Roy of the Rovers fish with a human head who plays in goal for Fulchester United. In the interests of keeping the strip exciting, it seemed that no season for Melchester Rovers could ever consist of mid-table obscurity. Almost every year, the club was either competing for the major honours at the top of the domestic and European game, or struggling against relegation to lower divisions. Often, such spells of good and bad fortune and form would directly succeed one another—a Rovers team that won the European Cup one year could find itself struggling to stay in Division One the next. Storylines often centred
Roy of the Rovers (comic) Over the years, there were also occasional non-football strips, such as "Racey's Rocket" (1984–85), which was about stock-car racing, and "Johnny Cougar", the story of the "redskin wrestler" which had previously run in "Tiger", but these strips never seemed to fit into the football-themed comic and were invariably quickly dropped. Another spin-off was "The Son of Racey" (1989–90), which gave schoolboy Roy Race Jr his first prominent role in the comic just before he joined Rovers as an apprentice. In addition to the players mentioned above who migrated from their own strips to the main "RotR" strip, there were also