The former Dons frontman has gone from player to fan since retiring

Dean Bowditch was celebrating on the pitch again as MK Dons secured promotion a few weeks ago, but this time it was as a fan rather than a player.

The 39-year-old made more than 200 appearances for the club in a six-year stay at Stadium MK, racking up enough goals - 48 - to see him sit fourth in the club’s all-time scorers list.

A part of the club’s most successful squad, which secured promotion to the Championship in 2015, Bowditch knows how it feels to celebrate on the pitch as a player.

Now acting as an ambassador for the club, meeting fans ahead of games in Club Red and talking about his playing days, Bowditch is enjoying the game from the other side of the white line… well, most of the time.

“I probably shouldn’t say it but I was on the pitch with my son at the end celebrating like a fan!” he said. “It meant a lot to us as well.

“I know what it feels like to get promoted at this club, and I felt the response of the fans was immense, like the start of a new era.

“As an ex-player and someone who supports the club, and now my son supports the club too, it was a no-brainer for me to come back to share my experiences, and to enjoy some amazing football. I cannot complain about what we’ve seen this season both as a host and as a fan, it has been great.”

Like most though, there were moments during the season when Bowditch wondered whether the squad would have enough to get them over the line. With frequent injuries to key players at crucial times, the former frontman said what he saw from the rest of the squad during those tough times proved the character in the dressing room was more than capable.

He said: “There were some moments in the season when I questioned whether it was the squad to be able to get the club promoted, and I probably wasn’t the only one.

“There was that tough time when players kept getting injured, but everyone stepped up. Rushy (Hepburn-Murphy) came in, started scoring but got injured, Callum (Paterson) too but made a massive impact when he came back, and Nathaniel Mendez-Laing came back at the end of the season - what a player we were missing for a big chunk of the season.”

While it is the club’s second promotion from League Two since Bowditch’s time at Dons, he said, certainly compared to the success under Paul Tisdale in 2019, the club now feels like it did when he first joined back in 2011.

He continued: “It just felt like a long time of not so great stuff right until last season.

“Even getting promoted from League Two (under Tisdale), I was talking to someone who said ‘but we didn’t do it the right way’ and it still felt like with the success, it wasn’t the way we wanted to do it.

“That’s why this one feels so good because it feels like it’s done the right way and hopefully that sets the tone for the next ten years.”