Wimbledon F.C. - Stadiums

Stadiums

Wimbledon originally played on Wimbledon Common, using the Fox and Grapes public house in Camp Road as the team's headquarters and changing room. The club moved to Plough Lane in September 1912. During the 1930s and 1940s, crowds of between 7,000 and 10,000 were not uncommon at the ground. Wimbledon's highest attendance at the ground came on 2 March 1935, when 18,080 people were attracted to an FA Amateur Cup tie against HMS Victory. However, the ground was basic, and even after the club's rapid rise to the First Division Plough Lane had changed little from Wimbledon's amateur days. The only notable difference was the addition of floodlights, first used on 3 October 1960 in a London Charity Cup match against Arsenal. At the time of the club's acceptance into The Football League, applicants had only to meet minimal stadium criteria, and once in the League these same criteria sufficed whether the club subsequently found itself in the Fourth or First Division. Following the Hillsborough disaster and the Taylor Report, the football authorities introduced far stricter safety rules that gave top-flight clubs specific deadlines by which to redevelop terraced grounds or to build new all-seater stadiums. The board of the club decided that Plough Lane could not be made to comply with this economically and, in 1990, announced plans to temporarily groundshare with Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park.

Given Plough Lane's location at the junction of two major roads and beside the River Wandle, major redevelopment of the site as a modern all-seater stadium would have been difficult, although not impossible. The club maintained that it had "searched exhaustively with Merton Council" for a site in or around Merton on which to build a new stadium, looking at "14 different sites over a period of five years", in addition to commissioning feasibility studies of both Plough Lane and Wimbledon Stadium. Despite this, nothing ever became of the club's continual promise to redevelop the site or to find a new ground in the borough, and they remained at Selhurst Park for twelve years.

Wimbledon's first match at the National Hockey Stadium in Milton Keynes was played on 27 September 2003. The club remained there for the rest of its final season, and the ground became the first home of Milton Keynes Dons.