Roy of the Rovers focus switched to Roy's son Rocky, who also played for Melchester. This publication was short-lived, and folded after only 19 issues. The adventures of the Race family were subsequently featured in the monthly "Match of the Day" football magazine, in which father and son were reunited as manager and player respectively. These strips began in 1997 and continued until the magazine's closure in May 2001. Football-themed stories were a staple of British comics for boys from the 1950s onwards, and Roy of the Rovers was the most popular. To keep the strip exciting, Melchester was almost every year either competing
Roy of the Rovers foreign teams, particularly in the European club competitions, the opposition would often cynically employ overt gamesmanship or downright dirty tactics. Continental sides were considered to be "sneaky": The strip followed the structure of the football season, thus there were several months each year when the Rovers were not playing football, but the strip needed to depict something more exciting than the players going on holiday and then reporting for pre-season training. As a result, the players tended to spend their summers involved in activities such as competing in charity cricket tournaments, but by far the most common summer storyline saw