I still remember the first moment the Championship Manager/Football Manager series entered my world. I was round my cousin’s house as a 10 year old busy trying to make it look as though I had eaten an acceptable amount of vegetables on my plate, when from around the corner where the PC was located a massive cheer erupted. Intrigued, I made my way towards the PC to find my cousin and a friend huddled over the desk deliberating who to substitute – would they bring off the midfielder who was playing well but tiring or the one who still had energy to spare but was having an average game.
The start of something beautiful
I was immediately hooked. My only football management game experience before this had been Premier Manager 3 (which will likely be seen in the Nostalgic Games section at some point here on Pass the Pad), and within seconds it was clear that this game was on another level entirely. I could start with a non-conference team? I could play in other leagues? I had to worry about my players’ condition and my tactics actually made a difference? Count me in!
My first actual hands-on experience with the series was with Championship Manager 97/98, and boy what an instalment to start on! Consistently in the top 3 CM/FM games of all time on fans’ lists, the game had what seemed like the perfect balance of depth and being able to blast through a season in a few hours if you wanted to. It may not have had many of the now staple features such as online play, the ability to add more than 3 nations or a 3D match engine, but there was nothing better than watching the match text flash with your team’s colours when your substitute scored a late winner (or so I’ve heard, my subs never seemed to have the desired effect!).
My affair with the CM series continued over the next 8 years, including the excellent CM 01-02, until the release of Football Manager 2005 (due to a split between Eidos Interactive and Sports Interactive), where I promptly switched across to the newly recreated Football Manager series simply because that’s what everyone else seemed to be doing!
It was with the FM series, FM 2008 to be exact, that I finally entered the world of network gaming. Teaming up with my university housemate (Mike here at Pass the Pad to be exact), we embarked with a game where we took charge of the two recently promoted teams into the English League Two – Morecambe (managed by Mike) and Dagenham and Redbridge (managed by myself). I can’t begin to say just how many hours were sunk into that game, but it changed the way we both thought about FM forever as we realised that playing with another human manager added so much to the game (especially in the frustration stakes when they would steal a talented youngster you had had your eye on for weeks from under your nose).
Seen through rose-tinted glasses even then
As the academic year came to an end we had completed eight seasons, with Dagenham struggling to survive in the Championship and Morecambe pushing for automatic promotion in League 1 and a new tradition had started. Over the years the starting teams have changed, with memorable network games as Peterborough and Scunthorpe in FM 2009 and Fulham and Stoke in FM 2012, but release day of the latest FM has always been greeted with the start of a new network game.
Which brings us to Pass the Pad and the conveniently recently released FM 2014. Conveniently, Morecambe and Dagenham are both in the same division, League 2, so we have decided to try and recreate former glories by starting a game with Mike managing Morecambe and Dave managing Dagenham (because we’re simple and need to manage teams that start with the same letter as our names).
Clash of the Titans
The plan is to bring you updates twice every season – the first covering the August transfer window up until the end of the year and the second covering the January transfer window up until the end of the (undoubtedly mediocre) season. We will also be uploading highlights of particularly interesting games or brilliant goals (undoubtedly scored against us) to our YouTube channel (here! As an incentive there is a highlight from Dagenham and Morecambe’s first meeting of the season waiting for you there) and more regular mini-updates via Twitter (follow us here!).
Hopefully you’ll join us for our 10 season mid-table stay in League 2!
Pass The Pad Games 