Roy of the Rovers (comic) Argentine international of the same name. The 1980s saw a slew of popular strips run in the comic, including The Apprentices (1983–84), a short-lived strip detailing the exploits of Melchester's apprentice professionals (effectively acting as the Melchester Rovers story in the comic as Roy was managing Walford for much of its run)—and Harker's War (1985), a strip that took an unconventional angle by showing a former policeman's one-man war on football hooliganism. The mid-1980s also saw reprints of Nipper, a popular strip originally appearing in "Score 'n' Roar" and "Scorcher and Score", that featured Nipper Lawrence, a plucky working class
Roy of the Rovers edition in "Shoot" magazine, which had in the late 1980s published a parody called Ray of the Rangers. The comic strip was resurrected in July 1997, printed as short (usually two-page) features in the BBC's monthly "Match of the Day" magazine. These strips ran until the magazine's demise in May 2001. By then the strip's wholesome tone, often espousing the virtues of fair play and strong moral character, was beginning to seem old-fashioned. The editor of "Roy of the Rovers" comic, Barrie Tomlinson, has commented that "everyone seemed to be growing up a bit more quickly, and they wanted stories