South-west National Hunt jockey Mervyn John Phillips spent his entire riding career with Falmouth-based permit holder Reg Lawry. He registered his first success for him on Magic Orb in a Buckfastleigh novices’ hurdle on Whit Monday, May 18, 1959. He rode six winners the following season, four of them on Magic Orb, including three wins and two second-place finishes during September 1959.
Having endured a couple of winnerless seasons, Mervyn turned professional at the start of the 1962/63 campaign and was quickly off the mark courtesy of Lawry’s novice hurdler Staggered, who rattled off three wins in a row within a month, beginning at Devon & Exeter on August 22. In the second of those wins, back at Devon & Exeter on September 6, they beat future Grand National winner Anglo by five lengths. Their third success, at Wincanton two weeks later, resulted in Mervyn’s claim being reduced to 5lb.
Afterwards, however, his career stalled, and he drew a blank during the 1963/64 campaign. Staggered was sent chasing and became one of Mervyn’s few rides and his sole source of winners from then on, scoring once for him in each of the next four seasons, the last of those coming in the Dunsford Handicap Chase at Devon & Exeter on April 24, 1968.
They then finished third at Worcester in May but parted company when returning to Devon & Exeter on the first day of its Whitsun meeting on Saturday, June 1, 1968. That appears to have been Mervyn’s final ride, bringing to an end a ten-year career that had yielded a total of 14 winners, half of them gained as an amateur and half as a professional
Mervyn Phillips’ winners were, in chronological order:
1. Magic Orb, Buckfastleigh, May 18, 1959
2. Magic Orb, Newton Abbot, September 3, 1959
3. Magic Orb, Wincanton, September 17, 1959
4. Magic Orb, Newton Abbot, September 26, 1959
5. Magic Orb, Taunton, April 7, 1960
6. Kilmore Lady, Buckfastleigh, April 9, 1960
7. Patch Up, Newton Abbot, May 27, 1960
8. Staggered, Devon & Exeter, August 22, 1962
9. Staggered, Devon & Exeter, September 6, 1962
10. Staggered, Wincanton, September 20, 1962
11. Staggered, Devon & Exeter, May 8, 1965
12. Staggered, Stratford-on-Avon, May 19, 1966
13. Staggered, Wincanton, February 9, 1967
14. Staggered, Devon & Exeter, April 24, 1968