THEY say that if you remember the 1960s, then you weren’t there.

My lost decade is the 2000s. And it’s not because I was lost in a fog of drunken excess, far from it.

It is because in 2000 I discovered a computer game, and spent the rest of the decade trying to beat my addiction to it.

The game was Championship Manager. Just typing those words has sent a shiver down my spine.

I had a brief flirtation with an earlier incarnation of the game at school in the 1990s, when someone had illegally installed it on to the computer network, where those in the know could get a sneaky game of it in before the IT technicians cottoned on to it.

But my affair with the game began in earnest in 2000, when I got my first-ever PC. As well as an ability to connect to the internet, you could also play Championship Manager 3 on it, which was succeeded by Championship Manager 01-02.

CM3 completely did for my A-Levels, I have to admit. I spent hours perfecting my assault on footballing glory instead of boning up on English Literature. Instead of Wordsworth, it was Wolverhampton Wanderers, eschewing Betjeman for Trevor Benjamin.

University was where I moved up a gear. While holding down a part-time job, I’d spend long shifts scribbling down formations, working on my shortlist for the upcoming transfer window and, having printed out detailed statistics of my entire squad, working out whose contract I’d be extending in the summer.

I’d take an analytical and at times painstaking approach to the game. When I wasn’t playing it, I’d be talking about it with my housemates. This was before social media, but I dare say if there was a Twitter then, I’d be on there, banging on about the merits of Cherno Samba and the importance of a holding midfielder.

The Northern Echo:

By the time I got a job, the PC moved to Sheffield with me. It was almost obsolete by then, overtaken by faster processors, bigger hard drives and so on. My mobile phone is now more powerful than that old PC. But I couldn’t get rid of it, because in my game, it was 2037 and I was the best manager in the world. I was king.

A friend offered to upgrade my PC with the promise that it could handle Championship Manager a little better. I accepted, but when the machine was returned to me, the file that contained my saved game had been wiped. The hard drive had been replaced with a bigger, faster unit, and the old drive had been chucked out, no longer fit for purpose.

I realised I had a problem at that point, as I was approaching the waste recycling facility where my hard drive had been dispatched to. It was closed. I attempted to climb the fence, but I could not make it. I was at my lowest ebb. I could almost hear the screams of that Champions League-winning squad from a skip in the distance.

I didn’t play the game again - out of respect - until 2010. That was, until I found there was a way to install the game on newer machines with the ability to update it to the present day. It worked a treat. But the old magic wasn’t there. I built a team capable of winning the Champions League, but the spark, the unbridled joy at an against-all-odds cup victory with a weakened team away from home, just didn’t happen.

I couldn’t even bring myself to wear a suit for cup finals, or to give my customary press conference in the kitchen after a big game.

The mere mention of Champ Man will elicit some kind of reaction when you are in company. It’s either the eyes lighting up at a kindred spirit, or it is the glazed, resigned look of someone who is married to someone who plays it. Or it is the third. The look of desperation, the “don’t mention that game, I’m a recovering addict”, leading to fond memories of long days and longer nights just playing “one more season”.

But did it ruin my life? No. Not at all. I managed to beat the addiction when the going got tough, when being a father and a husband was of paramount importance, I made the right decision, and closed the laptop.

And, years later, I was approached by the makers of the game to compete in a parallel Championship season as the manager of a virtual Middlesbrough – so the years of practice proved to be invaluable.