WITH all due respect to Lancaster City and Morecambe, I doubt either of them, short of a good FA Cup run, will play in front of a crowd of 5,000 during the coming season.

But one side which is a good three levels lower than the Dolly Blues has already attracted a gate in that region - for a pre-season friendly.

While their counterparts play in front of a handful of devoted/desperate fans, AFC Wimbledon, a club playing in the Combined Counties League, attracted a sponsorship package worth £250,000 - a figure many second and third division clubs would kill for.

The club the fans built to replace the one stolen by the Milton Keynes moneymen is proving to be a huge hit - in fact, the supporter-owned venture will achieve profit margins that Frankenstein FC can only dream about! And, being a 'community owned' club, the profits will be ploughed back into the game rather than used to fund egotistical projects that would have shamed Nero.

Meanwhile, unloved Wimbledon FC fester and die in the discomfort of their almost empty borrowed stadium at Selhurst Park.

Their plan to spruce up a hockey stadium at Milton Keynes looks in doubt, the club will be losing money hand over fist and most of the serious people in football don't want anything to do with them.

There will, no doubt, be some sort of attempt to draw in school kids once the eventual move to Milton Keynes comes off - but how excited are they going to get by the prospect of walking past a few protestors into a temporary stand with less atmosphere than the moon and about as much entertainment?

Football has a responsibility to put the MK Dons experiment out of its misery - hopefully sooner rather than later and with the men behind it having their fingers scorched, rather than burnt.

That might scare them and their ilk away from our football grounds as soon as possible.

Speaking of egotistical football chairmen with no future in the game, the plot at Carlisle United thickens (even more) with the news that former chairman Michael Knighton (a man banned from being a company director) is ' considering' suing his (many) detractors for a variety of offences, not least libel and slander.

In the meantime, his managerless, rudderless club has barely 15 players, and look like early candidates for relegation to the conference while fans

Morecambe would, no doubt, welcome the long-awaited 'derby' with the Cumbrians (a game which might, in fact, get the Christie Park 'house full' signs out of the store they've been in since the Ipswich game!).

However, football supporters everywhere have to feel that, for a club, which has always attracted healthy gates and has a huge catchment area to draw support from, relegation from the Football League would be an unparalleled calamity.

Meanwhile, I mentioned the state of the Giant Axe pitch last week - well, I've since had chance to visit the hallowed turf and can confirm that it is in a much improved state - whether we'll be saying the same thing in January remains to be seen!