SWINDON Town’s Cameron McGilp will take on a professional esports player from FC Nantes in the first round of the Ultimate Quaran-Team Fifa tournament following Benfica’s withdrawal on Wednesday.

McGilp had been set to play the world number two on Playstation 4 when the esports competition – created by Leyton Orient – kicked off this weekend.

However, after the Portuguese side pulled out claiming there was some confusion between them and their esports team, and that they didn’t actually mean to enter, McGilp was drawn to play the French side instead.

Town’s self-confessed gamer has some decent pedigree as a Fifa player having beaten last year’s world champion Mo Aubameyang in this season’s Weekend League on Fifa 20 as well as going 30-0 twice in the same competition.

Revealing how he came to represent Town in the one-off competition, McGilp said: “Our press officer Ben Hooke text me straight away because I’ve got a bit of a reputation at the club as ‘the gamer’ of the group.

“We have a certain amount of free time as footballers, so we’re always on playing together.

“In terms of Fifa, that’s the one game that I’m quite good at. So when this competition was created, I thought about it.

“Ben text me asking if I was keen to represent the club, and I thought ‘yeah, why not?’”

The Australian, who has played twice for the first team this season, says he will likely follow the tactics of his manager, but has not yet decided on which of his teammates he will pick in the starting XI.

Keen to downplay his chances of winning the 128-team tournament, McGilp says he has already received several messages of goodwill from fans and is keen to play his natural game when the game gets underway.

He said: “I’ll definitely give it a real go and try to play football the right way. It would be boring if I tried to sit in and counter-attack.

“But at the same time, I’ll have to respect the way each opponent plays. I’ll try my best and we’ll see what happens. Anything can happen on the day, the same as football really.

“I’ve been having a bit of banter with all the boys in the group chat about who is going to start for me.

“Obviously they all want to be involved, but I think I’ll probably stick to something similar to what we’ve seen on the pitch this year.

“I haven’t decided yet though. I’ll try and get a few games in against some of the boys this week and work something out.”