Roy of the Rovers

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Roy of the Rovers is a British comic strip about the life and exploits of a fictional footballer named Roy Race which has run in various publications since 1954. The strip gave its name to a weekly (and later monthly) comic magazine, published by IPC and Fleetway from 1976 to 1995, in which it was the main feature.

The weekly strip ran from 1954 to 1993 and followed Race's playing career until its conclusion with his loss of a foot in a helicopter crash. When the monthly comic was launched later that year, the focus switched to his son, Rocky, a player at the same club. This publication was short-lived, and folded after only 19 issues. The adventures of the Race family were featured one final time in short installments in the monthly Match of the Day football magazine, in which father and son were reunited as manager and player. These strips began in 1997 and continued until the magazine's close in May 2001; they currently represent the latest printed Roy of the Rovers stories. However, in February 2007, it was announced that a group of fans had obtained the rights to reprint classic strips and, eventually, publish new stories in a local football fanzine.

Football-themed stories were a staple of British comics from the 1950s onwards, and Roy of the Rovers was the most popular ever produced, with an estimated one million readers at the height of its popularity in the late 1970s and early 1980s.^[1] As such, it holds a unique place in British football folklore, demonstrated most clearly by the stock phrase "real Roy of the Rovers stuff". This is often used by football writers and commentators when describing displays of great skill or results that go against the odds, in reference to the dramatic storylines that became the strip's trademark.^[2]

Contents 1 Publication history 2 Plot 2.1 Weekly strip (1954–93) 2.2 Monthly comic (1993–95) 2.3 Match Of The Day Magazine (1997-2001) 2.4 Recurring characteristics 3 Creators 3.1 Writers 3.2 Artists 4 Regular features 4.1 Billy's Boots 4.2 Hot Shot Hamish and Mighty Mouse 4.3 Tommy's Troubles 4.4 The Hard Man and Dexter's Dozen 4.5 The Safest Hands In Soccer and Goalkeeper 4.6 Playmaker 4.7 Others 5 Spin-offs and merchandise 6 Parodies 7 Notes 8 References 8.1 Articles and books 8.2 External links

[edit] Publication history

The Roy of the Rovers strip began on September 11, 1954 as a weekly feature in the comic magazine Tiger, debuting on the front page of the very first issue. After twenty years of continued popularity, the strip was judged successful enough to sustain its own weekly comic, which was launched on September 25, 1976. This title ran for 853 issues until March 20, 1993,^[3] and featured the main Roy of the Rovers strip in addition to other football strips and features. In February 1989, the comic merged with the similarly-themed Hot Shot, and was known for a brief time as Roy of the Rovers and Hot Shot, but reverted to its original title shortly afterwards. There was also a hardback annual that featured a mix of reprinted and original content, and for a brief period, starting in 1986, Roy of the Rovers strips were serialised in the now-defunct Today newspaper.^[4] These were all-new strips, which focused largely on the relationship between Roy and his wife rather than the action on the pitch.

Following the sales slump and eventual closure of the weekly title in 1993,^[5] the comic was relaunched as a monthly publication in September of the same year. Sales of the comic to its targeted demographic of pre- and early-teen boys had been on a steady decline for some years so the monthly title pitched itself at a higher age group, looking to attract teen and young adult fans who had read the weekly comic in their youth. As a result, the strip featured grittier storylines, with back-up features and articles that attempted to capture the spirit of football fanzines. In addition, between January 1994 and January 1995, the monthly strips were mirrored by a weekly edition in Shoot magazine. However, this incarnation of the comic failed to attract particularly strong sales figures, and only ran for a further 19 issues, closing in March 1995.

This appeared to be the end of the Roy of the Rovers story, until a surprise resurrection in May 1997, with short (usually only two page) strips in the BBC's monthly Match of the Day magazine. These strips featured stories and artwork that were closer in spirit to the closing years of the weekly comic, and ran until the magazine's close in May 2001, also spawning an annual in 2000.

In the years following Match of the Day's closure, there was very little active discussion of the series ever making a return to print. Its old-fashioned and wholesome tone, often espousing the virtues of fair play and strong moral character,^[6] was generally at odds with the current trend for more sensationalist newspaper strips such as Striker, and television series such as Dream Team and Footballers' Wives. It remains fondly remembered, however, by many British football fans, a fact demonstrated by the nostalgic manner in which it is still written about by sports journalists.^[7]

In February 2007, it was reported that a group of fans had purchased reprint rights to the series from publishers Egmont for the sum of £150.^[8] They announced their intention to publish the series in a football fanzine titled Players Inc, commencing with the reprinting of classic strips from 1975 onwards, but with the longer-term intention of creating entirely new stories. It is unclear as yet how widely, if at all, the strips will be made available beyond the pages of the fanzine, which is currently only available in North East England. As such, the canonicity of any new strips published by Players Inc in relation to existing stories, particularly as Egmont still hold overall copyright, is at this point unclear.

[edit] Plot

For more information on the fictional career of the Race family, see Melchester Rovers

[edit] Weekly strip (1954–93)

The story followed Roy Race, a striker for the famous team Melchester Rovers, and his heroics on the field, with particular emphasis on his characteristic left-footed shot, nicknamed "Racey's Rocket". In the first episode, a teenaged Roy (and his best friend, Blackie Gray) signed for the Rovers after being spotted playing for a youth club team. A year later, he made his first-team debut and soon became a star, leading the team to either the League title or a cup almost every season. By 1975 he had been made player-manager, a position which he retained throughout most of the next 20 years. Although the strip followed the Rovers through nearly forty seasons, Roy did not age at the same rate and appeared to be at most in his late thirties by the time the weekly comic ended. This unrealistic longevity was never remarked upon by the weekly comic, although the later monthly comic would attempt to address it by stating that more than one Roy Race had in fact played for Melchester over the years.^[9]

Throughout his career Roy won a huge number of trophies with Rovers, and made numerous appearances for England, including managing the side for a friendly against Holland (largely populating the team with Rovers players and characters from backup strips). He married his secretary Penny in 1976, and they later had three children — Roy Jr., Melinda and Diana. However, he was also involved in a variety of sometimes unusual off-field activities. Up until the late 1970s, the majority of the storylines had focused on Melchester's attempts to achieve glory on the pitch — although distractions, usually involving the issue of whether or not the team would make it to a stadium in time for a match, would occur from time to time. In the early 1980s, however, as the strip reached its zenith of popularity, the story began to take on something more approaching a soap opera nature, with almost as much emphasis placed on off-field events as those on the pitch. One story, which saw Roy's wife move away to Crete, even attracted coverage in a number of British newspapers.^[10]

In 1982, however, the strip featured its most dramatic — and most famous — storyline to date. At the time, Rovers were playing in Division Two, following their shock relegation the season before. At the height of their push for promotion, however, Roy was shot in his office by a mystery gunman, and lay in a coma for several weeks. The ensuing whodunit proved to be one of the comic's most successful storylines, with an array of potential suspects. In the end, the culprit was revealed to be Elton Blake, an actor who had been cast as Roy in a TV series about the Rovers, but blamed him for his eventual sacking. Roy, meanwhile, was brought out of his coma by being played live radio coverage of the Melchester fans chanting his name during a match — and when the news of his recovery reached the stadium, it fired up the Rovers players so much that they went on to record a British record 14-0 victory!

The greatest disaster in the history of Melchester Rovers took place in July 1986, in a storyline which was designed to mark the end of the bright, colourful late '70s to early '80s era, overhauling the strip's cast and style and paving the way for Mike White to take over from outgoing artist David Sque. The Rovers squad had been kidnapped while on tour in the fictional Middle Eastern nation of Basran, in the sort of storyline to which readers of the strip had long since become accustomed. The story looked to be over when the team were rescued, as was the norm in such a situation, but as they were being driven away in a coach (still wearing their football kit), the writers performed a shocking double-bluff. A car, driven by Basranian terrorists intending to carry out a bombing, swerved and accidentally crashed into the coach — detonating the bomb and killing six of the Rovers first team. Although this was a massive development in the strip's history, the depiction of the Basranians as stereotypical "Arab terrorists" drew a certain amount of criticism, and an editorial decision was taken that future strips would avoid referring back to this incident.^[11]

The final dramatic incident of Roy's playing career came in the very closing pages of the final weekly issue, in March 1993. In buoyant mood — having just been reinstated as Rovers manager following an earlier resignation — Roy set off in his private helicopter to scout a promising player at a local youth team match. Disaster struck, however, as — for unknown reasons — he lost control of the helicopter and ploughed into a field. Thus the weekly strip ended its thirty-nine year unbroken run on a downbeat and unresolved cliffhanger, as Roy was taken into hospital while fans, the media and his family awaited news on his condition.

[edit] Monthly comic (1993–95)

The mystery of whether or not Roy had survived his crash would not be resolved until the first issue of the new Roy of the Rovers Monthly, in September 1993—where readers discovered that the accident had caused the amputation of his famous left foot, ending his playing career and causing him to move to Italy to manage Serie A side "AC Monza". Roy Jr., meanwhile—now known as "Rocky", a nickname first given to him by American fans on a pre-season tour in his early teens — was now sixteen years old, and on the verge of making his first appearance for Melchester's first team. Unlike his father, who had an exemplary disciplinary record on the pitch, Rocky possessed a fiery temper and found himself being sent off in one of his earliest games for fighting with veteran team-mate Johnny Dexter. This only added to the problems the club (now under the management of Blackie Gray) was experiencing as they struggled in the new FA Premier League.^[12]

Reconciling the continuity of the monthly strip with the stories that both preceded and followed it presents difficulties, as the new writers attempted to carve out a fresh continuity, retconning the story's history in a number of ways. Significantly, the strip rewrote various parts of Melchester's history (such as the years in which various honours were won), and shortened the recorded playing career of Roy Sr. to more realistic levels. Meanwhile, in another attempt to add some realism to the strip, the identities of the imaginary teams that Rovers played matches against were changed. Rather than having entirely false clubs with names like "Burndean", "Castlemere" and "Tynecaster", the clubs in the monthly strip were thinly-veiled parodies of existing clubs, with similar kits and lookalike players, and named after relevant real-life places—so Liverpool, for example, became "Toxteth", Arsenal were "Islington", and so on.

The monthly strip was also notable for often shifting the focus of its stories away from its titular characters. One memorable storyline featured star striker Paul "Del" Ntende (often nicknamed "Delroy of the Rovers"), an English-born player with a Nigerian father, agonising over whether or not to play for the Super Eagles in the 1994 World Cup (for which England had failed to qualify), after four of their players were killed in a dramatic car-crash on the eve of the tournament.

At the end of the monthly strip's first season, Rocky had saved the club from relegation with a last-minute wonder strike reminiscent of his father's best days, but the problems continued throughout the 1994/95 season. Blackie Gray was forced to resign after receiving death threats from fans, and was replaced by another former Rovers player, Mervyn Wallace. By the time the strip came to an end in March 1995, while there was some level of optimism surrounding the burgeoning careers of Rocky and Del, Melchester themselves were in dire straits, on the verge of bankruptcy and with their long-term future far from certain.

[edit] Match Of The Day Magazine (1997-2001)

With the return of the strip in Match of the Day magazine in May 1997, much of the monthly comic's new continuity was disregarded. None of the new characters created during that tenure were kept on, with only one player — Steve "Nobby" Wooten — from Roy's own playing days still at the club. A lot of the historical retcons that had been introduced were similarly discarded, including the "parody clubs" aspect, but the basic continuity thread of the club having struggled against relegation and being severely in debt was continued.

It was revealed in the first strip that in the intervening years, while Rovers had managed to survive the threat of bankruptcy, a bribery scandal had caused a mass exodus of players (providing an explanation for the jettisoning of most of the monthly strip's characters), and eventual relegation to Division One. Rocky, meanwhile, was playing for fierce local rivals Melborough, after a bitter falling-out with his father over a car accident in Italy in which Penny had been killed. Roy, who had quit football as a result, was blamed by some (including his son) for the accident, even though he had no memory of it happening, and the precise circumstances surrounding the event were never resolved.

With the relaunch of the strip, in May 1997, Roy was seen being persuaded to rejoin Melchester as manager and part-owner, with backing from the unscrupulous Vinter brothers, and arrived just in time to save them from yet further relegation. The following season, Roy and Rocky resolved their differences, the latter rejoining the club, and promotion back to the Premiership followed at the end of the year. In 1999, Rovers won the FA Cup, and their turnaround was complete in 2000, when they claimed the Premiership title. This was to be the last completed season that the comic would depict — when the magazine itself was closed down in 2001, Rovers were attempting to achieve a league placing that would secure them Champions League football and, in the process, give them financial security. While this storyline was never resolved, there was a certain sense of closure achieved by the fact that, shortly beforehand, Roy Sr. had finally wrestled full control of the club from the Vinters, thus completing his almost fifty-year progression from player, to player-manager, to manager, to outright owner. During this time, he had only left Mel Park for another club on two occasions — once when he quit as player-manager and took over as manager of Walford Rovers after a dispute with the Melchester chairman (although he returned to Melchester before the end of the season, just in time to defeat Walford in the FA Cup final), and secondly for a brief spell as manager of AC Monza after his playing career ended. He had also stepped down as manager on two other occasions — in 1978 and 1992 — but in both instances he remained as a player and took up the management post again shortly afterwards.

Recently, the Official Roy of the Rovers Website have begun to publish the monthly Match of the Day strips from the beginning, updated on a roughly weekly basis.

[edit] Recurring characteristics

Over the years, the strip became famous for its employment of certain types of storyline and stylistic storytelling devices. For example, despite the fast-paced nature of a football match, exposition would be provided by members of the crowd apparently commenting to one-another. This often created a disconcerting effect, as fans could seemingly make lengthy comments in the short time it took the ball to travel through the air (for example, as the ball was struck towards goal, one might "hear" a member of the crowd saying "Racey's had a shot!", followed by another responding "The 'keeper won't make it!", and so on). Even more implausibly, the players on the pitch could apparently hear comments made by individual members of the crowd and would often respond with comments such as "The fans are right, we need to work harder!" Nonetheless, loyal readers would usually willingly suspend disbelief at such moments, although this characteristic would often be parodied mercilessly, most notably by Viz magazine's Billy the Fish.

In the interests of keeping the strip exciting, it seemed that no season for Melchester Rovers could ever consist of simple mid-table obscurity. As such, just about every year the club would either be competing for the major honours at the top of the domestic and European game, or struggling against relegation to lower divisions. Often, such spells of good and bad fortune and form would directly succeed one-another, with no middle ground — so a Rovers team that had won the European Cup one year could find themselves struggling to stay in Division One the next.^[13]

Because the strip followed the structure of the football season, there were several months of every year when the Rovers were not actually playing football, but the strip still needed to depict something more exciting than the players going on holiday and then reporting for pre-season training, with the result that the players tended to spend their summers involved in bizarre activities like competing in charity cricket tournaments. By far the most common summer storyline, though, would see the Rovers go on tour to a fictional country in an exotic part of the world, normally South America, where they would invariably be kidnapped and held to ransom. In addition, the summer would often see Roy having to fend off lucrative offers to leave Melchester, usually to manage the international side of an oil-rich state.^[14]

Another notable feature of the strip, especially during the 1980s, was that real-life personalities often made appearances. Most famously, former Division One stars Bob Wilson and Emlyn Hughes were brought out of retirement to play for Melchester in 1985, along with longtime fans of the strip Martin Kemp and Steve Norman, of the pop group Spandau Ballet.^[15] Prior to this, cricketer Geoff Boycott had served for several years as Melchester's chairman, and Sir Alf Ramsey had briefly taken over as manager of Melchester while Roy lay in his coma. Other players such as Malcolm Macdonald and Trevor Francis would sometimes line up alongside Roy in England matches, despite the fact that the clubs they played for in real life were never featured in the strip.

The concept of TV pundits and anchormen making appearances, meanwhile, was a later development. When Roy announced his resignation as Rovers manager in 1992, he did so live on Sky Sports in front of shocked presenters Richard Keys and Andy Gray. The Match of the Day strips were able to take this further by making use of their association with the TV series — and so throughout that incarnation, the likes of Des Lynam, Gary Lineker, Ray Stubbs and Alan Hansen would often be seen on TV screens commenting on the goings-on at Mel Park.

[edit] Creators

[edit] Writers

Roy was created by the author Frank S. Pepper,^[16] who had previously created the similar strip Danny of the Dazzlers, but he only wrote four installments of Roy of the Rovers for the magazine due to commitments to another of his characters, Captain Condor. His role was taken by the strip's first artist Joe Colquhoun, who used the pen-name "Stewart Colwyn", and was himself replaced after four-and-a-half years by Derek Birnage, the editor of Tiger, who had commissioned the strip in the first place. In 1960, as an attempt to whip up publicity, it was announced that Bobby Charlton had taken over as writer, although in reality it was still Birnage (who claimed that he did consult with Charlton occasionally for story ideas).^[17] The longest-serving writer of the strip, though, was Tom Tully, who began writing intermittently from 1964 — in addition to the returning Pepper — and then continuously from 1974 until the end of the weekly comic in 1993. Ian Rimmer became the main writer for the strip during the Match of the Day years, having first co-written some of the monthly strips with Stuart Green. It is also worth noting the contributions of the various editors, most notably Barrie Tomlinson, who first oversaw Roy's adventures in Tiger before following him to the weekly comic, and later editors Ian Vosper and David Hunt.

[edit] Artists

After Joe Colquohoun departed, he was succeeded first by Paul Trevillion - also famous for the You Are The Ref comic strip - and then the late Yvonne Hutton, before David Sque took over in 1975. Despite reportedly not being a football fan,^[18] he was responsible for one of the strip's more definitive looks in its famous early-80s period. He was replaced in 1986 by former 2000 AD artist Mike White, who gave Roy a more muscular look and the strip a more modern feel. Barrie Mitchell — then the artist of one of the comic's other popular strips, Playmaker — took over in 1992, with a style quite similar to White's, and was kept on to draw the opening section of the first issue of the monthly comic, in the style of the old weekly, leading into a second section drawn by Robert Davies in the newer, grittier style. After the first issue, the monthly comic saw an inconsistent rota of artists used, in contrast to the lengthy tenures of the weekly strip's creative teams. Artists for this era included David Jukes, Sean Longcroft and Garry Marshall, but Mitchell did make a return to co-illustrate the final issue. This provided yet another continuity link between versions, as he returned in 1997 as the sole artist of the Match of the Day strips for all four years.

[edit] Regular features

The weekly comic generally featured a handful of different strips, of between one and four pages in length, in addition to a letters page, hints and tips about playing football, and features on real-life players, teams and events. Roy of the Rovers itself was usually the lead feature, although once the cover of the magazine stopped featuring actual strips (instead using photographs of footballers, or artwork that depicted the events contained inside), it would not always be the first feature in the comic. On some occasions, too, the RotR strip would be split, both opening and closing the issue and featuring a cliffhanger at its break.

The backup strips were almost always football themed, and included:

[edit] Billy's Boots

Main article: Billy's Boots

Arguably the most famous of the backup strips, Billy's Boots had appeared in Scorcher, Tiger and Eagle before finding a home in RotR. It told the story of Billy Dane, a hopeless schoolboy footballer who suddenly developed amazing skill and intuition whenever he wore the old boots of legendary striker "Dead Shot" Keen. The strip never tended to dwell on the morality of whether or not Billy's actions could be considered cheating; there was, however, frequent rumination on whether or not the boots were genuinely magical, or simply gave Billy the confidence to play well (he would quite frequently lose the boots, at which point he would revert to playing poorly).

[edit] Hot Shot Hamish and Mighty Mouse

Main article: Hot Shot Hamish and Mighty Mouse

Originally these were two different humorous strips, both written by Fred Baker and drawn by Julio Schiaffino. Mighty Mouse, a Roy of the Rovers strip, featured Kevin "Mighty" Mouse, a successful, skilful Division One player despite being a portly, short, bespectacled medical student. Hot Shot Hamish, meanwhile, followed gentle Hebridean giant Hamish Balfour, the man with the most powerful shot in the world, and began its days in Scorcher, before various mergers saw it end up in Tiger and finally RotR. Once the two strips were appearing in the same comic, they were eventually merged to form Hot Shot Hamish and Mighty Mouse (later shortened to simply Hamish and Mouse), when Mouse was transferred from Tottenford Rovers to join Hamish at Scottish club Princes Park.

[edit] Tommy's Troubles

Main article: Tommy's Troubles

Another of the comic's more popular strips (to the extent that, after the strip ended in 1985, it was revived within six months by popular demand), this strip told the story of teenaged Tommy Barnes. Initially it centred on his bid to be allowed to form a soccer team at rugby-playing Crowhurst School. Later, Tommy and his pal Ginger Collins formed Barnes United FC and played local league football.

[edit] The Hard Man and Dexter's Dozen

Main article: Johnny Dexter

Two strips that chronicled the career of tough-tackling centre-back Johnny "Hard Man" Dexter at two different clubs. The Hard Man was a mostly comical strip, noted for the antics of fat, bald, camp Hungarian manager Viktor Boskovic. Dexter's Dozen originally took a more serious approach, with Johnny moving to the league's worst team and trying to turn their fortunes around, but it later took on more comedy elements, with Viktor also re-appearing. Dexter would later transfer to Melchester Rovers and appear in the main RotR strip. Indeed, he was one of only a handful of characters from the weekly comic to appear in the monthly title.

[edit] The Safest Hands In Soccer and Goalkeeper

Rare among strips of the time in that it focused on a goalkeeper (thus meaning that the emphasis of the strip was on match-winning saves as much as match-winning goals), The Safest Hands in Soccer starred Tynefield City's Scottish keeper Gordon Stewart. Stewart was killed off in a plane crash in 1982, but a few years later a sequel series was launched, titled simply Goalkeeper, following his son Rick playing for arch-rivals Tynefield United. The Stewarts were fairly strait-laced characters, a marked contrast to the maverick "Rapper" Hardisty of later goalkeeper-focused strip Goalmouth.

[edit] Playmaker

Having previously been published in the short-lived Hot Shot comic, Playmaker went on to become one of the more popular strips of the latter years of Roy of the Rovers. The story followed Andy Steel, a prodigious 15-year-old midfielder for Millside City in the First Division. Later strips would see him transfer to rich Second Division club Lands Park, and finally to big-name Spanish side Real Santania, along with his team-mate and fellow prodigy Kevin Radnor.^[19] Perhaps surprisingly (particularly as by this point the strips shared an artist), Steel was never signed by Melchester.

[edit] Others

Other popular strips in the 1970s included Mike's Mini Men (the tale of a boy with a Subbuteo set), and Mi££ionaire Villa, which followed rich-kid David Bradley, a fanatical fan and hopeless player who had bought himself a place in the Selby Villa team for £2million. Simon's Secret, meanwhile, featured a young boy whose footballing abilities were enhanced by "cybernetic" implants received after a car crash.

The 1980s saw a slew of popular strips run in the comic, including The Apprentices — a short-lived strip detailing the exploits of Melchester's apprentice professionals — and Harker's War, a strip that took an unconventional angle by showing a former policeman's one-man war on football hooliganism. Young manager Dan Wayne was a popular character who appeared in two strips — Durrell's Palace and Wayne's Wolves, both of which saw him managing struggling clubs. The mid-1980s also saw reprints of Nipper, a popular strip from Scorcher that featured Nipper Lawrence, a plucky working class teenager playing for Blackport Rovers. Interestingly, an older Nipper had previously shown up in the RotR strip itself, appearing in the England team that Roy Race selected during his one-match tenure as national coach. The strip also appeared in the short-lived monthly comic.

In addition to reprints of classic strips, a number of memorable new features began in the early 1990s. Goalmouth took quite a modern tone, following brilliant young goalkeeper Nick "Rapper" Hardisty, who was also part owner of the struggling Fourth Division club he played for, and who had a propensity for rapping very loudly at opponents and teammates during matches. Rapper was another player who would eventually be signed by Melchester, ending his own strip. Buster's Ghost was a sequel of sorts to Nipper, created by the same writer (Tom Tully) and artist (Solano Lopez) and featuring the same club, Blackport Rovers. Buster Madden had been a top-class player for the club, but was killed in a car crash, and reappeared as a ghost to aid his former team-mates on the pitch in a variety of bizarre ways. His cousin Nigel Foster, also a Blackport player, was the only person who could see him. United, meanwhile, was one of a handful of strips that only enjoyed a short life due to being introduced in the dying years of the original weekly comic, and was unique among Roy Of The Rovers strips in that its fictional protagonists (a struggling Premier League side) were actually shown playing against real-life teams and players.

Over the years, there were also occasional non-football strips, such as Racey's Rocket, which was about stock-car racing, and Johnny Cougar, the story of the "redskin wrestler" which had previously run in Tiger, but these strips never seemed to fit into the football-themed comic and were invariably quickly dropped.

In addition to the players mentioned above who migrated from their own strips to the main RotR strip, there were also occasional "cross-overs" between strips in the weekly comic — for instance, in an early episode of The Legend, lead character and superstar player Agostina Da Silva was shown playing against Melchester.

[edit] Spin-offs and merchandise

The popularity of Roy of the Rovers at its height prompted copious amounts of merchandise and spin-off material, some of which is still available.

In addition to a Roy of the Rovers Annual every year from 1958-1994,^[20] and again in 2000, there were a number of tie-in books released. These included a handful of paperback prose storybooks in 1977 and again in 1993, and two football quiz books in 1978 and 1979. In 1994, a book entitled Roy of the Rovers — The Playing Years (ISBN 1-85291-548-X) was compiled by Peter Acton and Colin M. Jarman. This impressive tome documented the entire available history of Roy Race's playing career, alternating between press-cutting style summaries and lengthy segments of strips from the original comics, and has long been seen as a vital part of any RotR fan's collection.

Despite its one-time popularity and longevity, Roy of the Rovers never made the leap from page to screen, either in film or on television. In recent years, rumours arose that Colin Farrell was interested in playing Roy Race in a new movie version,^[21] but these seemed to be based more on a comment in an interview than any serious potential production, and nothing has come of the story since then. Roy did manage to make an appearance on the BBC comedy sports quiz They Think It's All Over in 1999, but only in the form of a cardboard cut-out!^[22]

Only one Roy of the Rovers computer game was ever released, on the Commodore 64[3], Atari ST^{[citation needed]}, Amstrad CPC[4] and ZX Spectrum[5] in 1988. It was split into two parts: the first an adventure game, in which — taking the role of Roy Race — the player had to find and rescue the kidnapped Melchester team, before then playing the second part, which consisted of a charity match to raise funds for the club. The fewer players you managed to find before the match started, the less you had to play with in the match. In the worst case you'd have to play with only Roy. The game garnered mixed reactions, with the Spectrum version receiving 7/10 from Your Sinclair, but only 3/10 from Sinclair User.^[23]

A number of official Melchester Rovers Subbuteo teams were produced in the 1980s and 1990s. Today, with official production of plastic Subbuteo players having ceased, a number of businesses offer unofficial versions. Subbuteo World, for example, offers handpainted Melchester teams in kits from every decade from the 1960s to 2000. There was also an officially-licensed board game in the 1980s, which saw players take on the role of Roy Race and manage the club.

No official Melchester replica shirts were ever produced during the comic's life, save for one or two special limited edition shirts (usually for competition winners). However, The Old Fashioned Football Shirt Company now makes officially-licensed replica shirts. There is currently no 1980s or 1990s version, but they have recently added a tracksuit top, as worn by Sir Alf Ramsey during his brief tenure as Rovers manager.

Two slightly more unorthodox pieces of merchandise arrived towards the end of the weekly comic's life. In the late 1980s, a RotR-branded, pineapple-flavoured chew bar was marketed at UK newsagents,^[24] and in 1990, a record was released by "Roy Race" and Gary Lineker, titled "Europe United". It was described in the comic as "a hot rocking heavy metal rap, featuring Gary Lineker and Roy on vocals and Roy on lead guitar."^[25] It did not chart in the UK Top 40.

[edit] Parodies

Parodies of the Roy of the Rovers strip have included:

• Billy the Fish in adult comic Viz: Billy is a fish with a human head, who acts as goalkeeper for Fulchester United.
• Lenin of the Rovers, a 1988 radio comedy starring Alexei Sayle, based around Britain's only communist football team.
• During the late 1990s and early 21st century, satirical magazine Private Eye featured parodies of Roy of the Rovers in every issue; these three-frame strips, done in the same style of artwork as the real comic, would mock current events in the footballing world, and have humorous names to match ("Roy of the Roverpaids", "Nistelrooy of the Rovers" and so on).

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

[edit] Articles and books

• Acton, P and Jarman, C.M, Roy of the Rovers : The Playing Years (Queen Anne Press, 1994) ISBN 1-85291-548-X
• Berkmann, Marcus, Roy of the Rovers review (Your Sinclair #37, January 1989)
• Berry, Chris, "Why did we ever give Roy of the Rovers the boot?" (Yorkshire Post, 15 June 2006)
• Farrell Touts for Comic Book Soccer Star Role, contactmusic.com, 19 May 2003
• Fifield, Dominic, "Match-saver cannot wait to take his genius to Germany" (The Guardian, 15 May 2006)
• Fustar.org Interview with David Sque, 23 March 2006
• Harper, Nick, Roy Race "interview" (The Guardian, 8 August 2003)
• McAlpine, Duncan, The Comic Book Price Guide 1996/97 Edition (Titan Books, 1996) ISBN 1-85286-675-6
• McGinty, Stephen, "A teen mag for boys - but will they buy it?" (The Scotsman, 15 January 2004)
• O'Meara, Tom, "He shoots... he scores!" (The Guardian, 20 September 2004)
• Platt, Mark, "Neil Mellor - The New Roy Race!" (Liverpoolfc.tv, 30 November 2004)
• Rose, Neil, "Race Against Time" (When Saturday Comes, April 2004)
• "Roy of the Rovers sent off" (The Times, 16 February 1993)
• "The 10 best comic book footballers" (The Observer, 30 November 2003)

[edit] External links

• The Official Roy of the Rovers Website
• Roy of the Rovers on BritishComics.com
• The Roy of the Rovers Annual Collection
• Handy Candy
• Subbuteo World (offers handpainted RotR Subbuteo teams)
• The Old Fashioned Football Shirt Company (makers of officially-licensed Melchester Rovers replica shirts)