So without a doubt we are a conference team now, and on that showing we have already learnt a real lot.
Terry said at the meet the manager night that he would challenge anyone to name the starting line up that he would pick for the first game of the season and seeing it today not many people Would of matched it.
From early in the afternoon their was a special atmosphere building and with the weather being nice for us it meant people could take advantage of catching up with people who they haven’t seen at football for a few months.
When the teams came out they were greeted by a near capacity Kingsmeadow with the Luton fans packed into the Kingston road end. The Tempest end was well decorated by the fleydon collection of flags as well as other flags so was a great site, before the game both teams observed a minutes applause in memory of Bobby Robson and a number of AFC Wimbledon fans who has died during the close season.
The game started and fairly early on although not many clear cut chances Luton were having a lot of pressure and it was looking like it was a case of a team going for promotion against a very young team.
Luton took the lead when they were awarded a 14 minute penalty after Paul Lorraine was ruled to have fouled the striker, possibly for holding and the penalty was converted.
At Half time the score was AFC Wimbledon 0 Luton Town 1 but the general opinion was that as their was only 1 goal in it we still had a chance and it was importnat that we continued to battle away.
At half time we did a blanker collection for the cancer charity that John Hartson is being trated for, thanks to everybody who threw money into the blanket and I’m pleased to say that they vast majority went straight in and dindn’t hit any of the people also carrying it.
The second half started and where we had been penned back for a lot of the play we seemed to be pushing forward especially down the right hand side, the only problem seemed to be that Danny Kedwell was being pulled out wide and so on a few occasions he was crossing the ball into a position where he should of been standing to convert it.
At the other end of the pitch the defence was doing well in containg Luton and Paul Lorraine made a couple of clearances to keep the score at 1-0 to Luton. The Luton fans thought they had the victory sown up and started singing 0-1 in your cup final but without looking it up it was 2-1 in a Semi Final, some people have short memories!
Terry Brown made a couple of big substitutions replacing Duncan, Hatton & Godfrey for Wellard, Main & Moore and this was giving us more of an attacking look, maybe Main & Kedwell knowing how each other play helped but with Moore pushing forward we began to look like we could get back in the game, then with about 10 minutes left Main broke into the box on the right hand side and just as he was about to shoot a defender challenged him missing the ball and took main down, the ref pointed straight to the spot and showed the Luton defender a Red Card.
With a new season and new players its always interesting when you get the first penalty as to who will step up to take it do we stick with last years players or go for one of the new players. Well Jon Main stepped up and fired it to the keepers left and into the back of the net. Three quarters of the ground erupteed the Luton sectipn stood their in utter dissapointment with the reality that as well as being level now they had to face the remainder of the game with 10 men.
Straight away people suggested that a draw would be a good rrsult and that we should shut up shop and take the point. But on the pitch this was far from the case and the team could see that we could still claim all 3 points a few chances fell but nothing clear cut and so the game finished 1-1 and a nice way to get our season off and running.
So looking at the game we were playing the team that the vast majority of supporters expect to see win the league by a large margin we are a team who have either just got promoted or very young players in the first half it clearly looked like only oen side could win this match but definatley in the second half we got a lot more confident did Terry Brown install belief in the players or did we see a flaw in Luton’s system.
It will be interesting to see the stats from the game as it appeared that their were very few clear cut chances on goal so a draw was a fair result, as Terry has been saying for a number of weeks our season isint going to be decided on this one game alone but it gives us an idea of what we may be up against this season.
But tonight we sit 9th in the league and it feels very nice being there.
Posted by imbd 
