WombleWorld’s End of Season Awards
The awards nobody needed, presented by the blog nobody asked for.
The season is over. We stayed up. Just.
We told you not to panic. We are not going to say we told you so. That would be unbecoming.
The WombleWorld End of Season Awards (WWEOSA - pronounced at your own discretion) are awarded annually at the conclusion of the AFC Wimbledon season. This is the first year they have existed. We expect them to become a tradition.
We were mathematically safe in mid-March. The 4-0 defeat on the final day was therefore a kind of celebration. A garnish. A flourish on a season that did not require one but got one anyway. It is fine. We are fine. Everything is fine.
These are the WWEOSAs. Presented annually. Inaugurally. For the first time. Already a tradition.
Womble of the Season: Steve Seddon
There is a version of this award that goes to whoever scored the most dramatic goal, or whoever had the best single performance, or whoever the algorithms decided was our player of the season based on touches in the opposition half during a Tuesday night in February.
We are not doing that.
Steve Seddon played every single game this season. Every one. In a campaign that required, at various points, the constitution of a mountain goat, the temperament of a hostage negotiator, and a genuine willingness to keep turning up, Steve was there. All of it. Every match.
He also contributed eight assists, which is the kind of number that makes you check it twice. Eight. For a left back (and sometimes a centre back). In League One. During a relegation battle. The man was not simply doing his job. He was doing everyone else’s job as well, from a position that technically requires him to stop things rather than start them.
His Fotmob rating was the highest in the squad (and WombleWorld is nothing if not consistent with it’s data driven vibe based assessments). His commitment was total. His temperament was unimpeachable.
And he was born on Christmas Day, which has to count for something. We are not entirely sure what. But it counts. A lot.
Beer of the Year: San Miguel
It won a fan vote to be stocked at Plough Lane. It has been served at Plough Lane. It will continue to be served at Plough Lane. It did not have a difficult season. It did not miss a single game. It did not require a working group.
DTB Member of the Year: James Longhurst
This award is not usually handed out with genuine warmth. We prefer irony. We are comfortable with irony. Irony asks nothing of us.
This year we are setting it aside.
Over the course of the season James became the driving force behind the 50.01% campaign. Not in a loud way. Not in a way that required a press release or a subcommittee or a working group with a terms of reference document. He pushed for urgency when urgency was needed, and made sure conversations that needed to happen happened. The 50.01% vote passed.
James Longhurst had a very good season. In a job that is entirely voluntary, frequently thankless, and occasionally subjected to the full creative force of a small part of a fan base holding you to account via Discord. James is DTB Member of the Year.
Genuinely meant.
Fan of the Year: East Stand, Block 124, Row E, Seat 12
The WombleWorld Fan of the Year award operates on a different basis to the others.
We have selected a seat. At random. If you were in that seat for the majority of home games this season, you are the WombleWorld Fan of the Year. You are entitled to a WombleWorld mug, which will be posted to you at our expense, assuming you come forward, and assuming we can afford the postage.
Contact us. Prove your attendance. The mug is waiting.
WombleWorld Subscriber of the Year: The Paying Few
AFC Wimbledon won a fan engagement award this season. We responded by putting the article about it behind a paywall. The joke wrote itself. We took the credit anyway.
Most of you are reading this for free. That is fine. That is, broadly, the WombleWorld business model. You are all the reason that any of this exists in the form it does, the match reports, the governance pieces, the WWEOSAs you are currently reading, the running jokes.
The paywall is decorative. It exists mainly so that the small number of people who have chosen to pay for it can feel, correctly, that they are doing something the rest of you are not.
WombleWorld+ is £3.75 a month. Less than half a pint of San Miguel at Plough Lane.
If you are reading this and you are not a subscriber, the maths is straightforward. And you’d be supporting a digital fanzine/blog/whatever this is.
WombleWorld+ Subscriber of the Year. The paying few. Thank you. Genuinely meant.
Shop Merch of the Year: The BIG Bobble Hat
There were contenders. The Haydon hand puppet made a strong play. He is magnificent. He is also, clearly, the work of someone who looked at a Womble and thought “what if Jim Henson, but in a hurry.” We respect it. But we will not be giving him an award.
The Big Bobble Hat takes it.
It is genuinely enormous. The bobble alone has its own postcode. Worn correctly, it will completely obscure the view of any fan unfortunate enough to be sat directly behind you. They will catch fragments of the pitch through the bobble. They will not see the football.
Which, given some of what they would otherwise have been watching this season, is probably for the best.
Capitulation of the Season: Last Day, 4-0
We had to acknowledge it somewhere. We are doing it here.
We were safe. We knew this. The players knew this. The opposition knew this. Everyone knew this. The match was therefore played in the spirit of two teams who had nothing to play for and one team who had nothing to play for but had also clearly decided to play for nothing.
4-0 is a specific scoreline. Not 1-0, the dignified loss. Not 2-0, the regrettable but explainable. Not 3-0, the bad day. 4-0 is a statement. The statement is “we are on the beach already and the beach is closed for refurbishment.”
We have spent the season telling you not to panic. We are not going to start now.
Closing Thoughts
The season is over. We are still a League One club.
This was, depending on your perspective, a test of character, an exercise in survival, or a fairly standard AFC Wimbledon experience dressed up in slightly higher-stakes clothing. Possibly all three. The 4-0 on the last day is doing its best to muddy the water but should not be allowed to. We were safe. The football was a footnote.
The awards above were earned. Some of them painfully. The club, the board, and the fanbase have spent nine months doing what this club always does: holding things together through a combination of goodwill, stubbornness, and an unreasonable attachment to the idea that it will be fine.
It was fine. It is fine. We told you it would be.
WombleWorld
Steve Seddon has been asked how he plans to spend his summer. He said he intends to play every minute of it.