As we face AFC Wimbledon at their brand new pad down in Plough Lane on Saturday, I thought it would be a good idea to have a chat with a Dons supporter, to get the low down on what’s happening down in SW17.
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I am pleased to say that this week I had the honour to spend some time in the company of Wimbledon aficionado, Ray Armfield.
Barry – What is
your role at the Dons
Ray – I am one of the match day programme
editors and also a stadium tour guide down at Plough Lane.
Barry – Tell us a little about
your manager please.
Ray – Mark Robinson,
our former youth team manager promoted up to the first team, he’s certainly
kept faith the youngsters that he managed, brought them through, they are now
around the 20/21 mark and one or two are certainly doing very well for us, very
pleased with him so far.
Barry – Fans back, new ground for you all, I notice that the attendances are quite buoyant, you must be pleased.
Ray – Yes, we are back, I say that I
could show you 100 photographs of Plough Lane, but you really need to get in to
see it, touch it, feel it to get the full ‘Plough Lane thing’.
It’s been great, the fans have really bought into it, crowds are averaging over 7,500, which is great from where we used to be and to give you a sense of size and scale, when you come to visit us on Saturday, you could have fitted our entire old ground into our main stand. Happy days all round.
Barry – How have away
attendances been, has there been a lot of interest from fans of visiting
clubs to come to the new place?
Ray – There has been, yeah. On the
away fans side we were given 1,400 capacity originally, we’re trying a few things
out with the club and the local police, but nobody gets less than 1,000, again,
unlike our previous ground the views are very good, no pillars or posts in the
way to obstruct, everyone gets a seat and you can see what’s happening on the pitch
unrestricted.
Apart from Burton Albion, who brought three or four hundred, everyone
else is near the thousand mark and I understand that you have sold your entire
allocation for Saturday, so that’s great also for the atmosphere.
Barry – Your start to the season was
good, what are your overall hopes for the coming campaign?
Ray – The season started off very
well, perhaps people would say the new stadium bounce or the fact that we were
an unknown quantity with all the new players in the team.
What I would maybe like to say is ‘not where are we going to finish’ but for once not have to look downwards every time I view the League 1 table.
Barry – Jack Rudoni and Will
Nightingale are your two top scorers, though Nightingale is a defender, how
have your strikers been performing this season?
Ray – In terms of where the goals
are coming from, when we lost Joe Piggott in the summer, Mark Robinson said
that we couldn’t bring in a like for like replacement and that the goals had to
be shared around. He was right, because when Guinness-Walker scored for us on
Saturday against Sheffield Wednesday, he became our 15th different
goal scorer this season. The goals are certainly being shared around.
If we are missing one or two players in key areas, Will Nightingale at the
back and Ollie Palmer up top, are both out, Palmer is our target man and he’s
the only one we’ve got, on Saturday we had no out and out striker and had to
play with a false 9 and the ball just kept coming back at us, hopefully Aaron
Pressley is fit for Saturday (he played Tuesday away at Lincoln and scored the
only goal of the game).
Barry – Luke McCormick, I liked him
at Bristol Rovers last season, he was on loan from Chelsea, you’ve signed him
permanently and he’s doing great again I see with two goals and four assists.
Ray – Jack Rudoni, as we mentioned is doing well for us, but Luke McCormick was very much seen by the boss as the Jewel in the Crown, or a marquee signing if you like. Maybe at the moment we haven’t quite seen McCormick at his best, but that’s not his fault he’s had to play a number of various roles, including playing off the loan target man, but when you watch him you can see the quality he’s got and he brings out quality in other players as well.
Barry – Anyone else we should keep
our eyes on?
Ray – One player that’s really got
bums off seats is Ayoub Assal, he’s only about 5’ 8, a home grown talent, gets
among the goals, gets in peoples faces, I think if you were to say ‘which of
all your youngsters will be the next cab off the rank’ in terms of moving to a
bigger club, it might be him.
He’s certainly one to look out for.
Barry – What’s the style of football under Robinson, are you playing it long or passing it around a bit?
Ray – We are trying to pass it around a bit now, our best game of the season was when we beat Oxford United 3-1 at home, the move to our third goal started almost on our own goal line, there were five or six passes, the ball never left the floor until Jack Rudoni stroked it home, every single one of those players was an academy product.
I’m hoping that if people look at us now, they won’t just think, oh Wimbledon all long balls and short hair cuts, we’ve moved on a bit from there and that goal, I hope, typifies the way that we want to play.
Barry - The comeback kings, strong finishers to games, never say die, good spirit in the camp?
Ray – We’re sort of getting a bit of a tag as the ‘come back kings’ sadly most of the time it’s out of necessity, we seem to do the worst things first and then have to rescue ourselves.
One thing that Mark Robinson does do, he tends to focus on the whole squad and not just the starting eleven, when he brings substitutes on he calls them ‘finishers’ rather than substitutes as that’s how he sees their job as finishing the game off, I have to say his record shows that he gets that right more often than he gets it wrong.
Barry – We’ve recently played Bolton Wanderers, our neighbours, their manager, Ian Evatt, made claims that they are the best side in the division, I know you have played them. Ray, do you think Bolton are the best team in League 1?
Ray – When we played Bolton it was the opening day of the season and it was a 3-3 draw. It was quite a lively game, as the score line suggests, I’ve seen one or two teams since, obviously, including one or two who are near the top.
Plymouth have surprised me a bit and I was quite impressed with Sheffield Wednesday on Saturday, up to the point where we brought our ‘finishers’ on and they didn’t seem to know what to do, which after talking to a couple of their fans after the game appears to be an issue for them, but are Bolton the best team in League 1? No, I don’t think so with what I’ve seen.
Barry – Promotion tips then, Ray please
Ray – I’ve seen Plymouth beat us, I’m not sure that they’ve got the staying power to be up there at the end of the season.
To be honest I can’t really see beyond yourselves and Sunderland for the two automatics spots, but I think the playoffs might be anyone of about ten teams.
Barry – Would you include Wimbledon in that ten for the playoffs challenge?
Ray – If I’m honest no, we’d really need three or four players in January to put us in the frame seriously, January is not always the greatest time to go shopping because there is an element of panic buying from a lot of clubs and we simply don’t have the money to panic buy, or even buy sometimes.
So no, I’m hoping that we’ll concentrate on midish table and not have the worry of looking down as we have had in past seasons.
Barry – A prediction for Saturday
Ray – I’m kind of hoping that it might go the same way as the Sheffield Wednesday game, I can see you guys taking the lead, maybe our finishers to come on and grab a draw.
I’m going to go for 1-1.
Some information for those travelling down, away fans have two designated matchday pubs - The Earlsfield and The Halfway House - both close to Earlsfield train station and about a ten minute walk from the stadium along Garratt Lane.
Thank you to Ray for his time, lovely to chat and here’s wishing the Dons a great season, excluding Saturday and the return on the 5th March of course.
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