WIMBLEDON 1 CITY 0
FA Premier League
20th September 1993
Attendance 8,481
scorer Earle(54)
Ref A Wilkie
City Coton, Fiitcroft, D Brightwell, McMahon, Curle, Kernaghan, Simpson, Sheron, Quinn, Edghill, Groenendijk – subs Mike(62), Margetson(unused), Lomas(unused)
Wimbledon Segers, Joseph, Fitzgerald, Scales, Kimble, Barton, Sanchez, Jones, Earle, Fashanu, Holdsworth – subs Clarke(88), Blissett(unused), Digweed(unused)
From ONCE A BLUE ALWAYS A BLUE AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF RICHARD EDGHILL By Richard Edghill and Dante Friend … Brian Horton told me I would be making my first team debut the following night against the crazy gang of Wimbledon. What a baptism of fire for my debut, Vinny Jones, John Fashanu and the rest of them. They were good players, tough but just the sort of game you should relish.
… We travelled by coach in those days, no flying, and we set off the day before… Alan Kernaghan, our £1.6M signing from Middlesbrough and a Republic of Ireland international, arrived that week and was also in the team. His debut was also in the same game.
There was no time to dwell on anything. As soon as I knew it I was standing in the tunnel and there’s big John Fashanu stretching his hamstrings with his leg up against the wall over my head, and Vinny Jones bouncing up and down like a madman, and me thinking Oh Shit! Now the nerves had really started to kick in. But get this the kick off was actually delayed at Wimbledon, because of congestion at the turnstiles! … During the game I stayed to mainly defensive duties. Wimbledon were a good, well drilled unit with the likes of John Scales, Robbie Earle, Dean Holdsworth, Lawrie Sanchez, Warren Barton and Hans Segers. They had some household-name players and Sam Hammam, the chairman, was a legend in his own right. you couldn’t dwell too much on who you would be up against. It was more a case of how we defended. We’d practiced defending as a unit all week. I don’t remember much about the game, only that it was really dark, a night match, the floodlights weren’t great. We conceded a scrappy goal from Robbie Earle and I wasn’t particularly marauding forward a lot, we just tried to stay solid. The pitch was terrible. Bobbly and horrible. I enjoyed it a lot even though we lost.
