Premier League: Remembering the audacious attempt to turn Wimbledon into the Dublin Dons
Three decades ago, in an era when the Premier League was consolidating its status as the world's greatest league but before foreign investment and ownership became commonplace, an audacious scheme emerged to relocate an English top-flight club across the Irish Sea. The plan to transform Wimbledon into the Dublin Dons represented a bold attempt to establish regular Premier League football in the Republic of Ireland, recognising that Irish support for England's top flight was unmatched in any region beyond the country itself.
The Ground-Sharing Dilemma
The proposal emerged from a simple logistical problem: Wimbledon had nowhere permanent to call home. Sam Hammam had bought the club in 1981, but with plans for an all-seater stadium in Merton having come to nothing, the club had been ground-sharing since 1991 with their south London rivals. The arrangement suited neither party.
Kenny Cunningham, the Dublin-born full-back who joined the club from Millwall in 1994, recalled the psychological toll of the situation. "We'd always get dog's abuse off Palace fans calling us squatters," he remembered. "There wasn't a huge amount of respect there I don't think. A bit tongue in cheek maybe but I think they meant it."
Under former Republic of Ireland international Joe Kinnear, Wimbledon had established themselves as a genuine top-flight force. They finished sixth in the 1993-94 campaign, a testament to their quality despite their precarious domestic arrangements. Cunningham reflected on the paradox of their position: "We were a small team in what was becoming the greatest league in the world. It was a great feeling to be stood in the tunnel ready to go up against world class players and knowing we had a chance."
Yet the ground issue remained inescapable. "But there was always the issue with the ground," Cunningham noted, "always the talk about what would happen in the medium to long term. Would they go back to Plough Lane? Would they groundshare?"
The Dublin Solution Emerges
The answer came from an unexpected source. Upon reading newspaper reports of Hammam's fractious relationship with Merton Council, Tommy Higgins landed on a more radical solution. Through his role with Ticketmaster Ireland, Higgins knew that property developer Owen O Callaghan had planning permission to build a 40,000-seater stadium on the outskirts of Dublin. The answer was elegantly simple: "A stadium in need of a club a club in need of a stadium."
A first meeting attended only by Hammam's brother went nowhere. But then, on the streets of Dublin, fortune intervened. When Higgins and businessman Maurice Cassidy ran into former Republic of Ireland player turned television pundit and journalist Eamon Dunphy, along with Paul McGuinness, manager of Irish rock band U2, a decision was made to resurrect the plan. A heavyweight Irish consortium had been assembled.
The Moment at Selhurst Park
The mid-1990s found English football in transition, caught between the long shadow of the Bradford City stadium fire, Heysel and Hillsborough, and a new era in which players such as Jurgen Klinsmann, Dennis Bergkamp and Juninho represented a new internationalisation of the league.
On August 17, 1996, the opening day of the new season, an important moment arrived. Gianfranco Zola and Fabrizio Ravanelli were the latest imported stars ready to make unlikely debuts, but it was a considerably more local talent who would steal the headlines. Among the crowd at Selhurst Park that day were the members of the Irish consortium, preparing a bid of £6m for 74% of Wimbledon.
Few goals in Premier League history have been more replayed than David Beckham's audacious lob from the halfway line against Wimbledon. Kenny Cunningham recalled the moment with the eye of someone intimately familiar with the contest. "If you roll it back very slowly to the point of contact where Beckham goes to shoot you can me see in the far left of the picture," he said. "You can blame me for a lot of the goals we conceded when I was at the club but I don't think I've to hold my hands up on that one."
Yet Cunningham recognised something beyond a single goal. "But that goal the way he stepped up on to the scene there was a lot of commotion about it. That was the Premier League on its way in a lot of ways. It was exciting times."
Those exciting times would not include a Wimbledon relocation to Dublin. The audacious plan, which might indeed have worked, faded quietly away, a curious footnote to an era when the Premier League's future still seemed full of radical possibility.