As a 35 year old, my earliest football memories start in 1992, when the premier league started. I think this was a great age to be when sky brought much more game access to the masses. I’m a Man Utd fan (my dad supports them, as did my grandad who attended the 1968 European final) and I was your typical football mad kid. Subbuteo, match and shoot magazines with the league ladders. Sticker albums (I still have my completed original 1994 merlin album) I owned the first fifa in 1994. I loved The ‘pro match cards’ with the big heads, as well as the ‘Corinthian figurines’ with the big heads.
From a young age, I was very good with numbers and stats (I now have worked in finance for 16 years) My first knowledge of fantasy, was when in summer 1994- the paper our family purchased ‘the sun’, announced the launch of ‘dream team’ As a 8 year old, this sounded amazing to me, and I ran my first mini league with a few friends and my dad where I worked out the points. I have no idea how many weeks I actually did this for, or if it ran the whole season, and of course at that age no money was involved. My hobby that would later become an obsession had began.
Incredibly I didn’t do anything fantasy related for another 13 years. Of course I would see it in the paper every year, but I think my family used to put me off it by saying about the high cost of telephone charges (those old enough will remember you had to ring a premium number for transfers)
Instead I focused on playing football, and played 9 years as a child and 5 as an adult (we were a very successful team in our county- but I was never more than a decent player in my town, I was never paid to play) In recent years 5 a side has been the extent of me still playing.I also spent a lot of my youth on football management games, I was never really that into FIFA or PES except having some heated games with my brother
My fantasy journey started up again in 2007, aged 21 where after a split from a long term girlfriend, I wanted something to do to keep me busy, and set up my first local ‘sun dream team cash league’ entrance was £5 and it still runs to this day although the entrance is now £10- we get between 20-40 every year. I used to actually work out all the points (as you used to have to pay to enter the Sun, and otherwise this would put some of my friends off)
I came 2nd in the first season, the game was almost a ‘pick and stick’ back then and I think it had 2/3 transfer windows only allowing 3 transfers. For the next 9 years, I was the very definition of casual player, my local league had 9 different winners in its first 9 years (I have now won the last 5 and World Cup version) I had no idea of blocks, 3 for 1’s, I wouldn’t look at fixture runs, team news was also a lot harder to get back then.
So that was how I got into fantasy football, in my next blogs I will focus on my transition from casual to serious player, cash leagues, playing multi formats as well as memorable and funny stories along the way. Please comment with your early memories of fantasy, or how you got into it, or your memories of the football memorabilia (pictures below) I mentioned. Thanks for reading
Keysersoze fantasy football 