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EFL 'request AFC Wimbledon observations' on reported failure to use MK’s full name

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    #26
    How many new towns have successful football clubs though? I can't think of any. People moving in will already have formed an allegiance with a club elsewhere.

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      #27
      Stevenage and Telford both have done decently. Better than any organic MK team.

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        #28
        Skelmersdale United have won as many European trophies as Manchester City

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          #29
          Crawley is another one.

          There are many things that play a part in MK’s failure to develop a local club but I think a key one is that the council have never been supportive of or facilitated that sort of growth.

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            #30
            Telford (mentioned upthread) is of course a phoenix club and the original Telford United were a rebrand of Wellington Town. They still play at Wellington's ground, albeit in the rebuilt stadium linked to United going bust in 2004.

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              #31
              This makes absolutely no sense. Plenty of clubs use truncated names for other teams (QPR and Hearts for instance.) Who even notices, never mind cares.
              Last edited by Amor de Cosmos; 24-09-2017, 18:49.

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                #32
                And EFL itself is of course a truncated form of the original name.

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                  #33
                  Originally posted by Amor de Cosmos View Post
                  This makes absolutely no sense. Plenty of clubs use truncated names for other teams (QPR and Hearts for instance.) Who even notices, never mind cares.
                  Also, this would have completely passed everyone by had they not drawn attention to it. Hardly the action of someone wishing to protect their reputation.

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                    #34
                    Originally posted by Amor de Cosmos View Post
                    This makes absolutely no sense. Plenty of clubs use truncated names for other teams (QPR and Hearts for instance.) Who even notices, never mind cares.
                    Legally I don't think the EFL has no leg to stand on. As AdC notes, the unofficial names of clubs are used all the time (Man Utd, Man U, United, even Manchester), so there is precedent. Proving malice is difficult; indeed, AFC can argue that they might suffer commercial disadvantage by rendering their opponent's name in certain variations since their client base has stated particular preferences. Good luck arguing in court that a commercial entity may not make commercial decisions within the law. And the programme, just like any publication, can feature whatever it likes within the confines of the law and common decency (and even then...).

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                      #35
                      They put MK on the scoreboard. They could have just put Visitors

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                        #36
                        What Wimbledon should do is get on touch with other clubs and get them to shorten their opponents names on the scoreboards for the next game. Even if they only get 30 to actually do it, that will stop the EFL taking it any further. Indeed, there will be a fair few on top that would probably do it habitually anyway as well.

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                          #37
                          30 would be an 86% effective hit rate, given that there are 36 home teams each week in the EFL, and assuming they wouldn't ask MK Dons.

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                            #38
                            I think you could write a programme referring to "our visitors tonight from Milton Keynes", "Meet the Opposition", do a club history piece about how they used to be called Wimbledon etc etc and that would be much worse than not referring to them at all.

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                              #39
                              That is very good but a bit late now.

                              Originally posted by Kevin S View Post
                              30 would be an 86% effective hit rate, given that there are 36 home teams each week in the EFL, and assuming they wouldn't ask MK Dons.
                              Of course, I was forgetting that clubs at our level and the division above aren't in the EFL.

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                                #40
                                Originally posted by Patrick Thistle View Post
                                They put MK on the scoreboard. They could have just put Visitors
                                Legally and morally defensible, unless there are specific prescriptions that demand the use of a club's full name, or the use of a nomenclature provided by the visiting team. It features the first half of the visitors' name. Would there be an issue if AFC put Leceister, ManU or Wolves on the scoreboard, instead of the club's full name? i suggest next time they play Franchise, they put: OUR TEAM vs THE OTHER TEAM on the scoreboard.

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                                  #41
                                  How many clubs list us as "Sheff Wed" on the scoreboard? And that's a far more unpleasant abbreviation than this one. (In fact every team that gets its United dropped is basically the same as this (West Ham, Leeds, Newcastle, etc) and they don't complain

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                                    #42
                                    Originally posted by Paul S View Post
                                    How many new towns have successful football clubs though? I can't think of any. People moving in will already have formed an allegiance with a club elsewhere.
                                    Livingston FC have done quite well. If by quite well you mean yo-yoing through the leagues, repeatedly spending too much and going into admin and being a thoroughly dislikeable set of arseholes. Of course, they did to Meadowbank Thistle what MK did to Wimbledon, only a few years earlier...

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                                      #43
                                      And conning their players out of wages they were due. And creditors out of their cash. And abusing the transfer window rules by registering obviously-salaried players as amateurs.

                                      They're actually worse than their repulsive MK cousins, but get an easier ride in the press because Meadowbank only had a few hundred fans rather than thousands like Wimbledon.

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                                        #44
                                        Wimbledon should have just referred to them as 'the Dins' throughout the programme and then blamed a typo, if challenged.

                                        Has anyone ever bothered (very publicly) doing a Freedom Of Information request against franchise, asking them to explain the origins of their name, thus luring them into implicitly breaching some kind of IP rights of Wimbledon. (I'm making this up as I go along, here - you can probably tell!) Might be worth a try, though.

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                                          #45
                                          FOI doesn't apply to limited companies, AFAIK.

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                                            #46
                                            "Dongs" would be a better "typo"

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                                              #47
                                              The FA should retrospectively make it illegal to appropriate another club's name and force MK to change it, even though franchising cannot be reversed at this stage.

                                              As with appropriation of Native American names in sports, it's not just appropriating the name but also pissing on its cultural history and memory.

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                                                #48
                                                Talking of American, seem to remember I read somewhere that when Indianapolis visit Baltimore in the NFL, the home team refuse to acknowledge them anywhere as the Colts and like Wimbledon did, just refer to them by their first name only. Doesn't appear to have caused issues or damaged reputations in the NFL at all.

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                                                  #49
                                                  Originally posted by Patrick Thistle View Post
                                                  Telford (mentioned upthread) is of course a phoenix club and the original Telford United were a rebrand of Wellington Town. They still play at Wellington's ground, albeit in the rebuilt stadium linked to United going bust in 2004.
                                                  Stevenage too are the third club to represent the town. Stevenage Town disbanded in 1968. They were replaced by Stevenage Athletic who moved into the new Broadhall Way ground. After playing in front of mediocre crowds in the Southern League, they declared bankrupcy in 1976. Stevenage Borough were formed the same year and started life in the Chiltern Youth League playing matches on a local playing field. The local council re-acquired Broadhall Way in 1980, when Borough became members of the United Counties League and moved in. Since then they've worked their way up the league pyramid.

                                                  The point is it wasn't easy, there were no short cuts, and it's still a struggle. Support is low given the town's catchment area as most residents have footballing allegiances elsewhere. I'm not a supporter but I do admire the way the club's been built. The "free pass" MK Dons have been given is an insult to the considerable time and effort members of Stevenage — and I would guess Crawley FC — have expended building their clubs from scratch in difficult footballing environments.

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                                                    #50
                                                    Originally posted by Satchmo Distel View Post
                                                    The FA should retrospectively make it illegal to appropriate another club's name and force MK to change it, even though franchising cannot be reversed at this stage.

                                                    As with appropriation of Native American names in sports, it's not just appropriating the name but also pissing on its cultural history and memory.
                                                    I don't think MK Dons rises to the level of trivializing the existence of roughly 1,000 nations that have been nearly wiped out by disease and genocide.

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