Preview: ‘Roy Of The Rovers: Best Of The 1980s Volume 2 – Dream Team’ – Britain’s Greatest Footballer Goes Pop???

by Richard Bruton

Britain’s best footballer heads into the mid-’80s… it’s pure footballing magic going for Melchester and Roy of the Rovers – but isn’t it always?

As with every other Roy of the Rovers volume that Rebellion and the Treasury of British Comics puts out, this second volume of Roy’s exploits in the 80s is pure nostalgia for the times, Tom Tully and David Sque‘s work just so full of great footballing action, the on the pitch stuff just pure classic ROTR stuff. (And yes, it’s football. It’s always football. Never soccer.)

Anyway, as great as the on-the-pitch action may be, there’s no disguising the fact that we’re deep into the latter period of Roy here and it’s beginning to tell just that little bit, as the previously ever so young Roy Race is rather starting to look his age (whatever that is – he has been going since the 50s after all) and the comic was beginning to look very much of a different time.

By now Roy’s deep into management and all that that entails – and some of the decisions he makes in these mid-80s tales are just really pushing the ridiculous levels way too high. You want an example…

Yes, I know it’s not real, honest I do. But that’s Steve Norman and Martin Kemp of ’80s pop combo Spandau Ballet (Remember them? London’s Duran Duran but not as good – and that both immediately places me on the Duran-y side of things in the ’80s and beyond!).

And yes, they’re going to spend most of this volume getting into Melchester Rovers’ first team, right at the top level of English football.

So yes, by the mid-’80s, we’d begun to lose some of the enthralling melodrama and social commentary that you sometimes found in ROTR and things begin to come off as a bit too gimmicky.

In this year of comics covered in Dream Team (from 195-1986), we not only get the Spandau boys but we also have cricket legend Geoff Boycott acting as Melchester Rovers’ chairman, plus veteran Arsenal goalie Bob Wilson and Liverpool great Emlyn Hughes tempted back into the game.

But even with that proviso, it’s still magnificent nostalgia for those who were around in those times, and there’s few better than David Sque at showing us this kind of perfect footie action…