MAN WHO LOST IT ALL FOR WIMBLEDON

THERE is sacrifice for your football team — and then there is Ivor Heller’s sacrifice for AFC Wimbledon. He has lost a south London print firm, with revenues topping £3million annually, a house in Wimbledon village and his marriage. But his football club, the one he has worked tirelessly to build, will play in a Wembley League Two play-off final against Plymouth today, and he would not change any of it. ‘Now I live in a one-bedroom flat above a newsagent,’ says Heller (right), a founding member and the club’s commercial director. ‘Is it worth it? Every second. I’ve got absolutely nothing but I get up smiling every day. I’m the luckiest man on the planet. I’ve got a great new girlfriend, I’m having a laugh.’ While many have offered much to the football club — Kris Stewart was their first chairman, and chief executive Erik Samuelson has been there from the beginning — it was Heller who first turned to Stewart, in November 2001 when the FA were deciding if Pete Winkelman could take Wimbledon FC up to Milton Keynes, and suggested they start afresh if they lost the case. When he got a call from an FA official explaining they had lost, Heller knew it was time. ‘Normally I’d climb a lamppost and shout at the FA,’ says Heller. ‘Instead I thought, “Let’s do it, let’s start again”. ‘It took me very little time to realise the best way to fight it was through the one thing we all care about — football.’ In the offices of Heller’s now defunct print company, he, Marc Jones and Trevor Williams made plans, designed the kit, the badge and the first car stickers and convinced Stewart to lead them. Four days after the FA ruling, Stewart persuaded a packed Independent Supporters’ Association meeting to back them. In 15 years, the club have raced up the football pyramid and today stand on the verge of promotion to League One and a reunion with Winkelman’s MK Dons. But Heller, along with the fans, wants to return to Wimbledon and closer to their spiritual home of Plough Lane. ‘We want to be back here, that was always the plan,’ the club’s commercial executive Pietro

Palladino told Sportsmail. ‘Someone asked if we play nearby. We don’t, our stadium is far away, but we’re close to moving back.’ Their planning application to build a 20,000-seat stadium has been held up by political wrangling, but chief executive Samuelson is optimistic it will be granted. The issue of whether AFC Wimbledon are a continuation of the old club or a completely new outfit club still divides supporters. Heller is in no doubt they are the same club he grew up supporting in the 1970s. ‘I’ve got a list of players from the Crazy Gang days who want final tickets,’ he says. ‘Vinnie Jones has been sending good luck messages and tried to come over from America but he can’t make it because he’s filming. He’s given us his FA Cup winners’ medal. ‘But Wally Downes, Kevin Gage, Paul Fishenden, Mick Smith, Mark Morris and Lawrie Sanchez will be there.’ Manager Neal Ardley, who played for Wimbledon for 11 years and was signing his apprentice forms when they won the FA Cup, says: ‘This is the first time Wimbledon have reached Wembley since 1988. ‘Chairmen come and go, the players come and go, stadiums get built, everything can change. One thing that stays constant is fans. These fans were there in the 1960s and the 1970s and are still there now. I’m taking Wimbledon back to Wembley for the first time since 1988.’