Everyone is anxious to understand when they can see football again. Covid has made this incredibly difficult for us to plan for. However, we can see the horizon and today we are pleased to announce the first step towards having full crowds back in the stadium.
Premier League newcomers Brentford will be our next prestigious opponents at Plough Lane - and fans who have purchased a season ticket for the coming season will be first in line to be able to see this exciting pre-season friendly for free.
We will face our London neighbours on Saturday July 17th at 3pm and we can't think of a better way of rewarding all our loyal season ticket holders for their incredible support and loyalty.
The match will be played under the same protocols as our match in May against Liverpool, for which we received a safety certificate to host 2500 fans socially distanced. Unfortunately it falls before the government’s July 19th deadline, so cannot be a test event as it was originally planned to be.
Reservations for the match will open on Thursday 1st July, so if you have not yet purchased your season ticket and would like to see the game, please do so now as you will not be able to reserve a ticket for you and your groups unless you all hold a season ticket for next season.
It's incredibly difficult at the moment for us to give you definitive details of all our other forthcoming games, although we are trying our best behind the scenes to seek clarity. We had to change and alter our original test event schedule when the June restriction easing was delayed and lost other exciting options, which has been frustrating.
Ultimately though, we still have two test events that must be played before we are allowed to fully open the Plough Lane doors.
Our hope, at the moment, is to play Scunthorpe United on 31st July as our next test event. This will be for a full capacity west stand only with around 4000 fans.
Once that hurdle is overcome, our next planned test event would be our first home games of the season on the 14th Aug vs Bolton Wanderers, this must be for a minimum of 6000 fans, so theoretically can be a full house, which is how we hoped to bring in the new league season.
However, we're sorry to say it's not quite as simple as it sounds and we cannot yet confirm the above. Ultimately, we are at the mercy of the Government's continuing Covid guidelines and, right now, we still don't know for sure what those will be. We anticipate an announcement regarding the lifting of restrictions in the next two weeks and then following that, what that means for football and crowds.
All we can do, at this moment, is show you how we plan to proceed if those announcements provide us with what we expect to hear.
The moment we are able to actually confirm these details then please rest assured that we will let you know straight away.
So keep an eye open for future announcements and please bear with us as we try to make sense out of an ever-changing, and often confusing, landscape.
To renew your season ticket please log in to your ONLINE TICKETING ACCOUNT or email tickets@afcwimbledon.ltd.uk