Steve Bettis - nominated by Melville United.

Melville United’s assistant first team manager and kit man Steve Bettis spends a fair chunk of his week at Gower Park during the football season.

A retired civil servant, Bettis (also known as Stevie B) does a lot of the club’s pitch marking, cleans the clubrooms, sets up the gear for training on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, as well as for matchdays, home and away. 

He is the bloke who sets up Gower No 1 and the changing rooms on matchdays, closes up the hoardings afterwards, sweeps the changing room and packs up the playing kit. On home matchdays he usually starts his tasks at about 9am and is still there at 6.30pm.

He has just completed his seventh consecutive season as part of Melville’s first team management. Unlike many players, he never misses a night’s training, is first there, and last to leave.

While his input is much appreciated, few of those who benefit from his work today would appreciate he was also a very handy player in his prime.

Bettis joined Melville United’s founding club, Melville AFC, in the early 1970s and has the distinction of having won the Melville first team player of the year award four times - in 1979, 1980, 1984 and 1986 – for his efforts as a nuggetty little midfielder.

He also has the longest chronological playing career at Melville, having made his final first team appearance in 2005, away to North Force. 

In that match he came on as sub in his early 50s with the team short-staffed, with the appearance also making him the oldest outfield player ever to have taken the pitch for Melville United in the northern league.

In 2012 Bettis also shared the club’s Coach of the Year award after assisting with the Melville Federation League team.

The in 2014 he was conferred with life membership of Melville.

Bettis said when he joined Melville, “it was a club nobody wanted to know," puddling around in the Waikato second division, but over the years has become highly respected.

"I’ve always just wanted the club to be the best on and off the field," he said.

Bettis was briefly a Melville committee member in the 1980s.

"But I hated every moment of it."

His one final claim to fame came in the early 1970s. Bettis had transferred from Affco Rangers to Claudelands Rovers - who then insisted upon a $3 transfer fee to reimburse them for his registration costs before releasing him to Melville.

He argues it made him the first player Melville ever paid a transfer fee for.

Steve receives a $75 meal voucher from The Keg Room.

Find out more about our region's Unsung Heroes HERE.