of classic strips, a number of memorable new features began in the early 1990s. Goalmouth (1990–92) took quite a modern tone, following brilliant young goalkeeper Nick "Rapper" Hardisty, who was also part owner of the struggling Fourth Division club he played for, and who had a propensity for rapping very loudly at opponents and teammates during matches. Rapper was another player who would eventually be signed by Melchester, ending his own strip. Buster's Ghost (1992–93) was a sequel of sorts to Nipper, created by the same writer (Tom Tully) and artist (Solano Lopez) and featuring the same club, Blackport Rovers. Buster Madden had been a top-class player for the club, but was killed in a car crash, and reappeared as a ghost to aid his former teammates on the pitch in a variety of bizarre ways. His cousin Nigel Foster, also a Blackport player, was the only person who could see him (a similar story called The Footballer Who Wouldn't Stay Dead had run a decade earlier). United (1992), meanwhile, was one of a handful of strips that only enjoyed a short life due to being introduced in the dying years of the original weekly comic, and was unique among Roy Of The Rovers strips in that its fictional protagonists (a struggling Premier League side) were actually shown playing against real-life teams and players. Cheat (1992–93) saw Nick Leach continually cheat his way to the top, only to ultimately see his well-deserved comeuppance, while Future Ball (1992–93) gave an insight into how football may be in the future, played across the planets. The final new story to begin was Dream Keeper, which ran for just a few weeks in 1993. Over the years, there were also occasional non-football strips, such as Racey's Rocket (1984–85), which was about stock-car racing, and Johnny Cougar, the story of the "redskin wrestler" which had previously run in Tiger, but these strips never seemed to fit into the football-themed comic and were invariably quickly dropped. Another spin-off was The Son of Racey (1989–90), which gave schoolboy Roy Race Jr his first prominent role in the comic just before he joined the Rovers as an apprentice. In addition to the players mentioned above who migrated from their own strips to the main RotR strip, there were also occasional "crossovers" between strips in the weekly comic — —for instance, in an early episode of The Legend'', lead