Jonny McCambridge: Match of the day – learning a harsh lesson in the world of computer games

Up until recently he has concentrated mainly on adventure games on his consoles and tablets – the sort of games where small spiky animals or tradesmen of Italian descent whizz about the screen jumping over some objects and collecting others. He also seems to like games where strange and random landscapes are built out of square blocks. What all the games he plays have in common is that they seem to go on endlessly and that I am bored by the lot of them.

The only computer games I’ve ever really enjoyed are those with a sporting theme. My brother and I spent much of our teenage years attempting to master PGA Golf on the Sega. I still tease him about how he once mentally collapsed during a round, and I recovered a six-shot deficit on the 18th hole at Sawgrass.

My son has never displayed much interest in playing sports – either on a grass pitch or on an electronic screen using a keypad. I suppose this has allowed me to create a false narrative of my supremacy. While it has been clear that he has been more adept at me at online games pretty much since he’s been able to hold a joystick, I’ve always been able to assume that I’m the true master in our house of sporting challenges.

But things have begun to change. Since he’s gone to big school my son has been playing football in PE. This quickly progressed into him wanting to face me at football on the games console.

I whistled through my teeth and wondered aloud about the wisdom of such a challenge. I told my boy I’d been around football games for most of my life, while he had never played one. I had no desire to embarrass him, (well, not much).

He inserted into the console the card of the only sporting game he owns – Mario and Sonic at the Olympics – and selected the football option. I took a few minutes to try and explain the rules of the game to him and told him about the tactics needed to be successful. He impatiently shushed me. I rolled my eyes knowingly.

Then we played a game of computer football. My son beat me 9-0. Next, he selected the rugby sevens option. We played a game of that. He won 98-0. We played several more times at both games, but I didn’t fare any better.

It quickly became obvious that whatever little bit of sporting knowledge I possessed was swamped by his mastery of the controls. Years of playing computer games had provided the muscle memory that ensured that even with just a loose grasp of the rules and concepts, he was beating me handsomely.

On more than one occasion he would dribble the length of the pitch while my players foundered uselessly, only to discover he was going in the wrong direction. A subtle change of pressure on the keypad turned his player who then dribbled the pitch in the opposite direction before scoring.

The revelation was how annoyed I became. Not at my son’s superiority (which I had to grudgingly accept), but at my own obvious impotence at the game.

The players didn’t move in the directions I wanted, missed countless tackles and often wandered off the pitch entirely when my goal was under threat. On the rare occasion when I did get the ball in a threatening position, I would have to look down at the controller to remind myself how to shoot. By the time I had managed to locate and hit the button, my son had already stolen the ball and scored in the opposite net.

It all, I am afraid to confess, brought out the worst in me. I was reduced to yelling manically at the useless little players on the screen.’No, no, no!’ ‘Get him!’ ‘Stand up you fool!’ ‘What’s he doing over there???’ ‘My flipping buttons don’t work!’ After multiple consecutive defeats, I bitterly attempted to construct the argument that the controller I was using was obviously of inferior quality to my son’s. He promptly offered to swap and proceeded to beat me 13-0. In my defence, I was provoked by my son’s habit, each time he scored (which was very, very often) of jumping to his feet and shouting ‘Goal! Goal! Goal! Goal! Goal!’ while he paraded triumphantly in front of my face.

Worse, he insists on providing a running commentary through the game, highlighting his triumphs and my shortcomings. ‘Will daddy be able to avoid his 38th consecutive defeat tonight? The ref blows his whistle to start the game….daddy’s defender has fallen over…‘Goal! Goal! Goal! Goal! Goal!’ The lowest point arrived when my son decided to go for a bathroom break in the middle of a game and couldn’t even be bothered to pause the match, such was his confidence I would be unable to breach his defence while he was gone. Sadly, he was right.

Once I had endured 50 consecutive losses (one for every year of my life) I huffily decided that enough was enough and that it was time to hang up my boots (and controller) and retire from the cut-throat world of computer football.

As I retreated to the haven of the kitchen, I could hear my son shouting up the stairs to his mum, “I don’t think daddy wants to play any more.”