A Home Fixture

The best thing about youthful football enthusiasm was that it was directed at, and enthused by, one's home team. By and large it is the same today, even though satellites and the internet have allowed the game's tentacles to spread globally; much further, anyway, than the next town or village.
There is no doubt that the foundations of the popularity of the English game were geographical. A community, be it city district, town or village, had a football team, and lads from that city, town or village wanted to play for it. Rivalries were nurtured and traditions established. Location, nickname and team colours helped to help define where you lived and where your loyalties resided.
The rebuilding of the old clapped-out Victorian framework of grounds, however welcome, has nonetheless put the ideal of localism in football under strain. My football mid-life dreams and visits were rooted in dark, shabby, thrilling places like Roker Park, the Baseball Ground, Highbury and Maine Road, Ninian Park and Filbert Street. Nowadays, watching Final Score on Saturday TV, I am often left in the dark when the linkman shouts, 'There's a goal at the Amex (or the King Power).' But that, after all, is my fault. I'm out of touch.
What I do worry about rather more is the thought that the game, for purely financial reasons, might one day decide to move away from its geographical tradition and instead embrace the monetary wiles of the franchise. This could mean someone might be able to buy the club (sorry, brand), and the players' contracts, and move it all, lock, stock and barrel, from the south of England or where-ever, to the north-east, for example.
The key question is then: if a club moves away from his traditional geographical base (because of a new stadium, say) is it still the same club? Or is it a new club? And there are related questions. For example, if a club does move away from its traditional location should it have to rename itself and start again in the bottom division?
I have to confess that the closure of Wimbledon and the birth of MK Dons did bother me in a sense that here was a club which (a) moved from its geographical base, and (b) called itself something else. So, should it have been made to start again and gain admission to the Football League, like every other new club has to do?
Now, I have nothing whatsoever against MK Dons or their modern stadium. But I do think that at some point someone is going to have to decide what constitutes a new club, or whether a fresh start in a new location automatically means beginning again. Something like a 20-mile rule ought to do the trick. Move a club more than 20 miles from its historic home and it is a new club which will have to make a fresh start.
Anything to keep a franchise-type culture at bay.