The Best of Roy of the Rovers: The 1980s - Tom Tully

For men who like football there is always a place in their hearts for Roy of the Rovers and his legendary Melchester Rovers!! Having read the comic when I was young and loved all the stories I was over joyed to see this collection of stories from the 1980's. To say it is a collection of stories is a bit misleading, it follows Melchester Rovers through the turbulent period in 1980, Roy Race is player manager, they get relegated to the Second Division and Roy Race gets shot!!!

The collection only includes the Roy of the Rovers stories from the comic's and it has an introduction from Gary Lineker. There is also a nice 1 page bit on how the magazine was created, this is clearly from the original comic, just look at the TV!!!!

I think the comic has dated quite well, yes I know the names of the leagues are different, but football is football and it's all fun. Interestingly one of the story arcs is all about football hooliganism so the comic at least tried to confront some of the issues of the time. The comic artwork itself is really good, the drawings are really realistic and the colouring is as vibrant as it was when the comic first was released.

The book is 208 pages long and the thing it left me wanting at the end was more - I had to go on ebay and see if there were any other collections available or original comics - sad maybe but the collection took me back to a much more fun era as far as football was concerned. Luckily there are other collections -

1. The Bumper Book of Roy of the Rovers
2. Roy of the Rovers, the 1954/55 season
3. Roy's very first one
4. the Best of Roy of the Rovers, the 1970's
5. Roy of the Rovers the England collection.

I wonder if Santa will be good enough to bring me any of those!!! It's a great fun collection that will remind you of all the great players who appeared for Melchester Rovers and the games they played.