“Venture into any bookshop today and you will find a section given over to ‘graphic novels’[1], books that talk about them, books by or about their creators. After a dip in quality and interest around the millennium, the field is now full of great writers and illustrators, challenging stories and subject areas, and even the superhero genre has undergone a bit of a reboot[2]. This piece was originally conceived as a history of how football has appeared in comics, graphic novels, whatever terminology you want to use, but in the course of researching it I had the good fortune to talk to Paul Trevillion[3] and decided that Paul and his work on Roy of the Rovers was a much more interesting and specific point of departure. And as I talked to Paul, I found myself thinking more about football than comics, but you’ll see what I mean by that in due course[4].” Put Niels In Goal