MIKE WALTERS
9 DEC 2016
Neal Ardley wants Hollywood superstar Brad Pitt to play his part in the planned movie about Wimbledon’s resurrection – so his wife can swoon at the hero.
You’ve probably read the script already. A small club with a disparate cast of genial rogues and rascals rises from obscurity to win the FA Cup but is sold down the river and relocated to a retail park 60 miles away.
Ardley swims the Nile, wins the Grand National and climbs Everest to hunt down the dastardly, faceless men who stole his beloved club’s identity and takes the reformed Crazy Gang on a cathartic rampage through every division from park football to the Premier League.
Well, that’s the Tinseltown version.
“I have asked, if I get a small part in the film, if we can get Brad Pitt in to play me, just for the fact my wife would fancy me again,” said Ardley. “I’d be over the moon with that.”
Pitt is thought to be checking his diary, but there is no need for casting directors to agonise over who plays the bad guys.
Hannibal Lecter, Darth Vader and Lord Voldemort have all been knocked into a cocked hat by MK Dons, the evil stepsons who kidnapped Wimbledon’s history and turned it into a franchise on a retail park.
Today, just 14 years after fans recycled the carcass of their club in a pub and AFC Wimbledon was reborn in the Combined Counties League, the ninth tier of English football, the real Dons – accept no imitations – meet their unloved impersonators in the League for the first time.
Ardley’s reconstituted AFC Wimbledon go to the Moo Camp, in the city of concrete cows, on the fringes of League One’s play-off places, while their bastard offspring are nearer the dotted line below deck.
Both sides have steered clear of trash talk, but there remains an undercurrent of bitterness to the ‘derby’ that shames the Football Association’s wise men who let it happen.
“Win or lose, 90 minutes in Milton Keynes will not define our season – and it will not define the AFC Wimbledon story,” said Ardley.
“Yes, it’s a game with an edge to it, and I wouldn’t say it’s lost its ‘teeth’ because there is still a lot of emotion attached to it, but we’ve moved on and up. We are over-achieving massively for a club whose budget is probably the lowest in League One.
“But we won promotion last season on a budget that was in the bottom third of our division so we are no strangers to defying the odds. If we lose today, we are not going to give up the ghost.
“We have a bunch of players who are throwing their heart and soul into this club and a bunch of supporters who aren’t just enjoying a fantastic story – AFC Wimbledon fans wrote the script themselves. There were grown men in tears when we won the play-off final at Wembley in May.
“But those were not just the tears of fans caught in the euphoria of seeing their team win promotion.
“When our fans were crying at Wembley, it wasn’t just because they love their club – it’s because they gave birth to it.
“AFC Wimbledon is the greatest expression of fan power in football.”
Wimbledon are leaping straight from the frying pan and into the fire after a sensational comeback at Curzon Ashton in the FA Cup second round last week, overturning a three-goal deficit in the last 10 minutes, live on TV.
Ardley was a model of restraint when Tom Elliott completed the turnaround with the 94th-minute winner – an object lesson to managers whose teams beat lesser-ranked opponents and then perform a war dance as if they have won the Cup itself – which happened in the first-ever meeting between Milton Keynes and the Dons.
“I didn’t celebrate our winning goal because a few yards up the touchline their manager John Flanagan had his head in his hands.
“And, when we were 3-0 down after 80 minutes, that was me,” said Ardley.
“I think humility is often the best way forward because there’s a bloke in the technical area next door who’s suffering.”
not mine.credit and source: MIRROR UK
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