Virtual England

In amongst all the excitement around the launch of the New England kit, one thing was bothering me. It was going to be at least 24 hours from kick off before I would be able to download the new kit onto my virtual England team in Pro Evo 2009.

Sad I know.

I have bored people rigid, in the office and at home, with talk of what an exciting moment this would be for gamers, and it quickly became one of my favourite bits of the campaign.

I was very lucky to be present at Wembley last Saturday to watch a Rooney inspired England thrash Slovakia, but if I’m honest I would have loved to have been in front of my XBOX 360 as soon as the final whistle blew downloading the kit update.

A notch up on the sad-o-meter.

The next day on the train back north I planned how I could convince my wife that despite being in London on her birthday, I had to ‘work’ on a Sunday night. My ‘work’ would of course be playing Pro Evo as England, in the new kit, for as long as I could get away with it.

I arrived back early afternoon, played the dutiful husband for six hours then made my move. Sat in front of my XBOX 360 (albeit 24 hours later than I’d have liked) I downloaded the New England kit patch, the process was smoother than the Rooney’s finish for the 2nd goal the day before.

Still sad, but now not bothered.

The time had come to play my first game of Pro Evo as England in the new kit. I was brave and decided to go straight into a game on Xbox Live, me against someone called ‘The Destroyer’, England v Portugal.

Everything went according to plan an early goal from Terry put me 1-0 up, my virtual 11 clearly benefiting from the new confident look. Lampard struck the 2nd and then a moment of brilliance from Walcott put Rooney through to score a wonderful 3rd. The rout was completed by Gerrard and another Lampard strike and England had won 5-0.

Sad?

Probably but I’ll go off the scale when I work out how to share the replay of my Rooney goal on Youtube.