The Crawley News

The Crawley News

The Crawley News

Posted on: February 14, 2012 - 3:23 am
by Admin

Luton Town and AFC Wimbledon play in the Conference Playoff Final on Saturday 21 May 2011 at Eastlands to see who will join Crawley Town in being promoted to the Football League. Crawley Town won the Blue Square Premier (as the Conference is called these days) by 15 points over AFC Wimbledon to take the one automatic promotion spot to Football League status. The second slot will be decided by Saturday’s match.

The two teams could not be more different. Luton Town are a long-established club and arguably the biggest team to lose Football League status since automatic promotion and relegation to the Conference was started. In contrast, AFC Wimbledon are a fan-created football team formed less than a decade ago by supporters of the old Wimbledon disgruntled when their team moved to Milton Keynes and changed their name to MK Dons.

Luton Town enjoyed a decade in the top tier of English football, taking up most of the 1980s and had a League Cup win in 1988 in what was their most successful period, though they had graced the top tier twice before. Financial difficulties, however, led to a points penalty imposed by the Football League in 2009 from which they could not recover and were thus relegated to the Conference.