There is only one Roy of the Rovers

Hooray, the football season is back with us. In a number of previous posts I've admitted to being a supporter, albeit in a virtual sense, of Newport County. It's time I confessed and corrected this deceit: they were never my favourite team. Their colours were not the colours on my bedroom wall or of my youthful underpants. Pride of place in my footballing heart was, and still is for that matter, reserved for a team in the English league - Melchester Rovers. And the reason? One player - Roy Race, or Roy of the Rovers as he's better known. There has never been a footballer like him and it is almost certain that there never will be. Captain then player-manager of the Rovers from 1954 until a 1993 helicopter crash claimed his famous left foot, Roy scored 481 goals, and contributed towards nine league titles, eight FA Cup victories and three European Cup wins. It’s an improbably long career, but then Roy was an improbable player: teetotal, honourable, fair and respectful of authority. My childhood hero and role model.

Of course, over the many years of his glittering career, his exploits have been fodder for the media - particularly in The Tiger and latterly in his own fanzine, Roy of the Rovers. But, in his own words for the first time, he has written and published his autobiography. Simply called 'Roy', it chronicles his amazing time in the game and on the ball but there's so much more. The shocking details of the nine terrifying kidnappings that threatened to blight his playing career; the stomach-churning murder attempt in 1980, which left Roy in a life-threatening coma; the sickening car bomb attack that tragically killed eight of Roy's team-mates while on a pre-season tour of Basran and the devastation of losing his wife, former Melchester club secretary Penny Laine, who died in a car accident that brought Roy closer than ever to quitting the game he loved.

This book is a heartwarming picture of perhaps the greatest sportsman this country has produced. No sordid episodes, none of the shameless excesses of the modern game and certainly no corruption. And it’s all delivered in the rich, full style of the typical football memoir. A glorious achievement and a damn good read. I'd recommend it to anyone. How better to finish than to hear from the man himself with some quotes from a recent interview in the Melchester Echo? There is only one Roy Race - Roy of the Rovers.

You’ve won just about all the major honours the game has to offer - can you pick out one crowning moment which topped all the others?

Well, it was always about the team, of course, rather than me individually. But I would have to say the FA Cup final of 1958 when I was kidnapped at the hotel on the morning of the match, cast adrift on a boat off the south coast of England, cut myself free, paddled ashore with my bare hands, caught a train, made it to the Wembley dressing room with merely three minutes to go before kick-off, and then ended up scoring a hat-trick in order to turn around a 2-0 half-time deficit, the third and clinching goal coming on the stroke of full-time. That one felt special.

You turned down the chance to go and play in Italy. Do you agree with those who say that English players would benefit from playing abroad, and that it would improve the national team too?
I used to think players would benefit from a spell abroad, developmentally, what with necessarily opening themselves up to the different language, the different culture and the different diet - your pastas, your tomatoes, your salamis. But nowadays all the builders are Polish and you can get pasta and salami in Sainsbury's, so I'm not sure there's a point.

Are/were you a natural blonde?
Yes! I've often been accused down the years of colouring it in. But, like everything about me, it's totally real.