Who are Milton Keynes City?
Now, don’t go confusing ‘The Gladiators’ with the side that uses the MKC moniker today. After all, we are not here to wax lyrical about “one of the largest youth football clubs in the Milton Keynes area“. The standard of our opposition back in the day wasn’t as good as it perhaps it is now, but we didn’t go around taking on kids’ teams. Also, and as far as senior sides go, there have been two incarnations of MKC: one between 1974-1985, another between 1988-2003. Guess which one we’re more bothered about? Here’s a clue. It’s the first one.
Right, before we start on the usual formalities, here’s a tale about Milton Keynes City, er, MK I. It relates to a time not that long before our first meeting with them. 1979, to be precise. It appears that Ron Noades, then chairman of Wimbledon, wanted to move the Dons to Bucks. Oh, yes – so it wasn’t a new idea in 2003! Noades then bought a controlling interest in the MKC club, installing directors and working towards merging the two – based in MK, using the Dons’ League place. It didn’t happen, clearly, and Noades sold that interest a year later.
Just think. In a parallel universe, our first encounter with The Gladiators could have been – in fact – our first encounter with an embryonic MK Dons. OK, so the Dons were a League team and unlikely to be taking part in the FA Cup Preliminary Round back in 1983. So, maybe it’s a moot point after all that waffle. The nuts and bolts of our record against MKC are fairly straightforward. Thanks to goals from Ronnie Lear and Martin Gittings, Boro’ won 2-0 on Saturday 3 September 1983. And, at the end of the next season (1984-5), MKC were no more.
