Franchise-Spotting
04/03/04 |
by Alan Fisher
Choose England’s “best new city”, with more roundabouts than people and about as much character as an average Coronation Street actor.
Choose a ‘stadium’ designed to host hockey games, with three stands open to the elements and the kind of facilities that would have disgusted Osama bin Laden whilst hiding in a cave.
Choose losing all your decent prospects for a pittance to West Ham because you’re in administration.
Choose a half-hearted population who don’t seem to understand the basic fundamentals of being a football supporter, because they’ve never had a football team before.
Choose taking on D*rby reject Warren Barton on as player-coach, and installing the over-rated donkey as some kind of midfield playmaker and corner-taker.
Choose your future, choose Franchise.
I chose not to choose Franchise, I chose something else.
The game on Tuesday itself isn’t really decent subject matter – so the whole concept of the Wimbledon soap opera is the crux of this piece. It’s something that’s been written about at length, and passionately, but now the dust has settled and the MK Dons are firmly ensconced within their new abode, well, what the devil is it all about?
We arrived in MK at around 6pm. A quick blast down the M1, off at junction 14 and then over about ten thousand roundabouts and you find your goal. The area the hockey ground occupies is a gigantic retail/office type area – with a hell of a lot of parking. After establishing we could park for free from 6pm we left the car and headed to a nearby curry-house as a likely venue for a pre-match pint, we ended up staying for a meal – which was very nice, although a bit pricey.
The ground itself looks okay from the outside, because we approached it from behind it’s only reasonable stand, the South stand, which houses home fans – and is the only stand to feature a roof. We sat (well, stood) in the North stand behind the goal, Forest fans also filled the East Stand which took up the middle third of one side of the pitch, and were also dotted around the home fans as well. I’m informed there were 3,300 Forest fans there in a crowd of 6,300-odd.
Because of the rooflessness of the stands and the small size of the stands it’s nigh on impossible to generate an atmosphere at the Franchise. Indeed, even if you do get an audible chant off the ground - which we managed a few times - the home fans don’t respond to you (except the amusing blond-haired young man who was giving it some from the home stand – only to be told off repeatedly by the stewards before mysteriously disappearing at some point in the first half).
And so to the game – I feel obliged to mention it, but only in passing. ‘Super’ Gareth Taylor got his fifth Forest goal of the season, early doors. It looked quite scrappy to me but it was way over t’other end and after, that to be honest, neither side looked much like scoring (although MK Dons did hit the post).
Warren Barton received much deserved abuse for his sheep molesting credentials, and flashed us a lingering two-fingered salute when running to take a corner, under the full gaze of the linesman who did nothing about it. I might pen a strongly worded letter to the Franchise about this – after all, they are nurturing a sterile and wholesome family experience at the National Hockey Stadium, can’t have this sort of thing going on!
Marlon King was wearing the magical silver boots again which give him the first touch of a roman catapult, and really to be honest neither goal looked particularly threatened for the remainder of the game.
The fans in Red gainfully tried to generate a bit of excitement to pass the minutes, and indeed, to keep warm, but it wasn’t very easy – and ultimately full-time came as a relief that sees us climb into the nosebleed territory of the teens in the league table! There’s a few games in hand as apparently most grounds can’t seem to handle a bit of frost these days.
So Milton Keynes, the town that dubs itself “the world’s best new city”, how can we sum it up? Well, the curry house was nice. The ground wasn’t the worst I’ve been in. The team was the worst I’ve seen in a while and Forest weren’t much better. The town seems to consist of a lot of roundabouts to get you to the motorway, and I’ll be quite happy to never have to visit there again.
Choose a town and club with a bit of tradition – they don’t even have to be any good – so choose Forest.