‘I was in absolute agony’ – Danny Kedwell on penalty which took AFC Wimbledon into the Football League

BY EDMUND BRACK
edmund@slpmedia.co.uk

Danny Kedwell would have sat it out if it had been any other match.

AFC Wimbledon had made it to within one game of promotion back to the Football League after reforming as a phoenix club, with Luton Town standing in their way in the 2011 Conference Premier play-off final.

Kedwell was the talismanic forward, scoring 24 goals in Wimbledon’s 48-game National League season. But with less than 24 hours before kick-off at the City of Manchester Stadium, he routinely turned in training – with no team-mates pressuring him for the ball – and went down clutching his right knee.

“I was in absolute agony,” Kedwell told the South London Press. “I came off 20 minutes into training. It was devastating. I thought ‘this can’t be happening to me’.

“I went to take a kick of the ball and it killed me. It was me done – I wasn’t going to make the final. I wouldn’t have played if it was a normal game.

“My knee swelled up. I was waking up and taking anti-inflammatory tablets every four hours.”

Missing out was no option for Kedwell. Not only was he club captain and key to firing Wimbledon back into English football’s top four divisions,  after eight years of climbing the non-league ladder, but his contract was ending that summer.

Kedwell had a fitness test the morning of the showdown against the Hatters. Adrenaline and painkillers – he took six paracetamol – pushed him through to play the full 120 minutes.

He thought he gave Terry Brown’s side the lead in the opening stages when he fired a rebounded effort from Mark Tyler into the net, only for the offside flag to cut short celebrations. But his telling contribution came with the last kick of the game.

After Seb Brown saved Jason Walker’s penalty kick to give the Dons a 3-2 advantage, Kedwell stepped up to send AFC Wimbledon into the Football League.

He thumped his penalty beyond Tyler – the same leg that was heavily strapped – to send the Wimbledon fans behind the goal into raptures.

“That penalty shootout always pops up every now and then and I still get goosebumps now,” he said. “When Walker missed their pen, Ismail Yakubu went up and scored. I turned and said: ‘Boys, this is our time’. I just knew I was going to score. I was writing my own history and my own book – it was a crazy feeling.

“The history of what happened, with losing the club and going all up the leagues, I just knew it was going to be it. After the game was a blur – it took weeks for it to sink in. But even in the lead-up to the training the day before, everyone just seemed relaxed.

“We always felt like we were going to win, and that feeling just rubbed off on everyone. It was a very, very good day.

“I remember my knee was absolutely hanging off when I got back to the bar.”

It was Kedwell’s last kick for AFC Wimbledon.

His boyhood club Gillingham came calling that summer. Kedwell not only grew up a stone’s throw away from Priestfield, but he also attended every home game as a youngster.

“What a story it was to captain the club and score the winning penalty to get them back into the Football League, but I thought I had done my stint there,” he said. “You have seen it in careers where people have a real high and, all of a sudden, it goes downhill at a club.

“I didn’t want that to happen to me at Wimbledon. I wanted to go out on a high with the fans and the club.

“I have always said that there was no other club I would have gone to other than Gillingham. I turned down four or five clubs while I was at Wimbledon to get the job done.

“For two days, I had my agent and Erik Samuelson (Dons chairman) on the phone. It ruined my holiday.  Erik said: ‘We’re not going to accept the bid. If you want to go, you’re going to have to put a transfer request in’.

“I turned my phone off for a couple of days after I put the request in, because I knew I was going to get battered.

“If I didn’t care about Wimbledon, it wouldn’t of mattered, but because I loved everyone who worked there –  it was such a good place to be – it made it really hard for me. At first I said I wasn’t going to put it in. But after a couple of hours passed by the pool, it was playing on my mind. I was thinking: ‘Gillingham is two minutes from my house. It’s the club all my family go and watch. I’m going to have to do it’.

“I never got offered a new deal at Wimbledon to try and stay, so I think they knew it was time as well – they knew Gillingham was my club.”

After 58 goals in 118 appearances, Kedwell left to join the Gills in League Two after a £60,000 bid was accepted.

“Wimbledon was the start of my career,” said Kedwell, who was juggling a job at the Ascot racecourse during their early Conference South days. “I wish I could go back. It was so good turning up every day with the group we had. Terry recruited the right people and players.

“When you get a good changing room, you have a good chance. Terry always got it right.

“When I read stories back about the old Wimbledon Crazy Gang, that was like our dressing room. There was always banter flying about and people messing around – it was the best atmosphere.

“I can’t thank Terry enough for what he did for me. I was going from club to club around non-league, but Terry found me.

“I wrote my own bit of history for the club. Every time something happened, I thought: ‘It’s not going to get better than that.’ And it did – it always got better and better.”

Kedwell went on to score the winning goal for Gillingham to win promotion to League One in 2013 and had successful spells at Havant & Waterlooville and Ebbsfleet United.

The 39-year-old has just come off a pre-season run before he spoke with our paper.

He hung up his boots to become assistant manager at Chatham Town but came out of retirement for the final eight games as they won promotion from the Isthmian League South East Division.

“I said to the manager: ‘We need a forward. We’re not going to win the league without one. We need something different up there’,” explained Kedwell.

“We won eight out of eight, so now the manager is telling me that he wants me to be a player and assistant manager.

“I love coaching and managing – it’s a new journey for me. I have said this for years and years, and Fraser Franks and Steven Gregory used to say it too when I was a player for Wimbledon, I said: ‘I’ll come back and be the manager one day.’

“That’s my aim. It would be absolutely brilliant. I will get there.”