The adventures of the Race family were subsequently featured in the monthly Match of the Day football magazine, in which father and son were reunited as manager and player respectively.

[1] The strip usually saw Rovers competing for honours at the top of the English and European game, although in some years the storylines would see the club struggle for form, including a relegation from the First Division in the early 1980s.

The stock media phrase "real Roy of the Rovers stuff" is often used by football writers, commentators and fans when describing displays of great skill, or surprising results that go against the odds, in reference to the dramatic storylines that were the strip's trademark.

[2] Roy of the Rovers first appeared on 11 September 1954,[3] as a weekly feature in the comic magazine Tiger, debuting on the front page of the first issue.

After 22 years of continued popularity, the strip was judged successful enough to sustain its own weekly comic, the eponymous Roy of the Rovers, launched on 25 September 1976.

[5] There were also hardback annuals and holiday specials featuring a mix of reprinted and original content, and for a brief period, starting in 1986, Roy of the Rovers was serialised in the now-defunct Today newspaper.

[6] A new strip was launched in the Daily Star on 13 November 1989,[7] written by regular writer Tom Tully and drawn by veteran Roy artist Yvonne Hutton.

Hutton's final Roy of the Rovers artwork appeared on 17 January 1992, with Mike Western debuting on the art the following day.

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.

Although the strip followed the Rovers through nearly 40 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.

"[33] The final incident of Roy's playing career came in the closing pages of the last weekly issue, in March 1993, when he lost control of his helicopter and crashed into a field.

[34] Thus the weekly strip ended its 39-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.

[35] The mystery of whether or not Roy had survived his crash was unresolved until the first issue of the new Roy of the Rovers Monthly in September 1993, in which readers discovered that the accident had resulted in the amputation of his famous left foot, ending his playing career and resulting in his move to Italy as the manager of Serie A side AC Monza (a fictional top-level Italian club, rather than the real club of the same name).

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 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 his mother, 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, and the precise circumstances surrounding the event were never resolved.

Roy was persuaded to rejoin Melchester as manager and part-owner, backed by the unscrupulous Vinter brothers, and he arrived just in time to save the club from relegation.

[39] Although this storyline was never resolved, there was nevertheless a certain sense of closure as, shortly beforehand, Roy Sr. had wrested full control of the club from the Vinters, thus completing his 44-year progression from player to owner.

"With his clean-cut good looks, innate sense of decency and sportsmanship, and a seriously fierce shot in his locker, Roy Race was always meant to be a positive force on the football field.

Often, such spells of good and bad fortune and form would directly succeed one another—a Rovers team that won the European Cup one year could find itself struggling to stay in Division One the next.

[48] When playing foreign teams, particularly in the European club competitions, the opposition would often cynically employ overt gamesmanship or downright dirty tactics.

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.

[2] 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.

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.

[37] A number of artists worked on the monthly comic, such as David Jukes, Sean Longcroft and Garry Marshall, in contrast to the lengthy tenures of the weekly strip's creative team.

[67] Reading Roy of the Rovers and reflecting on the response to the death of sporting heroes such as Bobby Moore, demonstrates how children's popular cultural experiences, and the recollections of them in later life, traverse the boundaries of, and fuse, the fictional and the real ...

Roy of the Rovers never made the leap from page to screen, although he did make an appearance on the BBC comedy sports quiz They Think It's All Over in 1999, in the form of a cardboard cut-out.

In 1990, "Roy Race" and footballer Gary Lineker released a single, "Europe United", described in the comic as "a hot rocking heavy metal rap", which failed to chart in the UK Top 40.