reported £26 million in June 1997, while remaining at the club in an advisory role. In December that year, Wimbledon were reported to be considering the football and greyhounds option again. Ownership of Plough Lane was transferred from the club to Rudgwick Limited—a company founded in 1993 with Hammam serving as director. With political control of Merton Council having changed, Hammam secured the £8 million sale of Plough Lane to Safeway supermarkets in 1998. He unsuccessfully attempted to gain permission to redevelop a former gas works in Merton during the same year, and soon after entered abortive negotiations over a site in Beddington. Frustrated by the lack of progress, Hammam shifted his focus to Dublin and other locations outside London—Basingstoke, "Gatwick", Belfast, Cardiff, Manchester, Wigan, Bristol, and Scotland. He later claimed that during this time seven clubs from outside London approached Wimbledon with groundshare offers. Similar opposition to that emanating from the Irish football hierarchy followed after Kinnear spoke of the Cardiff proposal: the Football Association of Wales stated they "will oppose the plan even if it means Premiership football coming to Cardiff". By February 1998, Clydebank of the Scottish third tier were also pursuing a move to the Irish capital. Swayed by Hammam's offer of £500,000 to each League of Ireland club, the same amount to the FAI and "schools of excellence all over the country" in return for support, five Irish teams now backed Wimbledon's Dublin proposal. Later that year, after the Premier League had approved the idea, the lengthy, heated debate in Ireland ended with an FAI veto. With Dublin now not an option, and Scotland similarly barred, Hammam attempted to buy Selhurst Park from Noades, who had sold Crystal Palace in 1998, but still owned the ground. This led nowhere. Hammam finally sold his shares in Wimbledon in February 2000, and seven months later became the owner of Cardiff City. Wimbledon were relegated from the Premier League at the end of the 1999–2000 season. The average attendance at Wimbledon home matches dropped by more than half over the next year, from 17,157 during the 1999–2000 season to 7,897 during 2000–01. Milton Keynes Stadium Consortium Background and motivations The Milton Keynes Stadium Consortium or "Stadium MK", led by Pete Winkelman and his company Inter MK Group, was formed in 2000. It proposed a large development in the southern Milton Keynes district of Denbigh North, including a 30,000-capacity