THERE HARDLY COULD have been a more fortuitous time for the AFC Wimbledon juggernaut to park up at The Crabble. Dover Athletic need to find £23,000 in the next 30 days or so to survive, so they were delighted to quadruple their average attendance and boost the coffers by about £7,000, even if the £2,250 prize for reaching the FA Cup second qualifying round eluded them.
AFC Wimbledon supporters, no strangers to losing a club, happily contributed to the half-time begging bucket. An upwardly mobile club, their continual fundraising to pay the mortgage contrasts sharply with Dover’s deadline.
The trouble harks back to May 2002. As the Dons Trust deserted Milton Keynes-bound Wimbledon to start afresh, the Dover Athletic Supporters Trust (DAST) were taking over and entering into an agreement to pay creditors 30p in the £1, totalling £120,000, over five years.
Last month, creditors invoked a clause that had promised an early payment out of any substantial progress in the FA Cup. Simon Harris, the DAST chairman, said that the cash from the first-round tie against Oxford United in November 2002 had been used to fund that season. “We hadn’t thought about it,” he said, “because for ten years we’d consistently lost at home against lower division opposition.”
That tradition continued on Saturday, when Dover, the Ryman Premier side, succumbed to the unbeaten Ryman South leaders. Richard Butler, given much space on the right of a crowded penalty area, drilled home a rare on-target shot from either side during a full-blooded first half in which Peter Yeo, the referee, showed seven yellow cards after a series of late tackles and squabbles.
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In a better second half, AFC Wimbledon looked the more likely to score, on the break. Butler twice saw strikes ruled out for offside and had penalty claims turned down. At the other end, Michael Smissen should have directed his header closer to goal when unmarked 12 yards out, but Dover failed to capitalise on Craig Cloke’s long throw.
So the dream of meeting Milton Keynes Dons in the first round lives on, although Dave Anderson, the AFC Wimbledon manager, has other priorities. “The dream is to win promotion. We’ve won the FA Cup before, but we’ve never won Ryman Division One,” he said.
Dover (4-4-2): P Hyde (sub: P Mullin, 40min) — S Hamshare (sub: M Smissen, 46) D Readings, N Humphrey, C Cloke — T Hickman, D Skelton, M Carruthers, J Rogers — C Wilkins (sub: C Wright, 83), S Welford. Substitutes not used: R Smidmore, R Spiller. Booked: Cloke, Skelton, Hickman, Welford.
AFC Wimbledon (3-5-2): D Naisbitt — G Wilson, A Howard, J Conroy — S Gibson, J Barrie-Bates, C Gell, G Bolger (sub: N Roddis 87), R Gray — R Ursell (sub: J Sheerin, 75), R Butler. Substitutes not used: P Smith, M Woolnar, J Taylor. Booked: Gray, Butler, Bolger, Gell.
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Referee: P Yeo.