After news last night that we had just under 1,000 tickets left for Saturday's game against Torquay that figure has now been reduced to around 650 after today's sales were taken into account. I worked on the hotline tonight and it was busy but the line wasn't blocked for the whole time.
So if you don't have a ticket and wish to ensure that you do have one for Saturday you need to either try the ticket hotline tomorrow between 11:00 and 16:00 or turn up in person between 10:00 and 16:00.
If you do book your ticket on the hotline and need to collect them on Saturday please make sure that you arrive early on Saturday so that the people handing out the tickets also get into the ground for kick off.
Roscoe D'Sane has been interviewed by "This is Devon" about the weekend's game and he talks very fondly about his time with us to read the full interview click here.
The official site has posted that less than 1,000 tickets are available for Saturday's game against Torquay united. So if you haven't got your terrace tickets yet and are planning to come along on Saturday it maybe advisable to try and get through on the ticket Hotline either Thursday or Friday or arrive early on Saturday.
With us having sold 2,700 tickets already and Torquay having been allocated 850 tickets their should be a cracking atmosphere at the game.
I am putting up the following message ahead of Saturday's game which once again should be read alongside the programme article at the weekend about needing to raise around £100,000 a season. If you can help on Saturday Paul Jeater or keep an eye out on Saturday for ticket sellers around the game.
"We will be having a matchday raffle on Saturday to help towards the Club/Trust's fundraising target, as long as I can find some people prepared to give up a hour before the game, to help sell tickets. Looks likely that the first prize will be an AFC Wimbledon shirt signed by the squad. If anyone can spare some time Saturday, email me at essexwomble at aol dot com"After the hope that January would put us right into the middle of the Championship hunt it looked like and remaining hope that we would catch Chelmsford appeared to vanish last night after a 1-0 defeat to Boreham wood.
We knew the patched up team would be up against it but we didn't have any clear cut chances and a single good finish by Boreham Wood in the second half was enough to seal the points.
The game also saw us with another new keeper when James Pullen on loan from Eastleigh made his debut for us. Most fans may remember that he was in goal for Fisher when we played against them in the playoff semi-final.
So out of a possible 21 points during January (7 games) we ended up with 11 points and 9 of them came from the first 3 games. The only good thing about last night was that the other two games were draws involving Horsham, AFC Hornchurch, Staines & Ramsgate.
Tonight we face Boreham wood in Ryman League action and as usual the Matchday service will be in operation. If you cant make the match you can follow all the action on here by clicking the Matchday link above. I should be able to post the team news by 19:30 and then all the action from Kick off at 19:45.
If you are attending the game don't forget you can either pick up your Torquay tickets if you have ordered them in advance or buy terrace tickets from the turnstiles after the game as per the instructions on the officials site.
Stuart Cash was tonight interviewed on BBC London's non-league show were he talks about the current injury situation as well as the attempt to get extra players in the clip lasts for 7 minutes 30 seconds and can be listened to by clicking here.
If you have access to Setanta TV you will be able to watch Torquay host Histon tonight (Kick off is at 19:45). Torquay currently sit 3rd in the league with Histon 9th. As you maybe aware Torquay signed 3 players on Friday including Roscoe.
Although I'm sure that Terry Brown will have already had Torquay watched it's handy to be able to get an idea of perhaps the style that they will play against us when we clash.
If you attended the game and purchased a programme you may have read Erik's notes where he mentions Mark Davis article about the importance of Fundraising at the club.
To Sumarise the club needs to raise over £100,000 per season in fundraising initiatives, to give you an idea the combined effort's of The Dons Draw and Golden Goals raise around £60,000 per season so every other fundraising event we can do helps the club. From loose change collections to silent auctions.
Two initiatives that you can get involved in via this site which help the club are the Amazon Shop and the live score to your mobile service.
The Amazon Shop - The amazon shop is a way in helping the club but doesn't cost you anything extra all you need to do is click one of the amazon button's on the site and then undertake your shopping as normal once your order is completed a commission is added to the itmustbedons.com account and this money is paid directly to the club. To give you an idea for the period October to December 2007 I have passed £300 to the club. So if you ever use Amazon make sure you click on one of the links on here first. why not have a browse on the various items now.
Live Score To Your Mobile Service - This is a premium rate text service which enables you to either subscribe to be sent every message or you can just send a message to get the current score.
If you Subscribe you will be sent the team line up, a message after each goal as well as the Half Time & Full Time score each message costs 25 pence to subscribe to the subscription service text "AFCW Goals Start" to the number 60030 if you wish to stop the service text "AFCW Goals Stop" to the number 60030 and the service will stop immediately.
If you just wish to be sent the current score as a one off message just text "AFCW Goals" to the number 60030 and you will be sent the score at that time.
Once again all proceeds that are paid to me from this service are passed directly onto the club. If you are not the bill payer of th mobile please make sure that you get the bill payers permission before using the service.
If you have any questions about the service please send me an e-mail on paul@itmustbedons.com and I will answer any questions that you have.
I thought it would be a good time to have a look at the points that were required in the past two seasons to either win the league or make the playoffs. I have also added an projected column for this season based on current home and away form over past 6 games projected forward over the remaining games.
| Final Standings | Projected Standings | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pos | Team | 05/06 | Team | 06/07 | Team | 07/08 |
| 1 | Braintree | 94 | Hampton & Richmond | 82 | Chelmsford | 98 |
| 2 | Heybridge | 87 | Bromley | 80 | Horsham | 83 |
| 3 | Fisher | 85 | Chelmsford | 77 | AFC Wimbledon | 75 |
| 4 | AFC Wimbledon | 77 | Billericay | 77 | Harrow | 71 |
| 5 | Hampton & Richmond | 75 | AFC Wimbledon | 75 | AFC Hornchurch | 67 |
Yesterday afternoon we had a game that Jon Main had major say in both half's. In the first half he scored two goals which yet again showed us what a great player he is. The second half saw him pick up and injury and suggestions in the bar last night was it was a broken Bone in the foot and he could be out for around two months.
Yesterday we were 2-0 up at half time and Tonbridge scored twice in the second half, Straight after the break and then 20 minutes later to yet again see the points were shared between the clubs.
The Matchday Updates will be in operation this afternoon as we
face Tonbridge Angles in Ryman League action. Tonbridge have had a
number of player changes from the recent cup game so it will be a good
test for us.
The team news should be posted by around 14:30 and then all the action
from Kick off at 15:00 to follow the action click the Matchday link at
the top of the page.
If you have ordered tickets via the credit card hotline this week you can pick them up before the game today. If you are looking to buy tickets please go to the Official Site and see the details of where they will be sold after the game.
The AGM's will take place today at 12:00 in the Back bar for The Dons Trust and then for AFC Wimbledon Plc. If you are a member you can attend an vote and also hear a review of the past year.
Welcoming to the land of misleading headlines.
This afternoon Torquay United signed Roscoe Desane from Acrington
Stanley having signed from a League club he hasn't played in the FA
Trophy this season and potentially makes him eligible for next weekends
game against us in the FA Trophy.
I'm Sure we all hoped Roscoe would play at Kingsmeadow this
season but he could of selected a different game to make that return.
If you want to make sure of seeing next weeks game don't forget that tickets are on sale after the match tomorrow.
The Official Site has a fixture poster that you can download and display reminding people about our next 4 games, Tonbridge, Boreham wood, Torquay & Leyton. To download either the color or black and white version click here.
The official site wallpaper section has been updated and now you can have a wallpaper of Haydon, Jason Goodliffe or Marcus Gayle's goal at Maidenhead on your computer, to see these and other wallpapers click here.
This evening I was working on the ticket hotline and it clear that the Torquay game has caught the imagination of everyone and people are buying tickets in advance of the match.
Although tickets will be on sale after the game on Saturday why not take the easy option and keep an eye on the official site and use the ticket line when it is open you can pay by credit or debit card and then pick the tickets up before one of the next three games.
Tonight we face Billericay in the Ryman League. As usual the matchday updates will be in operation from around 19:30 with the team news and then all the action from 19:45 when the game kicks off.
If you are following the updates Online can I remind you that if you keep pressing refresh it can block my access and therefore I'm unable to post additional messages so you end up losing out, in most cases I cant post faster than every couple of minutes so if you are refreshing quicker than this you may be wasting your time.
Lets hope we are back on winning ways by the end of the evening.
If you are trying to work out if you can get to Billericay on Tuesday night by train the answer should be yes, and more importantly you should be able to get home as well.
Billericay is on a main commuter line from London Liverpool Street station so getting there is straight forward as trains are about every 10 minutes and takes just over 30 minutes.
I have listed below the time of trains that should get you to Billericay with enough time to get to the ground before kick off either walking or getting a cab.
| Depart Liverpool Street | 17:56 | 18:04 | 18:15 | 18:25 | 18:35 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arrive Billericay | 18:28 | 18:36 | 18:47 | 18:57 | 19:07 |
Once you arrive at Billericay the ground is about 1.5 miles away from the station and the link below shows a map should show you the walking route, but I would imagine that their will be a taxi rank outside that will be able to get you to the ground.
In terms of the return journey trains are a bit more limited and these are listed below: -| Depart Billericay | 22:01 | 22:31 | 23:01 | 33:31 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arrive Liverpool Street | 22:31 | 23:01 | 23:31 | 00:03 |
As we start to head into the final 3 months of the season the league is starting to hit a bit of a fixture backlog whilst Hendon have completed 27 games and only have 15 games left Horsham have only played 19 games meaning they still have 23 games to play.
The season has to finish by the last Saturday of April which is only 14 Saturday's left Horsham will be playing 2 games a week for the remainder of the season, this hasn't been helped with the fact they have had 2 games called off this week, as have Staines.
The cup runs that Horsham and Staines had in the first half of the season when they had a number of games called off could begin to have an impact on their challenge for a top five finish.
With us still being in the FA Trophy we still have dates where we wont be in league action and if we were to be extremely successful and progress through to the Semi Finals we would have to reschedule the games against Hendon & Chelmsford in March and have a very short space of time to arrange them. Hopefully the weather will hold off and we can get Tuesday's game at Billericay played to make sure we don't fall to far behind as well.
The Amazon shop on the site is an easy way for you to purchase items that you usually would from Amazon and at the same time helping the club. For each sale a commission is paid to the club, it wont cost you anything extra and all you need to do is click one of the links on the site and then do your shopping as normal.
Our current run of being unbeaten in the league came to an end today when we were beaten 3-2 at Folkestone.
The first half we clearly had the better of but we couldn't make the possession pay, at half time the talk was of maybe 1 goal being needed to win the game. If this was to be the case things weren't looking good when in the first minute of the second half Folkestone took the lead with a looping shot from the edge of the box.
Ten minutes later Folkestone extended their lead when a long throw was headed in, from the other end of the pitch it was difficult to tell if it was flicked on to a player in the middle or was headed straight in.
It looked like out fight back was on when on 65 minutes Steve Ferguson got on to a through ball and put the ball past the keeper and into the back of the net. Any hopes that the fightback would see points coming our way seemed to disappeared when on 86 minutes Folkestone had a free kick on the edge of the box and the Folkestone player expertly curled the ball into the top corner of the net giving Lee Butcher no chance.
With just over 5 minutes left on the clock it looked like any chance we had, had now gone but in the space of about 1 minute and a combined distance of 5 yards both Marcus Gayle & Steve Ferguson missed chances to score. First the ball was played straight across the front of goal and Marcus standing by the back post allowed it to go past him when he was just 3 yards from goal. Then in an almost identical situation Steve Ferguson was 2 yards out and in the center of goal forgot to touch the ball and it was cleared.
Then in the last minute we closed the gap to 3-2 when Jon Main headed home from close range, but once the game re-started their wasn't enough time for us to level the score so we came away pointless.
To be fair to Folkestone they played well being solid at the back and made the most of the few chances they had. With Staines Horsham and Hendon's games being called off this ended up being a defeat in one of our games in hand but seeing how we respond to this starting at Billericay on Tuesday is more important than the dropped points.
If this afternoon's game is on I will be providing the matchday update service via the matchday link above. The team news will be posted around 14:45 and all the action from kick off from 15:00.
Once the result of the pitch inspection is known I will also post this on the updates so everyone can know if the game is going ahead or not.Friday's edition of the South London Press had some good coverage as always, the articles are all on line and can be seen on the website by clicking here.
The articles include interviews with Mark Beard and Lee Butcher as well as comments from Terry Brown on the cup draw and Jason Goodliffe.
So if you don't live in South London you can still read what is being said in the local papers.
Tickets are now on Sale for the FA Trophy home game against Torquay on Saturday 2nd February as it says on the official site it is recommended that you purchase your tickets in advance. The easiest way to do this is send an application in by post, if your a seat season ticket holder and wish to reserve your seat you need to send in Voucher E.
The Credit Card hotline is open but just a reminder that this is just one line and therefore to a lot of people it appears that it is constantly engaged.
Full information on the full process can be seen by reading here.
As mentioned earlier last Night's Non-League Football show on BBC London 94.9fm featured both Terry Brown and Dave Anderson I have split the relevant section up into 8 clips and you can listen to them below: -
| Description | Size | Length | Listen |
|---|---|---|---|
| Introduction to the show | 552kb | 0M44S | Here |
| Terry Brown Interview | 4.4mb | 6m26s | Here |
| Jane L, Soundman & the boys say Thanks | 356kb | 0m30s | Here |
| Book Don Says Thanks | 376kb | 0m29S | Here |
| Lee & Nicky Say Thanks | 208kb | 0m18S | Here |
| Aideen Has the final Word | 540kb | 0m43s | Here |
| Dave Anderson about St Albans and getting the sack | 2.7mb | 4m03S | Here |
I hope everyone enjoyed that and well done to everyone who got messages read out.
Three games were scheduled to take place tonight in the rymans league with Horsham, Staines and Ramsgate visiting Harlow, East Thurrock and Tonbridge respectively but all three games have been called off due to the heavy rain that has been taking place. This means that Horsham will still have 23 games to play in the remainder of the season.
Last Night BBC London's Non League Football Show had interviews with Both Dave Anderson and Terry Brown, I will have up on the site tonight the best bits from these interviews and the discussions they had, so if you missed the original broadcast of this show you can listen again fairly shortly.
Well Lunchtime's FA Trophy draw gave us the draw a lot of us was hoping for on two front's first it was a home game and secondly we get to play Torquay who are currently 2nd in The Blue Square Premier Division.
The full draw is as follows:-
Ebbsfleet United v Weymouth/Kidderminster Harriers
Burton Albion v Histon/Cambridge United
Aldershot Town v Braintree Town/Workington
Farsley Celtic/Alfreton Town v York City/Grays Athletic
Stafford Rangers v Tamworth
Crawley Town v Droylsden
AFC Wimbledon v Torquay United
Bishop's Stortford/Halifax Town v Rushden & Diamonds
Torquay United progressed at the weekend after winning 2-1 at Newport County on Saturday.
The draw for the 3rd round of the FA Trophy takes place at around 11:00 today although it could be published at anytime from about 11:15 onwards. As soon as I here what the draw is I will post it on the matchday updates so if you are at work and cant get onto the Internet due to firewalls but have access to a mobile that has Internet or WAP on it you can use either of the following url's to find out the information.
Web Mobile - http://www.matchdayupdates.com/team/afcw
WAP Mobile - http://www.matchdayupdates.com/mobile/afcw
if you have a waap phone bookmark the page so that you don't have to type it in each time.
In the run up to the draw you might want to try the draw predictor that I added yesterday all you need to do is click here and this will provide you with a team we have been drawn against you can re-draw it if you want.
Once again Dons Online were present yesterday capturing all the glory of the game on video. Here is a suggestion you might like to try that you may find improves your viewing experience. First download the full zip file and extract it to a location of your choice. For yesterday's game this will give you 29 separate clips.
If your a Windows user open Windows Media Player and drag all the clips into the play list section of the player.
If your a Mac user their is a brilliant media player called VLC this works in the same way and select open file and then select the directory where you have saved the files, don't select any files just the folder, this will add all the clips.
Now hit play and sit back and watch the full highlights, who needs Match of The Day on a Saturday night or Sunday early morning re-run.
With the draw for the last 16 of the FA Trophy being made tomorrow lunchtime I thought it would be worth putting on my own draw to see who we might get.
It's no way near as complicated or long as the standard FA / UEFA / FIFA cup draws but part of the reason is that I didn't have a goldfish bowl to hand.
Anyway to see who and where we might get drawn at tomorrow click here
This afternoon we progressed in the Trophy following an excellent 4-0 demolition of fellow Ryman Premier League side Tonbridge Angles.
With a large crowd packed into the ground the game was delayed by 15 minutes and it was 15 minutes into the game we took the lead, Daniel Webb fired in from around 15 yards.
With 35 minutes gone we were awarded a penalty for handball, Mark Debolla stepped up but his effort was saved. As it looked like we would take a 1-0 lead into the half time break the 4th official indicated 1 additional minute of playing time and Mark Debolla saw this as an opportunity to correct his penalty error and gave us a 2-0 lead.
The second half turned out to be an almost identical copy of the first especially on the goal scoring side of things, first on 60 minutes Mark Debolla ran on to a through ball and slid the ball past the keeper and into the back of the net.
Tonbridge were then reduced to10 men when a player did a two footed tackle right in front of the dugouts any slim hope that Tonbridge had was now gone as we just kept running at them and Ferguson has a number of chances but a combination of saves by the keeper and dragging his shots wide.
Then in the final minute of the match Richard Jolly broke down the left hand side and placed the ball past the keeper it looked like it might just go wide but hit the inside of the post and rebounded back into the net. for a full time result of 4-0
This afternoon's game at Tonbridge has passed an early pitch inspection and so the game is due to be played. As mentioned yesterday updates will be taking place via the match day link above.
If you cant make the game and want to be kept informed of goals as they happen in the Ryman League can I recommend the "Non-League Football Live Site" where as Sky and BBC only get half time and full time results this service updates after each goal is scored so is another valid resource to keeping track of what is going on.
At this stage things are not looking great for our FA Trophy game going ahead on Saturday.
Reading posts on various guest books it would appear that it has been raining all day in Tonbridge and large parts of the pitch were water logged this afternoon.
Tonbridge have already announced that a pitch inspection will be held on Saturday morning at 09:30 as soon I hear any news I will post them on the updates service.
If the game does go ahead I will be providing the full match day service from around 14:45 with team news and then all the action from kick off at 15:00. If the game doesn't go ahead it will be re-scheduled for Tuesday evening let's hope thats not the case.
It's always difficult to try and predict how the games will work out especially with teams playing different number of matches ranging from Hendon's 2 in the remainder of the month to Staines who have 5 in the rest of the month.
To give people an idea of thee strength of each sides fixtures I have averaged the league position of each of their opponents so a very low score means they are playing teams currently top of the table whilst a high score means playing teams near the bottom of the table. So how does this all come out?
I Have listed teams who are against the lower placed team at the time and if teams are level in order how they currently sit in the table.
| Team | Average Position of Opponents |
|---|---|
| Chelmsford City | 17 |
| AFC Wimbledon | 17 |
| Staines Town | 13 |
| Harrow Borough | 13 |
| Margate | 12 |
| Ramsgate | 11 |
| Hendon | 10 |
| AFC Hornchurch | 10 |
| Horsham | 10 |
| Ashford Town | 10 |
With 5 wins and a draw over the past 6 games we currently sit top of the form guide and it has also pushed us right up the table and even without playing on Saturday we will still be in 3rd place without playing in League action.
The 16 points we have picked up out of a possible 18 is 4 points better than anyone else and 5 points better than Chelmsford, 6 better than Staines and Ramsgate and 8 points on Hendon.
One thing that people have said about us this season is our lack of goals but during the last 6 league games only Hendon have scored more with 16 compared to our 15 and our defense continues to perform as well as it has done all season.
If we can keep this form going the season is going to have an exciting second half to it.
Tonight we face Ashford Town (Middx) in Ryman League Action at Kingsmeadow. If you cant make the match the match day updates service will be in operation and you can follow all the action by clicking the Match day link above.
The game should be an entertaining encounter as we both currently sit first and second on the form guide with Ashford picking up 12 points out of the last 6 games compared to our 13 points. They are also strong away from home as 5 of these games have been away and they have won 4 of them but lets hope we can continue our run at the moment and put more pressure on the top two teams.
With fixtures coming thick and fast at this time of year I thought it would be good to have a look at the fixtures that the current top 10 league sides have in the league over the remaining part of the month.
| Date | Chelmsford | Hendon | AFC Wim | Ramsgate | Staines | Margate | Hornchurch | Harrow | Horsham | Ashford |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8th | ATFC (H) | BTFC (H) | AFC W (A) | |||||||
| 12th | HTFC (A) | RFC (A) | HeFC (H) | CAFC (A) | HUFC (A) | LFC (A) | ETUFC (H) | |||
| 15th | TAFC (A) | ETUFC (A) | HTFC (A) | |||||||
| 19th | LFC (H) | FIFC (A) | AFCH (A) | HoFC (H) | CAFC (H) | RFC (H) | BWFC (H) | STFC (A) | HeFC (A) | |
| 22nd | BTFC (A) | |||||||||
| 26th | CAFC (A) | HTFC (A) | TAFC (H) | HBFC (H) | HUFC ((A) | BWFC (A) | HoFC (A) | RFC (A) | AFCH (A) | FIFC (H) |
| 29th | HoFC (A) | AFCH (A) | STFC (H) | RFC (H) |
To help you out I have added the following Key so you know what the relevant codes stand for.
| Code | Team | Code | Team |
|---|---|---|---|
| AFCH | AFC Hornchurch | AFCW | AFC Wimbledon |
| ATFC | Ashford Town (Middx) | CAFC | Carshalton Athletic |
| CCFC | Chelmsford City | ETUFC | East Thurrock United |
| HeFC | Hendon | HoFC | Horsham |
| FIFC | Folkeston Invicta | HTFC | Harlow Town |
| HBFC | Harrow Boro | HUFC | Hastings United |
| HeFC | Hendon | HSFC | Heybridge Swifts |
| HoFC | Horsham | LFC | Leyton |
| MUFC | Maidstone United | MFC | Margate |
| RFC | Ramsgate | STFC | Staines Town |
| TAFC | Tonbridge Angles | WFC | Wealdstone |
.
Just want to say sorry for the lack of service over the past few month's and I hope to be back to normal in terms of updates from now on.
As an added bonus today for the first time this season Dons On line were filming yesterday and they have added a whole host of clips from yesterday's game and they appear to have been in a really good spot to see the major incidents so to download the action click here.
Although I haven't been updating the site I would like to say thanks to everyone who has purchased items via the Amazon link during this time once again it has done very well and all proceeds will be passed onto the club.
After our home Midweek League game on Tuesday we are away from League Action next week as we take on Tonbridge Angles in the FA Trophy.
The club will be running a coach to the game departing at 12:00 from the woodman in Wimbledon Park and 12:30 from Kingsmeadow if you wish to book on the coach please call the club between 10:00 and 16:00 this week or book at the window before the game on Tuesday night.
The Man of The Match vote is up and running as it has been for every game, to cast your vote click the link below: -
