Saving Grace (cartoon strip by Steve English)

The second instalment of Saving Grace, the cartoon strip introduced in the previous issue and drawn by Steve English, the magazine’s regular cartoonist. It follows a young, football-mad goalkeeper called Grace and runs across the foot of the Little Kicks page, sharing the space with readers’ photographs. This issue those are led by twelve-year-old Abby Kay of Oxford United Under-12s, who met Megan Rapinoe after a Reign match in Seattle the summer after the World Cup and names Steph Houghton and Keira Walsh as the players she would most like to meet next. Alongside are Marcia Milnes’s picture of Arsenal supporter Maria Petri being hugged by Spurs’ Gemma Davison at the north London derby, and Christopher Moore’s daughter Jenny with the shirt Carly Telford gave her after England’s record-breaking friendly against Germany. The strip’s reappearance confirms it as a recurring fixture of the section rather than a one-off.