I knew that this game had to be a thing of the past

I saved about eight weeks worth of pocket money and eventually bought the '96/'97 edition. The difference was amazing.You could now manage in Italy and Scotland while a larger database of European clubs and players made the game a lot more interesting and sadly a lot more addictive. It was in this edition that I found my first Champ Man legend, Fredi Bobic, who, like many to follow, never became the world-beater that the game had predicted.I couldnt wait to finish school and get home to the computer and resume whichever career I had going at the time. Unfortunately, I had to share my computer with my brother and sister, meaning that every evening my time on the game felt short-lived.As a youngster, football always occupied me, and Championship Manager was of course part of this. I often got told off for day dreaming at school and in amongst the clichéd naïve dreams of scoring the winner in a World Cup final, thoughts like I wish my brother and sister went to boarding school and I reckon I can win the Champions League with my Luton Town team often went through my head.

They told me that a number of my teachers spoke of how I seemed distant, mentioned my short attention span and how I regularly neglected homework Championship Manager got the blame. It had always run slowly on my computer due to it only just meeting the game specifications and when a friend lent me CM3 , I soon realised that my computer couldnt handle it. I was gutted.I would continue to play CM '96/'97 until the internet really kicked off. I started to slip again.By now my brother was in college, my sister was also in secondary school and it was clear that one computer wasnt enough for me with my CM addiction.Somehow I negotiated a deal to have my birthday and Christmas presents for a few years all in one go and along with some money that I had saved I managed to get my own computer.Not only did I discover porn, I also discovered that monumental nine-hour stints on Championship Manager could easily happen.Maybe you could blame lack of sleep from playing the game, maybe just the hours playing on my solo game and my network game, perhaps it was spending classes passing notes between other victims about our current Champ teams or maybe I just wasnt bright enough, but revision for my GCSEs went out of the window.

I barely passed getting the borderline results that I needed to get onto my college course.It may not surprise you to hear that I royally screwed up my first year in college but thankfully some maturity hit me and I managed to salvage this and eventually get into University. I knew that this game had to be a thing of the past.Many legendary Champ careers had passed, getting Cheltenham Town into the Champions League was my finest achievement and converting little known Icelandic striker Orri Freyr Oskarsson into English Footballer of the year came a close second - In his career, he scored over a goal a game for 200 games for the Robins But that was it. Champ stayed.This is where I'll fast forward a few years to the week running up to my dissertation deadline. Worryingly both my housemate and I were addicted to our game and despite the most important deadline of our lives fast approaching, we couldn't stop playing the game. One morning in particular comes to mind when we were eating our cereal ahead of a penned in day in the library that then turned into a 17-hour Championship Manager session that ended in the early hours of the next morning This ruined the next day as we both had to sleep it off. That was three days before the hand in.Somehow we met our deadlines but neither of us did as well as we couldve and we didnt in our degrees either.