Roy of the Rovers Hughes were brought out of retirement to play for Melchester in 1985, along with longtime fans of the strip Martin Kemp and Steve Norman, of the pop group Spandau Ballet. Geoff Boycott served for several years as Melchester's chairman, and Sir Alf Ramsey had briefly taken over as manager of Melchester in 1982, while Roy lay in his coma. Players such as Malcolm Macdonald and Trevor Francis would sometimes line up alongside Roy in England matches, despite the fact that the clubs they played for in real life were never featured in the strip. The concept of TV pundits and
Roy of the Rovers that were more realistic". There has been no new material since 2001, but reprints of the strip have appeared online and in print. The "Roy of the Rovers" website has archived all of the "Match of the Day" years' material, in addition to excerpts from other classic strips. In October 2007, Setanta bought the original strips, which they featured on their web site. Then-rights holder, Egmont, published a 64-page "collectors edition" of the comic strip in April 2009, gathering together a number of 1980's era Roy of the Rovers stories in addition to other backup strips from the comic. Two