Our 1st MV50 award - The Tony Phillips Trophy is an annual award that was introduced for the 2004/05 season.
Tony Phillips was a teacher based near Bridlington and the Chairman of Bridlington RR in 1994.
Tony put forward the idea at the club’s 1994 AGM to have a local, off-road, running competition over the winter months. This was agreed in principle and Tony proceeded with the organisation.
For the new venture several local clubs would be invited to attend and some sort of point scoring and league system would be created.
In the summer of 1994 messages were posted or faxed out to all the clubs in East Yorkshire to gauge interest. At this time, it did not include the clubs in Hull as they were viewed as too big and the idea for the league was to start off small.
A meeting was subsequently held, chaired by Tony, with representatives of the interested clubs to flesh out the idea. The agenda was to come up with some race venues and some rules, and get things moving for that autumn/winter.
The Ethos was to create a friendly local competition, away from the bureaucracy and commercialisation of road running.
Tony was the driving force behind the establishment of the League we have today. He was present as a guest as the 2024/2025 end of season presentation celebrating 30 years of the East Yorkshire Cross Country League.
