A Silver chalice style cup approximately 85mm in diameter and standing 205mm tall and on a 140mm diameter two tier wooden base. The Rover’s Cup has quite a history, originally belonging to the Rovers Bicycle Club of Northampton.
At the time, The Rovers Bicycle Club was one of the oldest cycling clubs in the country, but for some reason was short of first claim members. At the conclusion of the Second World War, two stalwart members Henri Hudson and Billy Cockerill who had been active cyclists of distinction even before World War One were hoping to keep the name of the Rovers alive, but faced an almost complete absence of active members.
With Invicta making a rapid comeback as its members returned from war service, the notion of the amalgamation of the two clubs was promoted. Unfortunately, neither was prepared to give up their name and no satisfactory compromise could be worked out.
A decision was made to wind up the Rovers. The club’s trophies were offered as a collection to the Northampton Museum but the offer was declined. The club’s trophies were then auctioned off to surviving club members except for the Challenge Cup which was presented to the N&DCA in 1946. The decision to call it The Rovers Cup made it a lasting memorial to a club with a long and distinguished history. The cup would have then been engraved retrospectively with all the names of past champions.
Originally the Rovers Cup was presented to the winner of the B.A.R. (Best All Rounder) run over the three traditional distances, 50,100 and 12hour but sometime during the 1990’s it became a senior B.A.R. league over a range of distances, best of 3 x25, 2 x 50 plus 1 x 100 miles and 1 x 12hour
Since 2001 the cup has been presented to the winner of the season long competition calculated on a points system rather than average speed reflecting the changing attitudes in time trialling.