Kinnear back in Irish dream

CLIVE WHITE

Wimbledon 1 Nottingham Forest 0

Like the pre-season promise to Dean Holdsworth of a Ferrari in return for 15 goals, Wimbledon's proposed move to Dublin sounds just too good to be true, not to mention more than a bit Irish.

Another afternoon in front of a comatose crowd at rented Selhurst Park had the nomadic Dons dreaming about the Emerald Isle again. "We got a standing ovation at Everton last week," Joe Kinnear, their manager, said. "I wish we'd been playing away today as well rather than here. We hate the place. I haven't got a player in the side who wants to play here. The sooner we get to Dublin the better."

Kinnear said that in a year's time a new 60,000-capacity stadium would be awaiting them as well as as an adoring public starved of top-class club football. "Half of Dublin's empty on a Saturday, because they're all travelling to Manchester United, Liverpool and such places.

"We could be in a position where we end up being a Celtic or Rangers, buying the best from Holland and Germany. Our strength is our weakness. Who are we going to upset - 4,000 punters and a few diehards stuck up in Cowdenbeath or somewhere?"

A few diehards at the Football Association will doubtless have something to say about it, too, but providing guarantees with regards to travel subsistence for their opponents can be given, it is not easy to rubbish their plans. After all, barriers are coming down everywhere in Europe. Kinnear, himself a Dubliner, claimed that they were "60 per cent" towards realising their hopes and that they had the support of Manchester United, Liverpool, Everton and the like.

It might be the only way that Holdsworth is going to get a Ferrari out of the Wimbledon owner, Sam Hammam, even if the importance of his 16th strike of the season probably deserved one. Without his presence for the first 70 minutes on Saturday, due to a suspect ankle, it was hard to see where a Wimbledon goal was coming from. Come to that, or a Nottingham Forest one, so profligate was their mood, though with three strikers you could not fault their ambition.

"We've almost got to keep a clean sheet to get anything out of a game," noted their manager, Frank Clark, who conceded that a quick return to Europe was looking increasingly unlikely. The decision to omit Ian Woan was possibly an ill-conceived one, as Clark expects to be reminded of by the player himself first thing this morning.

After Steve Chettle had done his utmost to give Wimbledon a helping hand with a careless back-pass for which he just managed to atone, Holdsworth came on to deliver up a victory which should help to sustain dreams of Dublin and a prancing horse.

Goal: Holdsworth (0-1) 81.

Wimbledon (4-4-2): Sullivan; Cunningham, Blackwell, Perry, Kimble; Earle (Holdworth, 69), Jones, Castledine, Gayle; Ekoku, Clarke. Substitutes not used: Goodman, Thorn.

Nottingham Forest (4-3-1-2): Crossley; Lyttle, Cooper, Chettle, Pearce; Stone, Bart-Williams, Gemmill; Roy; Guinan (McGregor, 69), Lee. Substitutes not used: Phillips, Haaland.

Bookings: Wimbledon: Cunningham.

Referee: K Burge (Tonypandy)

Man of the match: Holdsworth.

Attendance: 9,802.