Dream Team: Conference North

The English Conference North; the 6th tier of English football is not the most classy place to be plying your trade as a manager. Especially when it's on a 3 year old copy of Football Manager in your bedroom, borrowed from your mate, in Hull, while you're a student. Yes, that's right, I'm a loser and cosequently nearly just fell backwards of my chair while typing that sentence.

Nevertheless, my two friends (not my only 2 friends, just 2 of my numerous (4) friends) are currently trying to take Harrogate Town all the way to the Premier League on Football Manager 2010. I on the other hand thought it might be fun to see what would happen if an American pornography tycoon bought the mighty 'Sulphurites' and injected oodles of cash into them.

So, I was appointed manager at the beginning of July 2006 with a rather healthy transfer budget of £700,000,000 to spend.

I was a fairly incompetent manager to start with, I didn't quite know where to look for players or hire staff so my first match was a disaster. I was beaten 2-1 by a team called Kermt-Haselt, who I can only guess are imaginary.

However, once I'd found my way around the screen I started to make some progress. I signed elderly goalkeeper Paul Jones first, who would in the end only play 1 game before being replaced by Peter Enklemann. I signed myself a good assistant and signed promising German midfielder Aaron Hunt.

My first pre-season in charge saw a major overhaul of the playing staff at Weatherby Road. Most of the original team were released or sold as I brought in players such as Danny Guthrie, Phil Cave, Steven Warnock and Nicky Southall who all played their part in my first win. 3-1 against Huddersfield.

My next game was a friendly against Lancaster who had a Striker called Rob Black. I figured this could only be a good thing and was proved right as I won 7-0 and Black was sent off for a clumsy challenge on Nicky Southall. Typical.

My first league match was re-arranged due to international call-ups, which I assume is a first for the Conference North. In the end it was a 0-0 draw with highly glamorous Leigh. These would be the only points I dropped all season as my Harrogate dream team would go on to win their remaining 41 league matches convincingly and we found ourselves declared Champions with around 12 games left to play.

Not everything went totally to plan in my first League season though. Despite winning the FA Trophy, I was dumped out of the FA cup by Coventry in the 4th round and also found myself embroiled in a Fergie style war of words with Scarborough manager Mick Hucknall (Although I'm not sure if Mick was actualy his first name, I've done that for comic effect).

The club was also leaking money at an alarming rate. Transfer fees, wages and a maximum stadium capacity of around 3,000 had left me with very little money coming in compared to a lot going out. A problem which I'll have to fix next year in the big, bad Conference.