Two men with deep roots in Waikato football have been chosen as WaiBOP top male coaches in a legacy selection exercise to mark the first 25 years of the federation's existence.

Steve Williams (Melville United) and Roger Wilkinson (Waikato FC, Hamilton Wanderers assistant and Melville United youth coach) were chosen from a field of 11 nominations and recognised for their length and breadth of service, results, football values and ability to inspire as well as their legacy of player and club development.

Other nominations received were for Mark Cossey, Duncan Lowry, Sam Wilkinson, Barry Gardiner, Mike Woodlock, Peter Smith, Declan Edge, Larry Seales and Cameron Grieve.

The WaiBOP Awards Night 2025 was held on 18th October, 2025, in Hamilton. The evening celebrated winners from across the WaiBOP leagues from 2025, as well as a number of legacy awards, celebrating 25 years of WaiBOP Football.  

The legacy selections include players, referees and coaches who have made an impact between 2000-2025.

But the statements of case for Wilkinson and Williams were overwhelmingly compelling and the judging panel decided they could not be separated.

While this is just a theoretical exercise, it also marks the first time these two would have been paired together as co-coaches.

Roger Wilkinson

Wilkinson has evolved as something of a godfather of football coaching in the WaiBOP region after having originally made his mark here from 1984 onwards with Claudelands Rovers, AFC Waikato, Hamilton AFC and then as inaugural national league coach of Waikato United, where he won the Chatham Cup in 1988 and finished league and cup runners-up with The Bulls in 1992, and Superclub Championship runners-up in 1995.

For the purposes of this exercise Wilkinson was only judged on his football impact from 2000-2025, a period when he coached Waikato FC from 2006-08, served as assistant coach at Hamilton Wanderers for a number of years, and worked as a Melville United Academy coach from 2018 onwards.

During this time Wilkinson, who is also a former New Zealand national director of coaching, has influenced the development of hundreds of players, been a huge advocate for coach education and has personally played a significant role in upskilling other coaches.

 In 2002, Roger co-founded a private coaching consultancy, Premier Skills, with former Crystal Palace First Team Coach, John Cartwright and worked as Under 21 Development Coach for West Bromwich Albion before returning to the Waikato.

Wilkinson is no longer the feisty character he was back in the 80s but has become a mentor to hundreds of Waikato-BOP players from Chris Wood down to the current crop of U12 players.

Some have called him the best coach with the worst jokes, but either way he is a coaching guru, with football gravitas that can seldom be matched.

Even when between jobs, Wilkinson has always been a restless, driven soul. The ultimate football junkie.

Today you can still encounter Wilkinson at football venues offering unsolicited advice to youngsters or talking shop with adults (or cracking madcap jokes).

Here's Wilkinson talking football philosophy some years back: “If you are not fully committed the game will wear you down and New Zealand is littered with coaches who have either given it away or settled for coaching at a safer, lower level.

“But I am a driven coach. I hate it when opposing teams produce something I had not foreseen, not prepared for. Your team has got to stand for something, have a style of play it imposes.”

Steve Williams

Whereas Wilkinson had a broad influence through education and youth coaching, and also coached privately, by contrast Williams was a one-club man as a coach.

While it could be argued this meant he didn't have the same breadth of significance for the wider code, the club game is focused on grassroots football, and nothing says "grassroots" more than a coach picking a club and sticking with it through thick and thin.

During the period under consideration Williams coached Melville from 2000-2002, 2006-2011, and 2013-2016, a total of 13 years (having earlier coached them from 1991-1998 at northern and national league level).

Williams achieved promotion twice (2007 and 2014 seasons) and made one Chatham Cup semi (2013). But his crowning achievement during this period was winning the northern premier league in 2009 (having previously won it as Melville coach in 1995). He was premier league runner-up with Melville in 2000 and third in 2001 and 2011.

His overriding legacy was his determination to use his coaching role to "build a club" as opposed to just running a successful team or developing individual players and his influence in this regard went far beyond coaching.

Like Wilkinson, Williams could also be an entertaining football raconteur and here are some historic comments from him reflecting on the week-to-week realities of coaching at community level in response to a former player suggesting some of his sessions weren't as technically strong as they could have been.

"I never said I was Pep Guardiola, and in saying that, neither can I recall having Sergio Aguero or Bernardo Silva playing for me," Williams said. "We're down at Gower Park No 2 pitch with three light poles and four old lights on each pole and at best only three working at any one time. Before training Graham Jones would be sorting out the fuse box to get the lights working.

"The pitch was bone-dry in pre-season and a peat bog in the middle of winter. The reserves also played there on a Saturday and it was not the manicured arena of today.

"For two hours on a Tuesday and two hours on a Thursday we're there with a bunch of misfits, most of them with personality disorders. Let's be honest, we did what we had to."
 

Article added: Tuesday 04 November 2025