The official Roy of the Rovers web site run by Mark Hunt remains offline (but there’s an archive of its early incarnation here) and the character’s official Facebook page hasn’t been updated since February 2014! The club folded the following year but Wayne remained in the comic in the new Wayne's Wolves story for a year.

There he met the fat, bald, camp but extremely successful Hungarian manager Viktor Boskovic, with the strip taking on an increasingly humorous tone in the process. When the monthly comic was launched later that year the focus switched to Roy's son Rocky, who also played for Melchester. Two further titles were released in 2009, The Best of the 1970s and The Second Bumper Book, and a third Best of, focusing on the World Cup, was released in 2010. Gordon Stewart would later be rebooted to appear as Melchester Rovers' goalkeeper in the 2018 Roy of the Rovers revival. For 1959 and 1960, the title changed to Tiger Book of Roy of the Rovers, and after that the titles would be Tiger Roy of the Rovers Annual (or slight variations thereon) until the last one in 1975, after which the Roy of the Rovers Annuals themselves would begin, to tie in with the standalone comic.

The Guardian newspaper of 10 April 1995, for instance, described future England captain Alan Shearer as "the classic working class sporting hero.

Seen as surplus to requirements at Danefield, Dexter transferred to fourth division Burnside Athletic. He impresses Melchester manager Kevin "Mighty" Mouse and coach Johnny "Hard Man" Dexter at his trial, and is signed on as a trainee – but suddenly finds himself, along with the rest of the youth team, promoted to the first team squad when the club's entire roster of professional players are sold to ensure Melchester's financial survival.Roy of the Rovers – The Bumper Book of Roy of the Rovers came packed with sort of features that made the Roy of the Rovers Annual top of many a boy’s Christmas list. Roy of the Rovers never made the leap from page to screen, although he did make an appearance on the BBC comedy sports quiz They Think It's All Over in 1999, in the form of a cardboard cut-out. It is this as much as anything that has ensured the iconic comic book character's continuing popularity, almost 67 years after he first appeared on the pages of Tiger magazine. The story followed Roy Race, a striker for the fictional football team Melchester Rovers, based in a town of the same name in an unspecified part of England, where Roy lived with his family.

Roy of the Rovers was usually the lead feature, although once the cover of the magazine stopped featuring actual strips (instead using photographs of footballers, or artwork that depicted the events contained inside), it was not always the first feature in the magazine. The Bumper Book of Roy of the Rovers was published in October 2008, and reprinted strips, articles, short stories and features taken from Roy annuals dated from 1957 to 1971. New characters created for the series include Roy's younger sister Roxanne, nicknamed "Rocky" (a homage to Roy's son from the original series), and Vic Guthrie's sister Ffion. Pepper, who quickly adapted to scripting stories in the picture format which was beginning to supersede prose, had already combined sport and adventure in Champion with boxing airman “Rockfist Rogan” in the 1940s. Former Division One stars Bob Wilson and Emlyn 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.Roy of the Rovers taught sportsmanship, etiquette and why a fractured ankle, a broken rib and an early case of Polio should never stand between a determined team captain and victory in the FA Cup. Egmont published a Roy of the Rovers special, distributed only to WHSmith, edited by Steve MacManus, in 2009. A series of hardcover graphic novels began publication in 2018, written by Rob Williams and drawn by Ben Willsher, running in parallel with a series of novels for younger readers written by Tom Palmer with illustrations by Lisa Henke. 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. Eight months later, Roy and Blackie made their first-team debuts against Elbury Wanderers in a game that ended in a 3–3 draw, with Roy scoring twice.

Originally these were two different humorous strips, both written by Fred Baker and drawn by Julio Schiaffino. In 1975 Roy became Rovers' player-manager, and at the end of the 1975-76 season he married the club secretary, Penny Laine. Mick Collin’s effort from Aurum Press, published in 2008, was the first non-illustrated book about the hugely popular comic book hero which sparked thousands of boyhood fantasies.Running from 1980 to 1983, The Marks Brothers was one of several long-running and popular stories to appear in the comic during the 1980s. Rovers played in a fictional universe made up of invented teams; however, real-life players including Emlyn Hughes, Bob Wilson and Malcolm Macdonald made appearances in the strip, as did former England manager Alf Ramsey.