Roy of the Rovers 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). Reconciling the continuity of the monthly strip with the stories that preceded and followed it presented difficulties, forcing the story's writers to alter its history in a number of ways, a technique known as retroactive continuity. Significantly, the strip rewrote various parts of Melchester's history, and shortened Roy Sr.'s recorded playing career to a more
Roy of the Rovers 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. Tony Harding often illustrated Roy for the Roy of the Rovers annuals and also drew the Roy's Action Replay strip that appeared in All Action Monthly in the late eighties (Fleetway). Mitchell returned in 1997 as the sole artist of the "Match of the Day" strips for all four years. Filmmakers Luke Dormehl and Tom Atkinson, released a documentary called "Roy" in 2008, featuring interviews with some of the key members of the