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 a striker he comes closer to fitting the "Roy of the Rovers" fantasy than anyone else lately admired by English crowds". Shearer was at that time the leading goal-scorer for "unfashionable" Blackburn Rovers F.C., who were on the verge of winning the Premiership title. Comparisons have been drawn between the fictional Roy Race and the captain of England's 1966 World Cup winning team, Bobby Moore, whose playing career spanned a similar time-scale to that of Roy's. Moore's death in 1993, just days after the last edition of the "Roy of the Rovers" comic was published, produced a "literature of tribute",