Saving Grace (cartoon strip by Steve English)

The sixth consecutive instalment of Saving Grace, the strip about a young, football-mad goalkeeper drawn by the magazine’s regular cartoonist Steve English. It runs along the foot of the Little Kicks page, this issue sharing the space with the Star Six interview rather than with readers’ photographs, which are absent for the second issue running. The episode is set outdoors in the snow, with Grace freezing between the posts, a snowman built in the goalmouth, and a punchline about organising a wall. Above it, Steph Houghton answers young readers’ questions, telling Abigail she hopes still to be involved in football in ten years’ time, with Manchester City or England, and that a captain must be herself and enjoy every moment; side panels record her hundredth cap against Sweden at Rotherham’s New York Stadium in November 2018 and her MBE in the 2016 New Year Honours.