Roy of the Rovers: 50 Years Ago Today

25 September 1976

Fifty years ago today, a new comic appeared in British newsagents. Except its star wasn’t remotely new.

Roy Race had already been banging in goals for Melchester Rovers for 22 years, having first appeared in Tiger on 11 September 1954. By 1976 he’d become popular enough to do something rather special: leave the supporting cast behind and have an entire comic named after him.

On Saturday 25 September 1976, Roy of the Rovers was launched.

The cover wasn’t exactly shy about it either: “BRITAIN’S TOP SOCCER HERO NOW HAS HIS OWN PAPER!”

Price? 7p. And what you got for your seven pence was 32 pages absolutely crammed with football. Looking at it now, you certainly couldn’t accuse them of short-changing you.

I was just six years old at the time, so this particular revolution in British publishing completely passed me by. It would be another four or five years before I properly fell into the Roy of the Rovers life.

Once I did, though, I was hooked. Roy, Melchester Rovers, Blackie Gray, Billy’s Boots, Hot Shot Hamish and the rest became part of my childhood. Saturday meant football, comics and wondering what completely ridiculous disaster was going to befall Melchester next. And there usually was one.

So, 50 years later, I thought I’d go back to where the standalone comic began. I’ve got the complete first issue sitting in the Verso Library, so this seemed the perfect excuse to read it properly from cover to cover and see what somebody actually got for their 7p on 25 September 1976.

Britain in September 1976

Before opening the comic, it’s worth remembering the Britain into which it arrived.

The country had just staggered through the extraordinary summer of 1976. Months of hot, dry weather had left reservoirs depleted, brought water restrictions and, in some areas, standpipes. Then September arrived and so did the rain.

Lots of it.

The political and economic climate wasn’t much brighter. James Callaghan had become Prime Minister earlier in the year, inflation remained high and sterling was under enormous pressure. Within days of Roy getting his own comic, the pound would fall sharply and the government would turn to the International Monetary Fund for financial assistance.

Meanwhile, if you’d switched on the radio, ABBA were at number one with Dancing Queen.

The Real Thing were at number two with Can’t Get By Without You, while The Wurzels were sitting at number three with I Am a Cider Drinker.

1976 in three records.

There was also a full programme of football on the very day issue one appeared.

Newcastle beat reigning champions Liverpool 1-0, Manchester United won 3-1 away at Manchester City and, rather pleasingly, Ipswich Town beat Arsenal 3-1 at Portman Road.

Against that backdrop came a fictional footballer with blond hair, a number nine shirt and his own weekly comic.

Roy Had Already Been Around for 22 Years

It’s easy to think of September 1976 as the beginning of Roy of the Rovers. It wasn’t. Roy Race was already a veteran by the time his name appeared across the top of his own comic.

Roy Race had first appeared in the opening issue of Tiger in September 1954 and had spent the next 22 years turning Melchester Rovers into arguably the most famous football club never actually to exist.

By 1976, Roy was big enough to carry an entire publication.

And so Roy of the Rovers was born.

It would eventually run for 851 weekly issues, lasting until March 1993, with Roy and Melchester continuing in various forms afterwards.

But forget all that for a moment. Let’s go back to issue number one.

Seven Pence Well Spent

There’s something rather wonderful about opening this first issue 50 years later.

This isn’t a comic tentatively trying to work out what it wants to be. It arrives knowing exactly what it is and wastes absolutely no time getting on with it.

Page two has Roy himself welcoming us to his new paper, sitting behind a typewriter with PLAYER-MANAGER proudly displayed across the front of his desk.

There are messages of congratulations from genuine football names including Don Revie, Malcolm Macdonald, Tommy Docherty and Mike Channon.

There’s a free football chart, another free gift promised for the following week and readers are invited to write to Roy. Or, brilliantly, even telephone him. Imagine being a football-mad kid and being given a phone number for Roy Race. I’d have been bankrupt.

And then come the stories.

The Hard Man

Perhaps surprisingly, Roy isn’t actually the first strip in his own comic.

That honour goes to The Hard Man, starring Johnny Dexter of Danefield United.

Within a few panels we know exactly what sort of bloke Dexter is.

He’s uncompromising, unpopular with opposition supporters and not particularly interested in changing.

It’s wonderfully direct British football-comic storytelling. There are crunching tackles, angry crowds, arguments with referees and the inevitable feeling that Johnny’s reputation might occasionally get him into trouble.

No lengthy introduction and no complicated backstory. Here’s Johnny. He’s hard. Off we go. Comics really didn’t mess about in 1976.

And Then Roy Arrives

When the main Roy of the Rovers strip begins, it’s in glorious colour.

Melchester have taken maximum points from their opening two games and Roy is already among the goals.

And then comes a wonderfully 1976 plot device.

A giant supermarket chain called Meadows has offered £30,000 to the first player to score 50 league and cup goals. In today’s money that’s roughly £280,000, so this wasn’t a nice little supermarket voucher and a trolley dash. Roy and Mervyn Wallace were playing for serious money.

Thirty grand!

Roy and teammate Mervyn Wallace are chasing the prize and the competition provides the backdrop to the first Melchester adventure in the new comic.

The football itself is pure Roy of the Rovers: backheels, diving headers, impossible passes, goalkeepers flying through the air and players somehow having entire conversations while sprinting at full speed. And I love every bit of it.

There’s something beautifully innocent about it when viewed half a century later. Footballers aren’t brands. Nobody is discussing xG. There isn’t a transfer rumour appearing on your phone every eleven seconds.

It’s football as a kid with a ball and an imagination saw it.

Eight Football Stories

The front cover promises “8 SUPER FOOTBALL PICTURE STORIES” and they certainly packed them in.

Alongside Roy and The Hard Man are strips including Smith and Son, Tommy’s Troubles, Millionaire Villa, Mike’s Mini Men and You Are The Star.

That variety is important because Roy of the Rovers was never really just about Roy. The basic ingredient was always football, but the writers found seemingly endless ways of changing the recipe.

A hard man. A youngster. A manager. A superstar. A struggling club. A wealthy club. A goalkeeper. Football gave them an entire world to play with. And it wasn’t just comic strips.

There were quizzes, photographs, competitions, reader features and articles squeezed between the stories. One of the more remarkable inclusions in the first issue is a contribution from Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, writing about football and sport.

It feels less like a comic containing some football and more like somebody has tried to squeeze the entire footballing world into 32 pages. For 7p.

And then, right at the back, there’s another little bonus for me: Ipswich Town captain Mick Mills staring out from the final page. Fifty years later I’m reviewing the first Roy of the Rovers from Felixstowe, and there he is in a Town shirt. That’ll do nicely.

I actually have my own Mick Mills story. When I was about nine or ten and at Causton Primary School, Mick came in for a visit. He signed a bit of paper for me, which was exciting enough.

Young entrepreneur that I apparently was, I then photocopied it, went over the photocopied signatures in pen and sold my newly created collection of “authentic Mick Mills signatures” for 10p a pop.

I can’t remember how many I shifted. I can only apologise to Mick and anyone at Causton who invested heavily in the market.

Does Issue One Still Work?

Yes.

Obviously I’m not approaching this as a completely impartial 56-year-old literary critic. Roy of the Rovers is tangled up with my childhood in a way very few things are.

But reading this particular issue is fascinating because my Roy of the Rovers hasn’t arrived yet.

I’m six years old somewhere in 1976, blissfully unaware of it. Another four or five years will pass before I discover Melchester Rovers and disappear down the rabbit hole. By the time I get there, this comic already has hundreds of issues behind it. Yet almost everything I would eventually love about Roy of the Rovers is sitting right here in issue number one.

The dramatic artwork. The cliffhangers. Real football mixed with fictional football. Heroes and villains. Ridiculous goals. Terrible tackles. Competitions, statistics and facts. And, above all, the absolute certainty that football was the most important thing in the world.

Fifty Years Later…

Roy of the Rovers would survive as a weekly until March 1993. Roy Race would become far bigger than the pages in which he appeared.

Even people who had never bought the comic knew what someone meant when they described something as “Roy of the Rovers stuff”. It became shorthand for the sort of heroic, dramatic or frankly ridiculous sporting moment that really shouldn’t happen.

For me, though, the legacy is much simpler. It’s memories of being a kid: buying the comic, reading the stories, following Melchester, collecting the annuals and treating fictional football results with a seriousness they probably didn’t deserve. Although at the time they absolutely did.

And now, half a century after that first 7p issue landed in British newsagents, I’ve somehow ended up with the thing sitting in my own digital library.

Which means you can read it too.

Happy 50th birthday to Roy of the Rovers. I arrived a few years late, but I’m very glad I eventually found you.