The Dons turned on the style to register their sixth win in the first eight games of the season, with two goals in each half capping a sparkling and incisive display of football.

When Terry Brown discovered that he’d won the Blue Square Bet Premier Manager of the Month Award for August, he recalled that the last time he won a monthly award it signalled the start of the poor run of mid-season form that ultimately cost the Dons a play-off spot. This time, he hoped, it would not be such an ominous portent. By the time he and his squad had returned to the Kingsmeadow dressing rooms after a largely comfortable win over newly promoted Bath City, even the self-effacing Brown could allow himself a smile and wonder if the trophy might actually bring him some luck. Not that the Dons needed any on this sunny afternoon.

The only changes to the squad that secured all three points at Kettering was the return of Jon Main after illness, in place of Luke Moore, and the welcome sight of Mark Nwokeji in a Dons shirt for the first time in two months. Ankle and shoulder injuries had kept the former Dagenham & Redbridge man out of action since halfway through the first half of the Dons’ first pre-season friendly against Charlton. Granted, Nwokeji was on the bench, but he was finally fit and available for selection.

Wimbledon started like they meant business, and some good early work down the right by Sam Hatton and Ryan Jackson sent the Romans defence, shored up by former Dons striker Danny Webb, into a mild panic. Steven Gregory was looking on top form, winning three early tackles and spraying two noteworthy pinpoint long-range passes out to Christian Jolley, and Sammy Moore seemed once again to have cloned himself, popping up all over the pitch and getting into great positions only for a Bath foot to deny him at the last second.

City weren’t causing Ismail Yakubu and Ed Harris any problems at the other end, and it seemed only a matter of time before the Dons turned their possession into a goal. On 19 minutes they did just that. Ryan Jackson’s long throw was only half-cleared by Gethin Jones, under pressure from Danny Kedwell, and Gregory reacted to the loose ball first, worming his way into the D and firing at goal. Webb blocked his effort, but the ball spun handily into the path of Moore, who planted a first-time shot low and hard to keeper Ryan Robinson’s right and into the back of the net.

It was the least that Wimbledon deserved, and it was all Bath could do to keep the Dons out for another 19 minutes. But when Yakubu headed in Hatton’s inswinging near-post corner seven minutes before the break, the home side should have been home and hosed. They nearly were two minutes later, when Jackson and Hatton played Moore in after some intricate footwork, but the midfielder shot straight at Robinson from 12 yards.

Had Moore been able to lift the ball over the tangerine-clad keeper it really would have been game over, but the Dons were so comfortable in the opening half that even the most ardent City fan would have been hard pressed to be optimistic about their prospects for the second. Seb Brown had almost nothing to do, except catch a couple of crosses and take two goal-kicks.

If you had asked that same most ardent City fan about his side’s prospects 20 minutes into the second half, you would have got a very different answer. The Dons were no longer stamping their authority on the game and were allowing Bath more possession, and if strikers Lee Philips and Darren Edwards had been in better form the visitors could have levelled the score. Time and again, Wimbledon gave the ball away when under no pressure and were handing City the initiative on a plate. But although the Dons presented them with three takable chances in the space of five minutes, Bath registered just two shots on target in the entire game. This was a strange period of the game - almost as if Wimbledon were inviting their opponents to get a goal back and make more of a go of it, and Bath were politely declining.

After having so much of the ball in the first half and so little of it thus far in the second, it was a surprise that when the Dons did kill the game off with their third goal it was against the run of play. Another Jackson long throw did the damage, this time Kedwell heading it on for the unmarked Jolley to steal in at the back post and gently side-foot the ball inside the far post. That was the end of Bath’s resistance, and the start of another 25 minutes of thoroughly enjoyable football from the Dons.

Whatever happens between now and the rest of the season, home fans will be able to look back on the first eight games with a sense of amazement at just how well the Dons played at times. It was ironic, then, that the fourth goal should come from a complete mis-hit. Bath struggled to clear once more, and after Gregory’s shot was deflected up in the air it fell invitingly for Jackson, 22 yards from goal. His right shinpad seemed to make contact with the ball first, sending it spinning wildly out of kilter, but it fell perfectly for the waiting Kedwell, who controlled it first time and despatched it into the same few squares of netting that had gratefully accepted Jolley’s effort only three minutes earlier.

The Dons could have settled for four, but knowing that goal difference could be a key factor in deciding the top five come April, they set about improving on their already impressive +11 tally. Jon Main, who had replaced Blackman between the third and fourth goals, saw Robinson turn his near-post effort out for a corner, and fellow sub Rashid Yussuff was denied a wonder goal by a Webb deflection. Mark Nwokeji, who had replaced Sam Hatton with 10 minutes to go, chipped a pearler of a cross onto Kedwell’s chest from a seemingly impossible angle, and the Dons skipper controlled it neatly before deftly dinking the ball over his head to Yussuff, who had started the move with an incisive pass to Nwokeji, but the ex-Gillingham midfielder’s 20-yard drive hit Webb on the heels and span out for a corner.

This was another hugely encouraging performance by the Dons, who now go into games against the Towns of Luton and Crawley having entertainingly repelled a Roman invasion. Those two matches will say a lot more about the season to come, but for now AFC Wimbledon sit proudly at the summit of non-League football, having hugely impressed the watching Joe Sheerin, someone who played a huge part in getting the ball rolling in the first place.