Cod Almighty | Article

by Various

24 May 2025

Ah, the English summer, where the ice creams are all melting on the streets of overpriced designer beer. 

The Wimbles of Wombledon: love the concept, loathe the reality; been there, sold them the T-shirts. The baseline bashers generally get our goat though we can gloat over memories of unclose encounters of a thrashing kind.

Take a trip down memory lane and Plough Lane with Cliff, Harry and a Grovesian-like late run into the box by Kwame the Redeemer. Anyone for tennis, wouldn't it be nice?

Making good use of the things that they find

Let's get it right out in the open, right at the start: we here at Cod Almighty absolutely hate Wimbledon. Back in 2003 we even ran a daily series called Reasons I Hate Wimbledon.

Straight in at four with a bullet was "It's Cliff Richard!" Down two at five: "The use of first names - like you live round the corner from them and your children will marry theirs in a delightful village church in Hampshire" and static at number six: "…not only is it sport for people who don't like football; it is a sport for people who don't like sport. There are vast swathes of the British public who like to think their carefully nurtured aversion to sport makes them seem somehow pleasantly and likeably quirky; and yet they all come out of the woodwork at this time of year, furtively channel-hopping to see how "Tim" or "Greg" are getting on”.

Ho, indeed, ho, Not that Wimbledon.

What about the other Wimbledon? There is only one Wimbledon, the one that rose like a phoenix from the flames of fury.

We here in CA Towers have huge affection for the club, the supporters, for the very essence of its being as AFC Wimbledon are a glorious lesson in the art of the possible, and here at Cod Almighty we have some positive personal experience. Back in 2008, the day before Town played in the Dulux Cup final, three of the CA team went along to Wimbledon's then home ground, Kingsmeadow. As Pete Green recounted in his 2010 Rough Guide:

“We paraded a Harry the Haddock around the club bar, nattered to some lovely, friendly Womble types, and basically got tret like royalty all day. I guess we were bound to go down well, but still, it was flippin' great!"

At least one Womble hasn't forgotten as Ray Armfield, a guest diarist in 2018, reminisced:

"Hard to believe it's been over 10 years since some of your number made the incredible gesture of foregoing a Wembley final featuring the Mariners to visit AFC Wimbledon instead. It will always be fondly remembered. Many of your best-selling (in these parts anyway) t-shirts were sported, handshakes exchanged and ales supped”

Richard Dawson, our market stall hero, was dead chuffed at selling over 300 t-shirts to Wombles. Half the money went to the Mariners Trust and half to Wimbledon, so at least some good did come out of that weekend of Wembley woe.

It's not all chumminess, this is football after all. We do have to watch them play football against us as well, and there's the rub, or at least the point at which they begin to rub us up the wrong way.

Wimbledon are Wimbledon and their fans love them just the way they are. What are they? Wimbledon. They play the old Womble way. We may like to think of ourselves as a cultured club, but they are still the crazy gang.

When Town met the newly ascended original Wombles back in October 1977 we were, briefly, the only club to have played every team in the Football League. Our Rough Guider took a trip down memory lane via Plough Lane when we were about to meet the new incarnation in 2010:

"Town's 6-3 win at Wimbledon in our 1979-80 third division championship campaign will still elicit a fond sniffle from Mariners of a certain vintage. Fresher in the memory of younger Grimbarians will be the 6-2 romp at Blundell Park during the storming run to second division safety under Paul Groves in 2002. Hat-trick from Alan Pouton, hat-trick from Michael Boulding, mmm, remarkable, wasn't it. Bradley Allen for goalposts.

Most famously of all, of course, Plough Lane was the setting for a seminal moment early in the Buckley years – during Wimbledon's own spell in the top-flight limelight. It was 1989 and the fifth round of the FA Cup, attended by 5,000 Dons fans, 7,000 Town fans and at least as many Harry the Haddocks (NB: these figures may be invented). Wimbledon – who, fabulously, had won the trophy the year before – had to come back from behind for their 3-1 win after Big Keef’s early header had given Town the lead. Good times for both clubs, even three divisions apart.”

But for all that history Town have, technically, legally, only played seven games against the Real Continuity AFC, seven games that mostly linger longer in a chip wrapper. For our first re-encounter, in 2011, Town had Steve 'the Kitten' Croudson temporarily in goal and Dave 'the' Moore temporarily caretaking again. A harem-scarem festival of bog standard non-leaguery simply confirmed Kwame Nkrumah's observation that "Action without thought is empty". As did last year's two scoreless draws that were a clash of civilisations and of different decades, where our modern grooves met their ancient relicball of big blokes barging about.

The opening game of the season is always a mystery and our match reporter wrapped a riddle inside an enigma when trying to capture the essence of that rather dreary day:

"Up and down and up and at 'em in a game of shove ha'penny. There was smashing, there was movement, there were moments of almostness. A corner, a free kick, a chuckle-in and somewhere at sometime, deeply distant, vaguely persistent, Slim Charles swished and a flying bluebottle blocked a Rodgers rocket. Cor, mister, it sounds like something from The Beezer or The Topper. What next? Donovan Wilson and his educated insects? Ah, he's still injured, so we'll have to wait for that one."

Way, way later, the return fixture kept getting put back because of the Womblers' cup trot, and we finally reconnected at the beginning of the Great Escape. Our match reporter had clearly never been to the New Plough Lane with its startling local architecture:

"Wimbledon! Are we in a prison? Is this Stalag Luft SW17. Well, we're embarking on yet another great escape. Wimbledon! Big blokes, small blokes, former Town blokes. Just blokes in blue. Lovely staff though, fabulously friendly folk in fluorescent bibs."

New Plough Lane won't get three stars in the Baedeker Guide, but at least they'll get a thumbs up on Tripadvisor. Oh, there was a game going on.

"The Womblers kicked off towards the Town five hundred with a hoof, woof and whoosh. Vigourballing nonsense, all hurry and scurry; for ever since I've been a young boy they've only played long ball. Hoof it!

Wallop. They hit a brick wall. Ironic really given we were staring at a massive brick wall as high as the clouds. A brutalist, modernist monstrosity perhaps built from the bones of fallen publicans. One half-expected a fat bloke in a hat to start ranting atop it, probably about Ulez."

A scoreless bore was somehow not a chore when you're staring non-League in the eyes.

"Town were Juve on a bad day, but definitely more Juve than one where you want to hide under the duvet“

All in all Town's record against the real Wombles, old or new, is surprisingly super, though latterly rather dourly so, as last season showed. I suppose we'd accept dour delight rather than feeling sour at tea time.

One things for sure, fasten your seatbelts it's going to be a lumpy ride.

These are the full versions of the Cod Almighty programme articles for the 2024/25 season. An edited version was published in The Mariner on 3 May 2025