Wimbledon make their exit

They had said May 14th should be christened Wimbledon Day. In 1977, this was the date Wimbledon left the old Southern League to join the Football League's fourth division. Eleven years on and this was the date Lawrie Sanchez's header gave Wimbledon Wembley victory over Liverpool in the final of the FA Cup.

But yesterday, May 14th 2000, was the day Wimbledon's implausible 14-season stay in England's top flight finally faded.

The end came at The Dell, Southampton, and it was with a 2-0 whimper of a defeat rather than the customary Wimbledon bang. It feels very much like the end of an era. Sanchez, Dave Bassett, Vinnie Jones, Alan Cork, Wally Downes, Plough Lane itself - sepia names now.

Southern failure meant northern survival. All yesterday's noise, in fact all the traditional boisterous Wimbledon spirit, was 200 miles north at Valley Parade, where Bradford City, needing a draw or win, managed the latter against a disappointing Liverpool team that missed out on the Champions' League.

Bradford, courtesy of David Wetherall's second league goal of the season, retained the Premiership status they gained last year after 77 years standing in the shadows.

Bradford had started the afternoon behind Wimbledon on goal difference, but Wetherall's 13th-minute header gave the Yorkshire side a momentum the Dons never threatened to emulate yesterday. Wimbledon had not won away from home since the opening day of the season at Watford, whom they will be playing again next season, along with Preston and Burnley.

Wayne Bridge's first senior goal and Marian Pahars 13th of a productive personal season meant all Bradford had to do was hang on. They did. Wimbledon fell. The tears flowed.

"There's nothing being said in there," Terry Burton, Wimbledon's manager of a fortnight said of the away dressing-room at The Dell afterwards. "The only reaction's on people's faces."

Immediately the inevitable speculation began about Burton's future, his players' futures and the future of the whole club. Still without a ground of their own, with new owners who have still not signalled the club's direction and with famously tiny attendances, Wimbledon's situation looks bleak.

The financial implications alone are immense and every Wimbledon player who has spoken in the past fortnight has stressed that they do not believe a Charlton-style bounce-back is realistic.

Burton, though, a member of the backroom staff for years, refused to see this as the beginning of the end. "No, definitely not," he said. "Of course there has to be a post mortem, but there are three things you can do when you fail and that's admit it, learn from it and don't repeat it. We have good players but they have underperformed."

Burton thinks he will be retained as manager, and with a romantic tone that said much about him and old Wimbledon, Burton offered this: "When one bubble bursts, you have to blow another one."

Wimbledon followers might consider they have blown enough this season: one point from the last 30 as the club dissolved into a bout of incestuous bickering that culminated in the sacking of Egil Olsen.

Paul Jewell, at 35 the youngest manager in the Premiership, and who has done a remarkable job in his two years in charge, first overseeing promotion and now this, was both jubilant and stern. Had he any sympathy for Wimbledon?

"No, none at all. I don't want to be nasty, but they wouldn't have any for us. Our lads have been brilliant. On paper we shouldn't have turned up, but it shows what can be done with desire. The team spirit has been fantastic." Unlike Wimbledon's.

Last August, Jewell had said that a fourth-from-bottom finish would do Bradford. They achieved their goal - against the club Jewell joined as a teenager - and were there any justice, Jewell would be named Manager of the Year when it is announced today.

That award, however, is likely to sit on the mantelpiece of Alex Ferguson again. It is understandable: Manchester United won their 11th Premiership game in a row at Aston Villa, finishing the season on 91 points, 18 ahead of Arsenal. A Premiership record.

Leeds United, who drew 0-0 at West Ham, join United and Arsenal in the lucrative Champions' League. Liverpool are in the UEFA Cup.

It left David O'Leary smiling. "I started off dreaming of this," he said. "I thought we'd let it slip in the last six to eight games. I thought we'd handed it to Liverpool. They handed it back. I thought we'd blown it."

O'Leary was wrong. That "honour" belonged to Wimbledon yesterday, May 14th, 2000.