TOP 10 COMIC FOOTBALLERS

Ever watched your team on Tv and heard the commentator say ‘real roy of the rovers stuff’. It’s a common phrase that has incorporated itself into the vocabulary of football fans all over the world, mainly the ones who are above the age of 30 and thats because if you are younger than that its probably not as likely that you were brought up on the staple diet of reading a weekly football comic.

Roy of the Rovers was as regular to kids of the 70's and 80's as the sun coming up, or the rain pissing it down if you live in Scotland. So it would’nt be hard then when compiling a top 10 list to place Roy Race at the top of any list you compiled with regards the top comic footballers, but this is about what story you read and could relate to the character the most.

I am sure you did not turn to the centre pages of Roy of the Rovers every week just to read about Roy Race, maybe Blackie interested you more, or possibly one of the other characters. MAybe you turned straight to The Safest hands in Soccer to read about Gordon Stewart, whatever the case hopefully this list will include some of your personal favourites.

The list includes comic characters that I have personally read, it would not be fair to include a character that I did not read and therefore could not offer a fair and un-bias opinion of.

So in reverse order.

10 Hamish Balfour (Tiger, Scorcher) –
The man with the cannonball shot. Hot Shot Hamish followed gentle Hebridean giant Hamish Balfour, the man with the most powerful shot in the world, and began its days in Scorcher in August 1973, before relocating to Tiger when the two titles merged. Hamish was brought from his remote island home to play for Princes Park in the Scottish Premier Division, under manager Ian McWhacker, and was famous for being able to hit the ball so hard that his shot could (and often did) burst the goalnet. His powerful frame was emphasised by the fact that he always played in a shirt which was far too small for him and which did not reach the waistband of his shorts

9 Gordon Stewart (Roy of the Rovers) –
The man who could save everything thrown at him, yet his club never seemed to win a trophy. The goalkeeping equivalent of a brick wall. On his day, which was nearly every time he pulled on a pair of gloves, nothing could get past Gordon Stewart in Roy of the Rovers. No matter the placement, power or trajectory of a shot, when Stewart was between the sticks for Tynefield City, he was unbeatable. If luck was needed, Stewart had that covered, too, courtesy of his mascot Fred – a toy skeleton that he kept in his glove bag. He died in a plane crash off the coast of Brazil in 1982, but the Stewart name lived on through his son, Rick, who played in goal for his father’s arch rivals Tynefield United, in the story entitled Goalkeeper.

8 Roy Race (Tiger, Roy of the Rovers) –
The King, no other word can describe him. he reigned over the football comic world like Queen Victoria ruled over Britain for all those years. He began his 38-year career by, naturally enough, scoring the winner for Melchester Rovers on his debut in Tiger . From there his life was filled with more twists and turns than a rally track. He scored more last minute winners than any person I know, was shot in a ‘Who shot JR’ style whodunnit, twice kidnapped, took Rovers on a 13 year unbeaten run, employed Sir ALf Ramsey as an interim manager at the club, and managed to persuade Bob Wilson & Emlyn Hughes to turn out for the club, not to mention 2 members of popular 80's band Spandau Ballet. Yep, Mr Race had a distinguished and illustrious career, and won more than his fair share of trophies, but for me he was not the reason that I turned to the centre pages each week, other players in the team caught my interest more.

7 Duncan Mackay (Roy of the Rovers) –
Being Scottish myself it was easy to associate myself with and to like Duncan mackay very easily. Duncan played for Melchester in their glory era, the 70's to mid 80's. You could not help but like his straight talking, no nonsense blend of Scottish humour and action. Even down to the long dark hair, beard and gruff exterior he portrayed. Add to that he had the bandage round his head during matches, long before Terry Butcher made the bloodied bandage famous in a match for England. Duncan epitomised the 70's era of defending, the no nonsense, bone crunching, take no shit style of defending, where it was ok to break a guys leg in the tackle, and then call him a poff when he was writhing in agony on the ground, not like your soft touch footballers of today.

6 Nipper Lawrence (Scorcher, Score, Tiger, Roy of the Rovers) –
Nipper Lawrence was a young orphan who lived with foster-parents in the docks town of Blackport and had become an apprentice footballer with the local Second Division club, Blackport Rovers. He was not unlike Duncan Mackay, easy to like, he was small in stature, underfed, and looked like he had slept in his clothes constantly, but you could not help but love his attitude of not being bullied by anyone, standing up for himself in any circumstance, and he played on the pitch with more than a whim of Roy Keane about him. His determination to win and play good football won you over week after week, a gritty and determind story of not just a great footballer but a kid with a poor upbringing who faced adversity full on and let nothing get him down.

5 Terry Marks (Roy of the Rovers) –
Terry was one half of the popular Marks Brothers storyline in the early 80's. His brother Steve was the older one, who played as a playmaker for First Division Kingsbay, and scored the goals to make the headlines, while terry played for their poor neighbours Stockbridge Town as a defender. However, long before the likes of Rio Ferdinand, Gary Pallister and Tony Adams, would change peoples philosophy of defenders, Terry was already doing that back in the easly 80's. Stylish, not the quickest, but his positional sense was legandary, and he set about changing the myth that people had from the 70's that defenders were a bunch of slow arse cloggers who could only break legs and not play football. Terry would eventually join his brother at Kingsbay, but not before he had to make it the hard way.

4 Alex Jones (Champ, Victor, FPSM) –
Hedgehog, as he was affectionally known, due to his spikey haircut, was a mainstay of theUnited team from the 1984 launch of Champ, all the way through to 2003, when he became a player manager of the club. Determined, skilful and a will to succeed whatever the circumstances, he controlled the centre of United’s midfield with an iron fist. His constant bickering with teammate Terry Evans, was the source of much amusement, as was his need to play practical jokes on whoever he found as a suitable candidate. The United storyline was filled with great characters, but Hedgehog’s rebellious streak and his two finer salute to what society thought of him and his appearence made him instantly likeable.

3 Jimmy Grant (Victor, FPSM) –
Jimmy’s story began in the early 80's in Victor running alongside the great United storyline. Indeed he would eventually join United, albeit for one season only. His likeability factor for me though came from his Gary Lineker style attitude. Always willing to help, supremely talented in front of goal, and an eye for an opening. He was in the mould of Lineker as well, the goody two shoe persona, never sent off, never one to cause friction on the pitch, he let his skills and feet do the talking for him. It was his ability to always offer help and advice though that ranks him so highly on my list, not only was he helpful to his team mates, old and young alike, he was particularly willing to help kids achieve their dream, of playing professional football.

2 Jimmy Slade (Roy of the Rovers) –
Jimmy Slade burst on the Rovers scene in the late 70's, and I instantly loved his character. he was similar to Nipper Lawrence, the same determination, the same ‘I dont care what you think of me’ and the same skills and grit that Nipper showed. Jimmy had the long flowing hair and the exhuberant youthful attitude, of not caring less and just wanted to prove on the pitch how talented he was. He would ultimately die in the Basran disaster in 1986, but my youth in the late 70's and early 80's was made so much better by reading about this player on a weekly basis. probably where I get my attitude now

1 Johnny Dexter (Roy of the Rovers) –
For me there can only be one winner in the race to be number one. Hard in the old-fashioned sense, Dexter had a temper and was as hard as nails, but you could not help but love him. In addition to his tough tackling and fiery temper, Dexter had a strict moral code . He once delivered a fierce half-time dressing-down to an abusive section of the crowd and welcomed cocky signing Bob Baker by saying: ‘Listen chum… cut out the wisecracks.’ His storyline though, he began in The Hard Man, was contrary to his hard, no nonsense style. The story began more as a humerous story, centering on Johnnys fiery temper and how it got him into trouble constantly, and was then escalted further by the arrival of Victor Boskovic, the camp bald headed manager who had a penchant for tight fitting tracksuits and was prone to erratic half time team talks. The arrival of Boskovic made the story unrealistic in my view, and was trying to fuel the humour outline to much, and the realism was destroyed further when Dexter left Danefield United to join a side 90 places below them in the league, Burnside Athletic. the story name changed to Dexter’s Dozen and centered on Dexter’s attempts to improve the fortunes of a team bottom of the Fourth Division. Again the humour was created by the ever present camp Victor Boskovic, which really took away the realism and it was not until Johnny joined Melchester Rovers that we began to see his true character and his determination to win.  Although the Boskovic element detracted from the realism, Dexter for me epitomised what I would want from a player playing for my football team, drive, determination, power, no nonsense and desire. He would eventually become manager of Castlemere, but for me I will always remember him in his Melchester days, that for me was his crowning moment.

Have your say
I have no doubt that some of you will disagree with the ranks, and probably the players included in the list, there are no doubt some you who think Billy Dane, Andy Steel, Kevin Mouse, or some other comic book hero deserves to be on this list, then by all means feel free to contact us and let us know, justifying your choice in no more than 50 words. I would love to hear your thoughts or see your comments, as lists are always prone to causing discussion and debate. So let the debate begin!

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RISE AND FALL OF COMICS

By the time the mid 90's came round the era of the weekly comic was very rapidly coming to a close. Tiger had ceased as had Roy of the Rovers, and by now the industry was struggling to recover from the various troughs it had been experiencing in the early 90's. The peak of the 70's and 80's had long gone and thus the market has never re-emerged to share in its bygone highs. War stories have long struggled to maintain much relevance beyond nostalgia, while romance comics are also generally a thing of the past. But the titles and strips that have arguably plummeted the furthest from view from the loftiest of positions are the once-proud, and once spectacularly popular, sports comics.

It’s been a little under twenty years since the last weekly kids’ sports comic was on the shelves of newsagents across the land, in the shape of the final issue of the original Roy of the Rovers. Since then, a smattering of titles aimed at older audiences – from a teen-orientated Rovers relaunch, to the ghastly laddish newspaper spinoff Striker – have appeared and disappeared almost as quickly, but the present lack of a regular young readers’ sports title is a far cry from the genre’s heyday.

That heyday arguably extended right through to the 1980s, when Roy of the Rovers still had the power to make national news headlines with the occasional publicity stunt (such as putting its title character in a coma in a Who Shot JR?-inspired turn, or hiring members of Spandau Ballet to play for the famous Melchester Rovers); but it began in the 1950s. Comic strips with narratives based around football had existed for almost as long as the game itself – but it was in the post-war boom that such magazines took off with a vengeance.

The vanguard was led by Tiger – the paper in which Roy of the Rovers, instantly and forever more the most popular football strip, originally featured – which launched in 1954, and whose success surely contributed to the fabled prose story magazine Hotspur’s move into comics form five years later, as well as a raft of new football-themed strips in anthology mags such as Valiant and Hurricane. Finally, with IPC’s twin 1970 launches of Scorcher and Score ‘n’ Roar, there were comics that were able to fill their pages with football stories alone.

It was no surprise, really, that British comics would eventually start to look to sport to find their heroes. While military heroes were naturally somewhat in vogue after the war, there was nevertheless something of a void waiting to be filled by the fact that – attempts like Mick Anglo’s Marvelman aside – the superhero costume has never really fit the British physique in quite the same way. In a strange kind of way, Roy Race was our Superman, while someone like Bobby “of the Blues” Booth, a suspiciously similar counterpart in darker clothing, was his Batman. Just as a team such as the Justice League or Avengers features an array of heroes playing different roles, so too did the British comic strip footballers each excel in their own unique positions: goalkeepers, strikers, managers; greying legends, prodigious teenagers and promising schoolboys; even a table football wizard (the titular star of Mike’s Mini Men).

It may surprise those who think of football – or sport in general – in one-dimensional terms that it would be possible for a multitude of strips about the topic to co-exist, but over a glorious three decades, they did just that, with an admirable amount of diversity and inventiveness. It’s true that many strips chose to focus simply on the ins-and-outs of top level football in England – but in order to succeed, each new strip had to come up with a fresh hook.

There was something nicely postmodern about the construction of Jack and Jimmy, for example. Appearing in Score ‘n’ Roar – a Whizzer and Chips-esque creation featuring, as it were, “two titles in one” – the adventures of the straight-laced defender “Jack of United” appeared in one section, intertwining and contrasting with his hot-headed flair-player brother “Jimmy of City” elsewhere in the comic. The effect of the series was somewhat ruined, mind, when one transferred to the other’s club later in the run, just as the strip itself had transferred to the more successful Scorcher comic.

When football comics took greater leaps into fantasy, however, was when they generally shone even more. There was remarkable wit and creativity laced throughout Hot Shot Hamish and Mighty Mouse – originally two separate series about a kindly Hebridean giant with the hardest kick in the world, and a short, rotund, bespectacled dribbling genius who played league football around his job at a hospital, they shared a writer/artist team and unique sense of humour, and ultimately merged into a single ongoing story.

The fondly-remembered Billy’s Boots, meanwhile, was an adventure tale straight out of Boy’s Own (despite, er, actually first appearing in Scorcher). A schoolboy player with a lead-footed lack of ability, Billy Dane’s fortunes change when he discovers a pair of battered old boots in his gran’s attic, which turn out to belong to a legendary striker called Charles “Dead-Shot” Keen. Whenever he wears the boots, Billy is imbued with skills and ability reminiscent of Keen – but whenever he loses them, which happened with alarming regularity, his hopeless self returns. Admirably, the strip never confirmed whether the boots were indeed actually magical – or if Billy’s turns of skill simply came from the newfound confidence of wearing the supposedly lucky boots.

Indeed, the lessons that football comics could teach their impressionable young readers was arguably the greatest loss when they began to disappear. There was a distinct moral thread running through the majority of them – espousing virtues like fair play, honesty, and sportsmanship – and at times, particularly as the 1970s drew on, they often had plenty to say about the state of the modern game. Stark: Matchwinner For Hire told of a mercenary player who would sign for clubs on a one-match basis and charge per goal, with a “no win no fee” clause – a novel idea, albeit one that would fall foul of FIFA’s current player-registration laws. Then there was Millionaire Villa, a ridiculous and brilliant creation in which rich enthusiast – and hopeless footballer – David Bradley bought his way into the starting line-up of his local First Division club.

It could be argued that these football strips simply operated on too straightforward a moral spectrum – series such as Look out for Lefty, the Mary Whitehouse-bothering adventures of a working-class player whose mates were borderline hooligans, were the exception rather than the norm – to survive in the more cynical 1990s. And as comics themselves became a less popular fixture of newsagents, it was telling that only a football-specific comic – as opposed to more general sports tales – had been able to last as long as Roy of the Rovers did when it put out its last weekly issue in March 1993.

There were attempts to appeal to a more “edgy” market with the monthly spinoff later that year – and the talent and credentials of its new roster of creators, including Rob Davis and Sean Longcroft, were undeniable – but it was a short-lived return. A 1997 relaunch of the strip in the pages of Match of the Day magazine attempted to recapture the simpler feel of the original stories, but offered little more than nostalgic appeal.

And it’s hard to argue with the suggestion that perhaps it’s in a nostalgic past that football comics belong. Certainly, it’s far more difficult to base convincing heroes on present-day Premier League footballers, or to pretend that the game currently has a moral core when its participants and organisers seem so lacking in one. Yet there’s also a yearning, from those of us who followed the changing fortunes of teams like Melchester Rovers, Danefield United or Railford Town as avidly as our “real life” clubs, to see those stories brought up to date. The foremost modern talents in the field have shown themselves to be adept at a greater variety of genres than at perhaps any other period in British comics history – surely there must be at least one of them who’d fancy bringing Roy Race back to life?

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WHAT WE LEAVE BEHIND

Do you remember the first game you ever attended?
I can’t remember many of the finer points of my first ever game. I know it was a home game against Berwick Rangers that ended in a one each draw, and it was raining. That’s about it. We scored from a free kick. I’ve no idea how we lost one but I shouted loudly for offside with all the big people around me despite the fact I had not a feckin clue what offside was. In fairness I was only a wee kid at my first game, there are plenty of officals who have made a fair career in the game without getting to grips with the nuances of the off-side rule.
When I think back its more general things particular to that era that stick in my mind. Crowds seemed bigger and more enthusiastic (standing rather than sitting helped I suppose), strips were plainer but more outstanding because of it and they seemed to contrast better with the opposition.
At cup finals people still wore rosettes unashamedly without realising how stupid they looked. It was a harder, more honest game too. This sounds like the sort of sentimental crap that would come from your semi-incontinent mind wandering 90 year old neighbour, but it’s true, I swear!.
A yellow card back then had to be earned and red cards were infrequent and only came as the result of some form of grizzly, carnage inducing incident. Cheating only happened during the afternoon card schools where players bet their families and posessions for a laugh, and to miss a game through suspension meant the player in question was still hanging by his toe from the nearest lamp-post in punishment on account of him ‘no howfin the baw oot the grund tae waste time when he was telt’ during the previous weeks encounter.
Slip back further in time and it was really a man’s game, if the definition of ‘man’ happened to be ‘homicidal maniac with a penchant for mindless thuggery’ that is.In those days you could legally melt the goalie with a crowbar at corners and if they fell into the back of the net with the ball it was a goal and they were branded ‘a poof’
The tricky skilful artists of their day, were such because they had to be. It was survival. Amidst the fading spectacle that is football in the modern age, maybe we should cast an eye back to the halcyon days of stanley Matthews and understand, why he had such finely honed skills allied to his commitment and determination. It was self preservation, pure and simple. Failure to develop the required level of skill and tenaciousness, meant only one thing; a size twelve, steel toed boot so far up your back passage that the offender had squatter’s rights.
I miss other things too, like switching ends at half time so you could abuse the opposition goalie for the full 90 minutes.
And then there was comics, the staple diet of any kid from the 70's with ambitions to play professional football one day. Well we could but dream! I can recall vividly the sories from my weekly buy of Roy of the Rovers, and can recall very clearly the storylines and characters.
The Hard Man – originally inspired by the afore mentioned ‘homicidal maniac’, Johnny Dexter knocked over all who stood in his way. Under the certifiably mad gaze of Victor Boskovic an alarmingly fat, bald manager with a penchant for tight fitting tracksuits. Johnny consistently took no prisoners. In the words of my 90 year old neighbour he was ‘hard but fair’
Billys Boots – Young Billy Dane lived with his gran and played for Groundwood school team in an ancient chewed up pair of boots of his hero dead Shot Keen. The boots gave Billy fantastic skills and seemed to relive the events of Dead Shots career when he was alive. Undoubtedly the inspiration for football movie ‘Theres only one Jimmy Grimble’
Hot Shot Hamish – The famous Herculean Highlander, who played for Princes Park. Despite being in the scottish League, every game inexplicably seemed to have 200,000 fervent fans at every game crammed into a huge stadia. At least once every game Hamish would hit a thunderous shot so hard that the keeper would end up in the back of the net with the ball.
Mighty Mouse – The detailed career of clinically obese junior doctor Kevin ‘Mighty’ Mouse. From his days of turning out for St Victors medical team, incurring the wrath of Dr Mender and ‘Mad Annie’ the matron, to his professional career playing for Tottenford Rovers and Princes Park alongside Hamish.
The Wheelchair Wonder – Danny Kidd, tragically mowed down in a car crash at the age of fifteen is nursed back to fitness to resume his budding football career. All week Danny can barely walk, yet on Saturday he manages to pull on his boots and snatch a couple of goals for Overbridge by way of crazy, curvy shooting ability, the direct affect of his accident leaving his foot in a funny shape.
Nipper – Gritty Northern realism prevailed as winger Nipper Lawrence plied his trade for Blackport Rovers. Other characters included Mike Bateson, Len Duggan, Andy Stewart and Stumpy the dog. Not only did Andy Stewart never once sing ‘Flower of Scotland’ in this story, he never even got his kilt on.
Millionaie Villa – David Bradley, rich young playboy bought Selby Villa on the basis he would give himself a game – despite being utter rubbish. I always figured I would do the same at my local club. It will need to be next year.
Tommys Troubles – How mullet haired schoolboy Tommy Barnes formed his own football team, Barnes United, and aided by his specky pal Ginger Collins, thwarted sworn enemies Waller & Swate. Collins eventually became a politician and Barnes lost control of his club when some mysterious Arab consortium took over his club.
The Footballer Who Would’nt Stay Dead – Bizarre tale of Mel Deakin who continually saw, and conversed with, the ghost of Andy Steele. A warning shot on the effects of drinking Buckfast in the morning if ever there was one. Mel eventually went to Hollywood and appeared in the film The Sixth Sense.
Roy Race’s School days – These stories only actually turned up in annuals and summer specials. They did exactly what it said on the tin, chronicling Roy & Blackie’s early days as youngsters at school. Highlights included Roys first wet dream, Blackie getting caught sniffing glue behind the bike sheds and Roys sister getting pregnant to Mr Sands the careers adviser.
Other honourable if sketchier mentions went to Durrells Palace, The Marks Brothers, Tipped for the Top, and The Boy Who Hated Football. Ah Happy Days!
Bottom line and the whole point of this story, is that the next time your kids tell you that football today is better than years ago or you find yourself preaching to your kids about football in bygone days, or show them these funny smelling paper things you have just procured from the loft, with some guy called Roy on the front, it comes down to your own memories, you cant push them onto anyone else.
I dont know about you but my memories of football and the bygone days of comics are fantastic, and I dont care if my kids think Im strange or think Im talking total crap when I say about football in the 70's. They might one day experience it for themselves, What goes around comes around.!!

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FOOTBALLER OF THE FUTURE

Tevez, Eto’o and Gyan are among the latest breed of players to be tarred with the ‘football mercenary’ brush. But they have nothing on this 1970s Scoop comic superstar.
Jon Stark arrived on the football scene in the late 1970s, a prolific striker who played for numerous clubs in England and abroad on a nomadic career path motivated entirely by money. A self-styled ‘Matchwinner for Hire’, his terms of service were set out on his business card: ‘£1,000 per match plus £250 per goal, no payment for lost games.’ Playing for different clubs every week, wherever the promise of payment took him, Stark was the ultimate football mercenary. He was, of course, entirely fictional – a comic book character created against the backdrop of a real-life transfer revolution under the strapline: ‘Meet the Footballer of the Future…’
Stark first appeared in the debut issue of Scoop comic (15p every Thursday) in January 1978. Stone Orient were rock bottom of the second division after three consecutive defeats. A cup match against top-flight Belmoor saw the club turn to Stark, who told them, ‘Play me against Belmoor and I’ll guarantee you victory for £1,000 plus £250 for every goal I score. If we get beaten, you pay me nothing.’
Stark’s left foot strike and diving header saw Orient win 2-0. But the Orient manager wasn’t happy with Stark’s modus operandi, remarking, ‘He’s good alright, but I don’t like him or what he stands for.’ Stark wasn’t bothered: ‘Just give me my £1,500 and I’ll be on my way.’

Stark’s buccaneering debut was startling in the context of the often anodyne world of football comic strips, where clean-cut role model heroes played for pride and glory rather than pounds and pence. A self-centred maverick, Stark was a world away from Roy of the Rovers, but he nevertheless became hugely popular, and established himself as one of football’s most enduring comic strip characters. Stark’s adventures remain (mostly) good reads, but the most intriguing aspect of the strip – and what makes it so memorable – is its against-the-grain portrayal of a footballer who was unashamedly in it for the money.
Stark was by no means the first football mercenary. They’ve been around for well over a hundred years, ever since Alf Common switched from Sunderland to Sheffield United, then back to Sunderland, and then to Middlesbrough for transfer record fee of £1,000, all within the space of four years between 1901 and 1904.
And then there was Charlie Mitten – the Bogota Bandit. The post-war Manchester United star was unhappy with maximum wage rules, which restricted his earnings to £8 per week, or £6 in the summer. So, in 1950, he jumped aboard a slow boat to Colombia and signed for Independiente Santa Fe, having been offered a huge £100 per week plus a signing on fee reported to be anywhere between £5,000 and £10,000. Unfortunately for Mitten, after just one season in South America he was sent home, with FIFA outlawing Colombia’s use of expensive imports.
By the time Scoop launched, the football transfer market was flooded with money and controversy. Newspapers used the phrase ‘football mercenary’ to describe Kevin Keegan following his £500,000 move to Hamburg in 1977. Then Liverpool smashed the British transfer record when they handed £440,000 to Celtic for Kenny Dalglish to replace the departed Keegan. In January 1978, the month that Scoop and Stark first appeared, Joe Jordan demanded that Leeds United place him on the transfer list. He was quickly sold to Manchester United for £350,000, an English League record beaten a few days later by the £353,000 paid by Liverpool to Middlesbrough for Graeme Souness.
So Stark was a perfect fit for the times – a footballer-for-hire who was forgiven for his lust for money because he was so ruddy good at kicking a ball about. Although fans welcomed his goals and sang his name, Stark was rarely welcomed at the clubs he played for. ‘We don’t want your kind here!’ one manager told him. During a training session, the manager yelled, ‘Stop that money-grabbing bighead any way you can!’ (‘I’d like to see you stop him, boss!’ replied a beaten defender as Stark fired a shot into the net.) ‘This would never have happened in the old days,’ the manager reflected. ‘It’s freedom of contract that’s to blame for all this.’
Indeed, freedom of contract was to blame, and it surely inspired the creation of Stark. Introduced in 1977, freedom of contract rules gave players the right to leave their clubs at the end of their contracts, as long as there was a willing buyer. The George Eastham case from 1963, concerning the player’s move from Newcastle to Arsenal, had already broken up football’s archaic ‘retain and transfer’ system, whereby clubs effectively owned their players. However, players weren’t really handed control of their own contracts, and their careers, until 1977. Now footballers could go wherever they wanted, and make more money than they could spend.
Scoop was dead against freedom of contract. ‘Professional footballers have been squealing for years that the clubs have been treating them like slaves,’ wrote the comic’s columnist ‘Mike the Mouth’. ‘A footballer’s life is a good one. He works 15 hours a week at something he likes doing, he’s well paid, keeps physically fit, sees a bit of the world. Players owe a lot to the clubs and the public, and if they are slaves, there must be a lot of people queuing for chains!’
Jon Stark had ultimate freedom of contract, because he didn’t have one, allowing him to switch clubs on a weekly basis – and sometimes more often than that. Although no real-life footballer could match Stark for club-swapping frequency, the comic strip introduced a whole cast of football mercenaries, including Stark’s great friend Cosmo Kent (occasionally starring together as ‘Stark & Cosmo’), nephew and apprentice Barry Frazer, and goalscoring rival Caspar Rambold.
Stark’s mercenary approach extended beyond club football – it also shaped his international career. After being selected to play for England against Scotland he was asked how he felt. ‘Well, it’s flattering of course,’ Stark replied, ‘but you may not know that my mother’s Scottish, so I’m eligible to play for them as well. I’ll probably play for the highest bidder.’ He initially agreed to play for Scotland, but switched sides after England manager Kevin Venables offered him twice his match fee. Stark scored, of course, netting England’s equaliser in a 1-1 draw. The Scotland manager was magnanimous afterwards: ‘You played a great game! Pity it’s not a blue jersey you’re wearing!’ ‘That’s life!’ Stark replied. ‘But then, I don’t know what colour of shirt I’ll be wearing week to week!’
Not that Stark was entirely lacking in morals or ethics. He donated money to boys’ clubs, took younger players under his wing, and refused to play for unscrupulous chairmen. On one occasion, annoyed by Gildale City’s ‘bully boy’ tactics, and by the club’s chairman referring to him as a ‘money-hungry vulture’, Stark halved his normal fee to play for their opponents Ralston United. He scored a hat-trick in a 3-0 win, and warned the Gildale chairman, ‘That was only a warning. Clean up your methods and your team, or you’ll find me playing against Gildale EVERY WEEK!’
Stark regularly put his body on the line for the game – and the money. In one adventure Stark was diagnosed with ‘a rare pelvic disorder’ that required treatment from a ‘laser machine’ that cost £350,000. He was forced to play back-to-back games all over Europe with the aim of winning the Platinum Boot Award and using the prize money to pay for the operation. On another memorable occasion, Stark actually died. Playing against doctor’s orders after a head injury, he collapsed after heroically blocking a goalbound shot. ‘He’s not breathing!’ yelled a teammate. ‘And there’s no pulse! He’s KILLED HIMSELF!’ Luckily, he was somehow revived, and was back in action within weeks.
Stark played on for a good 20 years, outlasting Scoop comic after it folded in 1981, and continuing in Victor and then Football Picture Story Monthly. By then, the football transfer system had changed again. The 1995 Bosman ruling allowed players to move for free at the end of their contracts, and ushered in a new generation of football mercenaries.
Nicolas Anelka, Carlos Tevez, Winston Bogarde, Samuel Eto’o, and Asamoah Gyan are just a handful of players who’ve subsequently been tarred with the ‘football mercenary’ brush, and supporters of almost every club will have stories of other players who were plainly only in it for the money. None of them can match Stark in the mercenary stakes – although that may simply be down to lack of opportunity. For a start, FIFA rules mean that players can only be registered with a maximum of three clubs per season.
But if Stark was around today, and if the rules allowed, would Manchester City or Chelsea call on his services? Could he make a fortune by switching to Anzhi or Al-Ain? If Jon Stark is the Footballer of the Future, then that future hasn’t quite arrived. But his story isn’t entirely far-fetched, and remains a fascinating football ‘what if’.

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