Conroy wrote:
Wigan Athletic. In 20 years (of which I've spent 15 watchig the club) we have changed our crest from the traditional tree and crown to the town coat of arms and back again. Two changes in total. We have never changed our home colours or our name and when we moved grounds we moved less than a mile away.
Let me see now.... 1977-1982: blue and white stripes. 1982-1986: solid blue. 1986-1989: solid white with a few blue bits. 1989-1993: solid blue again. 1993-1995: black and blue stripes (can't beat that Inter vibe, eh?). 1995-1998: Blue with white sleeves and green stripes (those mid '90s fashion crime strips...) 1998-2000: Blue again. 2000-2002: Blue and green hoops? Eeeuwwww.... What the heck were you thinking? 2002-2003: Blue with more green bits. 2003-2006: Back to blue and white stripes. 2006-2007: Blue with white sleeves. 2007-2010: More blue and white stripeyness. 2010-2011: Blue with a token single white stripe. 2011-2012: Solid blue. 2012-2013: Blue and White stripes with added black bits now. Coo - very slimming....
Nope, no cynical cashing in going on by a club trying to maximise revenue streams by frequently changing it's image and identity going on there at all...
And FWIW MK have never played in any colours at all other than all white home, all red away and all black 3rd. We have chopped and changed our colours far, far less than any other team in football has in the period of our existence i.e. not at all. Pipe/Smoke interface time.
Conroy wrote:
MK Dons purchased a club, shut it down and moved 60 miles away to another town and county.
No, let's try keeping to those inconvenient facts again please... Wimbledon FC moved 60 miles to survive. They renamed themselves to MK 2 years later after almost all of those lifelong "Wimbledon" fans had long deserted them to support another club called "Wimbledon" instead and them then keeping the name "Wimbledon" too served no further purpose other than irony.
Conroy wrote:
They then changed their name, crest (changed completely not just updated) AND colours before attempting to claim they won the FA Cup in the late 80's despite being formed in 2004. Not quite the same is it really?
Again - they were forced to move to MK and Wimbledon fans all disassociated themselves from them. To stand any hope of prospering they needed to replace the old fans that had all abandoned them with fans from the new community they had been forced into being a part of. What else are they going to do in that situation? Touche.
And we did win the cup in 1988 - our chants say so, so ner
Conroy wrote:
If nobody wanted Wimbledon FC then they should have folded and another club from the lower leagues should have been allowed to be promoted into the football league. A new club should not have been created and just dropt into the football league without earning it.
Maybe so, but the football league allowed it so again: what would you expect the people running Wimbledon FC at the time to have done? If there is muck to be thrown in this affair then it needs directing at the FA and football league, not at the club and it's management who simply did what they had to do and what anyone else would have done in the circumstances. Do AFC fans smash up the toilets down at the Football League headquarters? No, they do not.
Conroy wrote:
How did you feel about Crusaders when they moved from Bridgend to Wrexham? If you disagree with any part of what happened there then you can't support MK Dons as the same thing happened but on a far greater and worse scale.
It sucked at the time big style. But then Crusaders were never more than a manufactured club on a massive scale anyway so I see no comparison.
Conroy wrote:
EDIT - And if someone came in now and bought Wigan Athletic before announcing that we were moving to somewhere north of Leeds and being called Yorkshire Athletic whilst playing in green and yellow and having a white rose as a crest then I would spend the rest of my life wanting them to fall flat on their face.
If your club was bankrupt, with no stadium and a tiny and ever-dwindling supporter base (a bit like Warriors, arf, arf
) who were all deserting you to set up a brand new club also called "Wigan", was slipping inexorably down the leagues and was being forced to play all it's "home" games in Rochdale or Oldham, and someone from Leeds offered them a tonne of money, loads of new supporters and a fantastic state-of-the-art stadium of their own to go and play there instead then what reasonably would you expect them to do? That question once again....
