Greetings to you all! Halloween is almost over and that means that so is CM9798’s birthday. I always enjoy the challenge each year of finding new ways to celebrate this great game, I mean granted I didn’t really for the first 17 years but since this site was launched in January 2015 we’ve tried our best to pay tribute. Of course, the CM9798 community keep this game alive every day and you really have to ask, is there a game of this age that is played as regularly as CM9798? I’m really not sure there is.
So why is it so special to us all?
I asked on Friday what Twitter’s earliest memories of the game are and the sheer volume of responses blew me away. Clearly, people never forget a great game.
Dig a bit deeper though and there were a number of replies alluding to playing this game with friends and it being the greatest time of their lives. Granted, there were some who said it ruined their lives but they wouldn’t change anything, which I think I respect even more. It really makes you appreciate that your childhood memories will stick with you forever if you want them to. Playing games with your mates is something that doesn’t lose it’s charm as you get older – it gets a lot less frequent, yes – but it is something I will be encouraging my son to do when he reaches such an age.
I’ve met people (virtually) through the community who I am proud to call friends. Most of them write for this very site either formerly or currently. We have ambitions to put on a Comicon type event for Championship Manager fans which would have happened by now if it wasn’t for damn Covid. Bjorn Heidenstrom – possibly the nicest man in the world – is well behind the idea, in fact he’s probably even more keen than I am! If we can get that together for the 25th anniversary next year, that’d be a nice story.
The Blog Squad as I have dubbed them are a fantastic set of writers, full of ideas and enthusiasm. Egging each other on to find the next project. We played CLM every Tuesday over Zoom and it was like I was 13 again.
We’re obviously an afflicted bunch to be hanging on to a game from 24 years ago but I think that’s something to be celebrated. I’m happy to keep providing the memories if you can all keep looking after each other and swapping stories.
I’ve been typing for so long we’re probably into the 25th year now. There’s going to be a mighty CM Cup next year – and hopefully a big meet up for us to reminisce about Tommy Svindal Larsen in person. If not, there’s always Zoom.
Thanks for reading and keeping the discussion going. You’re all winners in my eyes.
Dave
And of course the Blog Squad and friends:
KingOfTheRooks
Ross Bell
Nick
Deano
Matt Wills
Zak
Nathan
Philip
Rob
Nikolai
Ross J
Charlemagne9798
Did you see this earlier?