It has become a weary cliché to say that a book’s publication is eagerly awaited, but when an event is this momentous — the October arrival, thanks to the good offices of Random House, of the long anticipated autobiography of a football legend, perhaps the football legend, Roy Race, or Roy of the Rovers, as he was known wherever football fans gathered — then only cliché will do.
It was an illustrious career with Melchester Rovers of the First Division: countless League titles, eight FA Cups, three European Cups, a Uefa Cup, and many Cup Winners’ Cups. He made several international appearances, but never when it mattered. Roy put this down to a number of niggling injuries at crucial times, especially in 1966, though he was never bitter about it.
He also survived innumerable kidnappings on summer tours, a wholesale massacre of his teammates during a visit to the Middle East country of Basran, a shooting, divorce, and the terrible helicopter crash in 1993 when Race lost his feared left foot.
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