by Spencer FC
The driver got out of his car and came running up to me. ‘Are you OK?’ he asked, his eyes wild with panic. ‘Do you want me to ring an ambulance?’
I only had one thought in my head, though.
‘I’m going to be late for training,’ I said to the guy, who looked dumbstruck. I was only about a mile away, so I grabbed my bike, which was totally unrideable, and just threw it over my shoulder and ran the rest of the way to training.
I staggered into training ten minutes late – I’d never been late before – and all I could think was, I’m not going to play at the weekend now because I’m late. As soon as I saw Sean, the manager, I said, ‘Sean, I’m really sorry …’
Sean looked only a little less unsettled than the driver that hit me as he surveyed my battle damage. ‘What the hell happened to you?’
‘I got hit by a car,’ I said, gasping to catch my breath, ‘but it’s OK, I’m here now. I can still play.’
After giving me a once-over, Sean realised that somehow I’d managed to avoid any long-term injury, and rather than worrying about the state of mind of a blood-soaked left-back declaring himself fit for training, Sean was impressed by my attitude. So impressed, in fact, that the following week he decided to make me captain of the team.
Now, being captain of a football team at any level demands certain qualities. A talkative captain can inspire his teammates with bold words, and if you’re not the most vocal player you can lead by example, though then you probably need to be the best player. I wasn’t the most vocal, as I was still the new kid in this group and we weren’t friends outside the team, and I definitely wasn’t the best player. I just had the best attitude, and that’s not enough, in my opinion. You need a bit more than that, and so it proved as I found out the hard way.
The other kids hated the fact that I was captain, so about halfway through the season the captaincy was quietly moved on to another player. I wasn’t sorry to lose it, and nor were the other players. It was a nice gesture from the manager making me captain, and he would go on to name me Manager’s Player of the Year a couple of times for the team. I never won the Players’ Player, of course. That goes to the best player. Being popular never hurts either.
I did get a lot better, though, and I would eventually fully justify my place in the team. The key to this was very simple. I’d go out into the back garden again and again, on my own, and just practise. When I wanted to get better at slide tackling, I’d go out there and kick the ball in front of me and then slide tackle the ball against one of the most accommodating opponents there is: thin air.
Once I turned 15, the next step was trying to get into the school team, which was a much higher level of football. After seeing that I was one of the better players in the air, Mr Williams, our PE teacher who ran the team, attempted to try to turn me into a target man. For some reason our year group lacked strikers, and so they tried to fit a round peg into a square hole. I was playing left-back on Sundays and up front for my school in the week. Needless to say, I don’t think I ever scored a goal for Westcliff, and even though I may have notched up a few cheeky assists, the experiment would go down as a failure. I definitely wasn’t a striker.
As I approached the end of Year 11, Seb had gone to university and my younger brother Saunders wasn’t into football – he loves it now, but he wouldn’t get into it until he went to university himself, where he had even more catching up to do than I did. I would come home from school and say, ‘Saunders, come and play football with me in the garden,’ and he rarely wanted to. He was massively into his music and was usually playing the drums or mastering some other instrument, so I’d be off to practise rabonas or penalty kicks against thin air once again.
I was obsessed, and when I wasn’t playing football I was playing football video games. By this point Seb and I had moved on to the Pro Evolution Soccer series of games. I never really beat Seb at PES until I was 15, and even then we’d play 30-game marathon sessions and I’d maybe win two or three games. We could never end on me winning, though. If I beat him there’d always be one more to play. Older brother’s prerogative, I suppose.
Over the course of Seb heading off to uni, where he played lots of PES with his mates, and my doing the same a few years later, I eventually got better than him at the game, and when we played I’d smash him every time. And what happened then? Seb didn’t want to play any more. I couldn’t believe it. ‘What do you mean?’ I’d say. ‘I’ve stuck it out for the best part of a decade losing to you, using the mouse while you had the keyboard on FIFA, which is what’s motivated me to get so good, and now you don’t want to play any more?’
That’s right: he didn’t. He saw himself as a winner and that’s all he likes to remind me about now, his hammering me game after game when we were kids – even though I beat him every time when we play FIFA on my channel now!
Back at school, I was still going at it on Football Manager, too, not that anyone cared outside my little bubble of a bedroom. Oddly enough, I always had a little niggling thought at the back of my mind when I’d play: What am I doing? Why am I spending all of this time on something that won’t lead anywhere?
I’m a pretty efficient guy – always have been. It’s why I’ve never really got into playing golf. Seb loves it, but I’d rather play a couple of games of football or really smash it on the squash court, have some full-on exercise, burn some calories and then get on with my day. I was the same as a kid – except when it came to video games.
I wouldn’t have let myself do anything else that had no real end point to it, but still I would allow hours and hours of my day to be sucked up by football games. Football Manager is a black hole where time is concerned – a thrillingly magnetic one too, of course – but the way I like to justify it these days is to think about the game as a metaphor for life: You can work hard at it and win the Champions League ten seasons in a row, but one day your game’s going to freeze and you’ll never play it again, and you’ll ask yourself, ‘What was it all for?’
So you can either do it to the best of your ability and absolutely smash it, even though one day it will be over and no one will even care, or you can just not bother. And that’s how I feel about life.
Of course, this kind of philosophical reasoning didn’t exactly wash with my mum and dad. They never tired of telling me that I was wasting my time playing video games, and if I ever misbehaved they confiscated the games as a punishment.
What none of us realised at the time, though, was that playing these games was actually super-valuable: all those hours spent on FIFA, PES and Football Manager were just preparing me for my job. Without that time spent playing those games just for the love of it – no one dreamed of making a living from their own YouTube channel back then because it just wasn’t an option – I wouldn’t have been able to do what I do today.
While Mum and Dad might not have been too encouraging when it came to video games, they certainly instilled a strong work ethic and competitive nature in me and my brothers. Both my parents worked long hours. My dad ran his own business doing refrigeration and air-conditioning installation, while my mum worked at Ford Motor Company.
Dad started from nothing, really, and he began his career as a British Gas apprentice, but he was destined to be his own boss. Even while working as an apprentice he was running his own burger van in the evenings. He’s had a number of different businesses throughout his life, and he’s never been scared to try something new or back himself. His entrepreneurial spirit meant that I didn’t grow up thinking I had to follow a clear path from school to university and get a ‘solid’ job like a doctor or lawyer. Dad’s example meant that I knew I didn’t have to just accept the status quo and do what everyone, including the teachers at school, tells you to do. I knew I didn’t have to follow the crowd.
Many years later, in 2013, I went to the FIFA Interactive World Cup in Madrid, which is basically the World Cup for the FIFA video game. I wasn’t there as a competitor (I’m a good player, but I’m definitely no
t a pro-level player). I was there more as a type of journalist, I suppose.
While I was there, I played a one-off game against Alfonso Ramos from Spain, a guy who was, at the time, the only person to have won the tournament twice. A two-times world champion. Before we played I challenged him by saying,
‘If I beat you, you have to give me your World Cup-winning shirt and sign it saying I’m better than you.’
He agreed … and I won the game! I beat the world champion thanks to an Andy Carroll goal – the West Ham connection seeing me to the biggest FIFA victory of my life. I couldn’t believe it. Alfonso was as good as his word, and he sent me his shirt on which he had written: ‘You’re the best FIFA player in the world.’ It was an amazing moment for me, and it somehow seemed to make sense of all that time I’d spent playing the game as a kid.
I couldn’t wait to tell my dad after the game, and I texted him straight away: ‘I’ve just beaten the world champion at FIFA. So much for a wasted childhood, eh?!’
It didn’t take long for Dad to reply.
‘Well done,’ he said, ‘but with all that time you could have been great at snooker.’ I think that’s what they call a generational divide.
I got my first taste of internet fame when I was at school – and it had nothing to do with football. I started filming music videos of myself miming to pop hits in my mum and dad’s attic. Some were funny, or at least I think they were, and some were just pure cringe. When I showed my mate Pete some of them when he was round at my house, he said, ‘Can you send me them on MSN?’ (This was way before WhatsApp. Back then, MSN was the place to be to chat with your mates after school.)
I should have sensed a stitch-up a mile off, but instead I sent them to him in good faith and pure naivety. And he went and uploaded them to the internet. Cheers, Pete! One of them, my rendition of ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ by Queen, went viral and got something like 600,000 views (this was a lot back then) on Google Video (the precursor to YouTube). Featuring me topless and my super-skinny teenage frame on display, this video was definitely not meant for public consumption.
It got played in school assembly, much to my horror, and someone even came up to me when I was playing snooker in Chelmsford and said, ‘You’re the kid from “Don’t Stop Me Now”.’
Yet another reason why greatness at snooker was always likely to elude me.
TOP 10 VIDEO GAMES
Football Manager (formerly Championship Manager)
This game has taken up more time than any other game I’ve ever played – and even now I’m still addicted.
FIFA
Introduced me to video games in general, as well as the pitfalls of using the mouse against Seb, and was a huge catalyst for my YouTube career.
Pro Evolution Soccer
Not what it used to be, but in its prime this game was as good as anything else out there.
Mario Kart
We’ve all suffered from a bit of Mario Kart rage from time to time. What a game.
GoldenEye
The legendary first-person shooter. One of my first N64 games.
Shenmue
This Dreamcast game didn’t get the credit it deserved, but it was without doubt one of the most in-depth and ahead-of-its-time games I’ve ever played.
Call of Duty
I’ve played many different iterations of this franchise, but this, along with Mario Kart, is the only game in my top 10 that I’ve played a lot with my girlfriend Alex.
Virtua Tennis
I love this game, and it would be higher up the chart if it wasn’t such a lonely experience for me – I rarely had anyone else to play it with.
Super Smash Bros
Quality game, incorporating all of your favourite Nintendo characters. Ideal for a group – my best bud Manjdog and I grew up playing this.
Grand Theft Auto
No Top 10 would be complete without GTA, one of the most revolutionary games of all time. It wasn’t just a game – it was another universe.
Special mentions: TopEleven, WrestleMania and Fuzion Frenzy
Since my obsession with the game began, I always wanted to start a football club. Now, that’s a lofty ambition in anyone’s eyes, I know, but after I sat my GCSEs in 2005 and school was out for summer, my time playing for Heybridge came to an end. A lot of youth football teams finish when the players turn 16, and Heybridge was no different. It means a lot of lads often stop playing the game for good at this time too.
Not me though. My only thought was: No way am I stopping playing football – I’ve only just got into it.
A lot of my mates from school were in the same boat, so I decided to start a team myself. I rounded all of my Westcliff mates up, but we were still short of numbers, and that’s when I decided to give Faisal ‘Manjdog’ Manji a call. Faisal was my best friend at primary school. His parents would work long hours just like mine, so we would go to the Late Stay after-school class where we’d do our homework and hang out. We had lost touch over the years, as he’d gone to the other grammar school, KEGS. Luckily, his team had just finished up too, and he was able to bring along five or six lads from KEGS with him to play. Things were starting to look promising.
However, getting a squad together was just one of the challenges that presented itself. I also had to secure our place in a league by proving that I was eligible and organised enough to run my own team at 16 years of age, which involved going to a meeting with the local FA. I put on my smartest clothes, polished my shoes and even put a comb through my hair. This was serious, after all. I was ushered into a dark room, where a load of old, grey men with notepads sat at a table staring at me very seriously. I remember thinking at the time that it was strange how a group of pensioners got to decide the fate of youth football teams, but that wasn’t something I had any control over. I had to make a case for us being able to start this football team, so I cleared my throat, put on my most severe face and told them why they should let us join the league.
I walked out with the green light to start the team. I was buzzing. We still needed money, though. Even at youth level, running an amateur team can be an expensive business with costs such as kits, balls, pitch rental and referees. I was on a roll with officialdom, so I arranged another meeting, this time with the local council who were offering grants for new initiatives in the area. I had to convince the council that their money would be put to good use by helping us extend our amateur football careers.
‘Look, we’re all sixteen, and we just want to play football. You wouldn’t want us milling about on the streets with nothing better to do now, would you?’ Whether a bunch of grammar-school kids on the streets would strike fear into the heart of anyone was a moot point. But it worked. I got a £500 grant which went a long way to securing our new team’s future.
I knew just the place to find a manager, too. My dad is a qualified sports injury therapist at pro level, and there’s not much he doesn’t know about the game. I asked him to be the gaffer, and he was delighted to do it. He kindly offered to sponsor the team which would also help to push his business. I told you he was an entrepreneur. He wanted to name the team after his company, Carmichael-Browns, but FA rules prohibited sponsoring youth teams, so we got round the rules by calling the team Carmichael-Browns Athletic. We could certainly justify giving the team our family name, even though everyone today thinks the team, which we called CBA for short, stood for something else: Can’t Be A****.
Things felt like they really came together for me that summer. I got pretty good exam results after working harder than I ever had for my GCSEs, but football was the real catalyst. We now had a team, and I was hanging out with a great bunch of lads. I was spending a lot of time with the boys from KEGS, as they lived closer to me than most of the Westcliff lads, and on the last day of summer before we all started sixth form we were mucking about in Chelmsford, having a laugh, when one of the boys said, ‘Why don’t you just come to KEGS?’
If only! Going to KEGS would have saved me an hour-long commute
each way to school, and when I’d been unhappy in my first couple of years at Westcliff, with only Bob the bus driver to chat to, I’d applied each year to get in – and always just missed out. It was a tough school to get into at the best of times, let alone on the last day of summer with school starting the next day.
‘Yeah, but what have you got to lose?’ asked my friend. So I rang up KEGS, more as a bit of banter with the guys than anything else, and when a man I would later discover to be the deputy head answered the phone I said, ‘Hello, I was wondering if I could come to your school, please.’ I even said it in a comedy voice. I turned to my mates, laughing, expecting the line to go dead at any second.
To my amazement, he asked for my GCSE grades, and upon hearing them said, ‘Yes, well, I think we can fit you in. Come to the induction day tomorrow and if you like it, you can start.’
If I’m being totally honest, after bunking off sick from the first day of Westcliff sixth form to attend the KEGS induction day, I still had no intention of going to KEGS. My main ambition was to use the day as a recruitment opportunity and tap up some more players for CBA. I told you I’d always wanted to run a football club! However, I had so much fun on the day and made so many new friends that I started to seriously contemplate it. That night, after crisis talks with Faisal, Seb, the Westcliff lads, my parents and anyone who would listen, I decided to call Westcliff and tell them I wasn’t coming back. I was changing sixth-form school at ridiculously late notice.
Going to KEGS was a gamechanger for me. I’d settled eventually at Westcliff and made some good friends, but I would still see them playing football. KEGS meant that I got that time spent commuting to school back, which naturally meant more time to play football and football video games. I was the new boy once again, but I’d had plenty of practice at that by now, and besides, I had all my football mates to hang around with. Most importantly of all, KEGS had drama classes (Westcliff had disappointingly dropped drama from the curriculum when I was in Year 8) and something called the Fleur de Lys (FDL), which would give me the opportunity to show off my middle-child syndrome once again.
