Roy of the Rovers, cover date 24 August 1985

Emlyn Hughes and Bob Wilson join Melchester Rovers. Art by David Sque.

This legendary football comic, an icon of British popular culture, had an astonishing ability to fuse reality and fiction in a way that seems ridiculous at one level … but at another level seemed perfectly valid.

Tom Tully wrote these great scripts, season after season, under the clever editorial guidance of Barrie Tomlinson. The storylines – ‘Roy of the Rovers stuff’ – were often fantastical and unrealistic, but couched in familiar trappings – the training ground, the press, the advertising boards – that helped make it all so believable.

The ‘My Team’s Performance Chart’ was a regular ROTR feature at the start of every new league season. They were a fantastic way of tracking our teams’ progress in the pre-digital age. Over at Shoot!, the league ladders and team tabs were another essential item for the young football fan’s wall.

The comic was full of heroes. Young Rick Stewart in nets (Goalkeeper; drawn by Osvaldo Torta), hard man Johnny Dexter in defence (Dexter’s Dozen; Mike White), and up-front Hamish Balfour (Hot-Shot Hamish and Mighty Mouse; Julio Schiaffino) and Tommy Barnes (Tommy’s Troubles; Ramiro Bujeiro). These four, plus Roy, Blackie and several other Rovers, were all regulars in my Subbuteo team – and I’m sure in plenty of other lads’ teams too. In a strange kind of way the fantasy of the comic broke through into our realities, just as Emlyn and Bob went the other way.