Wimbledon Football Club was an English professional
association football club from Wimbledon, south-west
London. Founded in 1889 as Wimbledon Old
Central Football Club, the club spent most of its history in amateur and
semi-professional non-League football
before being elected to the Football League in 1977 and reaching the First
Division in 1986 after a mere nine seasons in the league and just four seasons
after being in the Fourth Division.Wimbledon stayed in the First Division and then the FA
Premier League from 1986 until 2000. Most famously, in
1988, Wimbledon beat the then-champions
Liverpool 1–0 in the FA Cup final, thus becoming only the second football
club (after Old Carthusians) to have won
both the FA Cup and the FA Amateur Cup, having won the latter in 1962–63. Following the publication of the
Taylor Report, which recommended that
all top-flight clubs play in all-seater stadia, the club decided that it needed
to move from its Plough Lane home in
1991. Wimbledon began to groundshare with nearby Crystal
Palace, an originally temporary arrangement that ended up
lasting over ten years. In May 2002, after rejecting a variety of possible new
local sites, the club was granted permission to move 56 miles (90 km) north to Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire. The move away from their native
south London was deeply unpopular both with the bulk of the club's established
fan base and football supporters generally. The majority of supporters responded
to the planned relocation by forming a new club, AFC
Wimbledon. Wimbledon moved in September 2003, and became
Milton Keynes Dons in June 2004.
