane.
352 pages, Hardcover
Published November 29, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 31, 2021
When many people around the world hear of Wimbledon, they naturally think of tennis or The Wombles. The South West London suburb has been synonymous with both for years to people all around the world, however there is another very famous part to Wimbledon and that is, its famous unfashionable football team who were famously entitled ‘The Crazy Gang’ for their mad antics starting in the 80s that took them from non-league football to winning the FA Cup in only 11 years against the mighty Liverpool FC, almost certainly the greatest ever FA Cup shock of all time.
Wimbledon FC for many years were considered by many as the rag tag Sunday football team with a small little ground in Plough Lane where the likes of Man United, Liverpool, Arsenal and Spurs hated to play. Wimbledon FC continued to defy the odds at the top level for many years and beat the cream of the crop of English football both home and away on a regular basis. However, behind the scenes a succession of club owners wanted to either merge the team with some of the bigger more glamourous London teams or move them miles from their South London roots to the likes of Dublin, Cardiff and a horrible new town in Buckinghamshire who didn’t have a football league team of their own.
Ultimately, despite the club fans (with support from the footballing community around the world) mounting campaigns to stop any merger or any move (or franchising of the club as it became known), an independent panel set up by the Football Association in 2002 decided that Wimbledon FC remaining in Wimbledon was ‘Not in the Wider Interests of Football’ and sanctioned the club owners to move the club 60 miles north to the town of concrete cows in Buckinghamshire and effectively Franchise the team out and ultimately renaming them.
After many years of battling against selling their club out, the fans went off and created their own team and called it AFC Wimbledon. They started out once again at the very bottom of the footballing pyramid with the aim to being able to return to the English Football League within 12 years and ultimately to return football to Wimbledon at a Stadium that they could call their own and to retain the history of Wimbledon FC for generations to come. Again they defied all of the odds and did it in 9 years !!!
‘Show Me The Way To Plough Lane’ by Gary Jordan, is a book written by a life long fan of Wimbledon FC / AFC Wimbledon and Gary takes us through the journey of Wimbledon FC from the 1800’s and their formation up on Wimbledon Common (The Famous Home of the Wombles), through their time as a very successful non league football team that took on and beat some of the greatest professional teams in the 70s in Cup Football, to getting elected into the Football League and the creation of the infamous Crazy Gang that took the club to the summit of English Football and created household names in the likes of Fash The Bash, Vinnie ‘Psycho’ Jones, and Dennis Wise.
From here and following the tragic Hillsborough Disaster, Gary tells us about how Wimbledon were forced to move from their run down 18000 capacity home in Plough Lane, Wimbledon to ground share with rivals Crystal Palace and with owner Sam Hamman looking for a permanent move anywhere but seemingly back to Merton he eventually sold the club on to Norwegian owners who refused to listen to fans or the footballing community as a whole and moved the club on to create Franchise FC.
With the fans stunned, they quickly dusted themselves down and Gary provides great insight into how a group of fans all came together in relatively short order to create AFC Wimbledon as a fans owned club, instilling the history of the old Wimbledon into their veins and finding a non league stadium in the form of Kingsmeadow in Kingston to start their journey back to the football league and ultimately Wimbledon. Between the fans, the local council and former players, they worked hard, raised millions of pounds to fund the club using innovative ways, increased awareness of this small team from South London and despite all the odds (including the current Prime Minister attempting to block their return to Wimbledon for his own political gain !), AFC Wimbledon returned to Plough Lane and an amazing new stadium in 2020, nearly 30 years after they last played a game in Plough Lane. With the backdrop of the Covid pandemic that spread around the world, their first season at Plough Lane was played behind closed doors, but in August 2021 finally, over 9000 fans got to see a professional match at Plough Lane and what a game that was (a 3-3 draw v Bolton Wanderers).
In his book Gary provides great insights on the turmoil that the fans (and the club) went through to try and return to playing football in Wimbledon and he provides great interludes throughout his book from Wimbledon fans young and old, who talk openly about their experiences of following their club from Plough Lane to Selhurst Park, to Kingsmeadow and back to Plough Lane again, from non league to Premier league back to non league and up again to Football league.
To read this book you do not have to be a fan of AFC Wimbledon or even a football fan to enjoy it. It is full of passion, turmoil, excitement and tears as it tells the tale of one of the most unfanciable football teams the world has ever seen, that has refused to die and has always come back stronger and stronger with every challenge it faces. It is a real page turner and fascinating to learn about the feelings of football fans that they have for their club, their desire to just be able to go and watch a football match in the local town and to succeed where so many others have failed.
It is at this this point that yes, I confess I am a massive AFC Wimbledon fan, I have had a season ticket since the early 1980s and have followed my team through the good, the bad and the ugly and never waivered in my support for them. However putting aside my loyalties and speaking as a book reviewer, this is an excellent read and I would like to award ‘Show Me The Way To Plough Lane’ by Gary Jordan, a ‘Witterings of a Cruise Ship Reader’ rating of 11 out of 10 and can highly recommend it for anyone to read at anytime, whether on holiday or just at home. This is a fantastic book that will leave you not wanting to put it down and keep turning the pages.
The book can be purchased in hardback only at the moment via Amazon for £12.35 but at 350 pages long it is well worth it.
If you are interested in finding out more about AFC Wimbledon, or The Dons Trust Board (who is the fans Trust Board that owns the club), why not visiting the following 2 websites :
www.afcwimbledon.co.uk
https://thedonstrust.org
You never know from reading Gary’s book, you may start supporting AFC Wimbledon or they could become your second team !!
As well as reading this review on Goodreads, you can also read this review and many other book reviews that I have done on my website, The Witterings of a Cruise Ship Reader;
https://thewitteringsofacruiseshiprea...
Happy Reading and a Very Happy AFC Wimbledon New Year
Canberralover
Wimbledon FC for many years were considered by many as the rag tag Sunday football team with a small little ground in Plough Lane where the likes of Man United, Liverpool, Arsenal and Spurs hated to play. Wimbledon FC continued to defy the odds at the top level for many years and beat the cream of the crop of English football both home and away on a regular basis. However, behind the scenes a succession of club owners wanted to either merge the team with some of the bigger more glamourous London teams or move them miles from their South London roots to the likes of Dublin, Cardiff and a horrible new town in Buckinghamshire who didn’t have a football league team of their own.
Ultimately, despite the club fans (with support from the footballing community around the world) mounting campaigns to stop any merger or any move (or franchising of the club as it became known), an independent panel set up by the Football Association in 2002 decided that Wimbledon FC remaining in Wimbledon was ‘Not in the Wider Interests of Football’ and sanctioned the club owners to move the club 60 miles north to the town of concrete cows in Buckinghamshire and effectively Franchise the team out and ultimately renaming them.
After many years of battling against selling their club out, the fans went off and created their own team and called it AFC Wimbledon. They started out once again at the very bottom of the footballing pyramid with the aim to being able to return to the English Football League within 12 years and ultimately to return football to Wimbledon at a Stadium that they could call their own and to retain the history of Wimbledon FC for generations to come. Again they defied all of the odds and did it in 9 years !!!
‘Show Me The Way To Plough Lane’ by Gary Jordan, is a book written by a life long fan of Wimbledon FC / AFC Wimbledon and Gary takes us through the journey of Wimbledon FC from the 1800’s and their formation up on Wimbledon Common (The Famous Home of the Wombles), through their time as a very successful non league football team that took on and beat some of the greatest professional teams in the 70s in Cup Football, to getting elected into the Football League and the creation of the infamous Crazy Gang that took the club to the summit of English Football and created household names in the likes of Fash The Bash, Vinnie ‘Psycho’ Jones, and Dennis Wise.
From here and following the tragic Hillsborough Disaster, Gary tells us about how Wimbledon were forced to move from their run down 18000 capacity home in Plough Lane, Wimbledon to ground share with rivals Crystal Palace and with owner Sam Hamman looking for a permanent move anywhere but seemingly back to Merton he eventually sold the club on to Norwegian owners who refused to listen to fans or the footballing community as a whole and moved the club on to create Franchise FC.
With the fans stunned, they quickly dusted themselves down and Gary provides great insight into how a group of fans all came together in relatively short order to create AFC Wimbledon as a fans owned club, instilling the history of the old Wimbledon into their veins and finding a non league stadium in the form of Kingsmeadow in Kingston to start their journey back to the football league and ultimately Wimbledon. Between the fans, the local council and former players, they worked hard, raised millions of pounds to fund the club using innovative ways, increased awareness of this small team from South London and despite all the odds (including the current Prime Minister attempting to block their return to Wimbledon for his own political gain !), AFC Wimbledon returned to Plough Lane and an amazing new stadium in 2020, nearly 30 years after they last played a game in Plough Lane. With the backdrop of the Covid pandemic that spread around the world, their first season at Plough Lane was played behind closed doors, but in August 2021 finally, over 9000 fans got to see a professional match at Plough Lane and what a game that was (a 3-3 draw v Bolton Wanderers).
In his book Gary provides great insights on the turmoil that the fans (and the club) went through to try and return to playing football in Wimbledon and he provides great interludes throughout his book from Wimbledon fans young and old, who talk openly about their experiences of following their club from Plough Lane to Selhurst Park, to Kingsmeadow and back to Plough Lane again, from non league to Premier league back to non league and up again to Football league.
To read this book you do not have to be a fan of AFC Wimbledon or even a football fan to enjoy it. It is full of passion, turmoil, excitement and tears as it tells the tale of one of the most unfanciable football teams the world has ever seen, that has refused to die and has always come back stronger and stronger with every challenge it faces. It is a real page turner and fascinating to learn about the feelings of football fans that they have for their club, their desire to just be able to go and watch a football match in the local town and to succeed where so many others have failed.
It is at this this point that yes, I confess I am a massive AFC Wimbledon fan, I have had a season ticket since the early 1980s and have followed my team through the good, the bad and the ugly and never waivered in my support for them. However putting aside my loyalties and speaking as a book reviewer, this is an excellent read and I would like to award ‘Show Me The Way To Plough Lane’ by Gary Jordan, a ‘Witterings of a Cruise Ship Reader’ rating of 11 out of 10 and can highly recommend it for anyone to read at anytime, whether on holiday or just at home. This is a fantastic book that will leave you not wanting to put it down and keep turning the pages.
The book can be purchased in hardback only at the moment via Amazon for £12.35 but at 350 pages long it is well worth it.
If you are interested in finding out more about AFC Wimbledon, or The Dons Trust Board (who is the fans Trust Board that owns the club), why not visiting the following 2 websites :
www.afcwimbledon.co.uk
https://thedonstrust.org
You never know from reading Gary’s book, you may start supporting AFC Wimbledon or they could become your second team !!
As well as reading this review on Goodreads, you can also read this review and many other book reviews that I have done on my website, The Witterings of a Cruise Ship Reader;
https://thewitteringsofacruiseshiprea...
Happy Reading and a Very Happy AFC Wimbledon New Year
Canberralover
May 8, 2022
Amazing book about an amazing story
put-down
August 24, 2025rec john green
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews