Bruce Holloway on Roger Wilkinson
By Bruce Holloway
Utter the name “Roger” in New Zealand football circles and the chances are anybody who has been around the game for any length of time will instantly know who you are talking about.
That’s the measure of Roger Wilkinson’s influence on the code.
Today he is but a youth coach with Melville United (and co-founder of Premier Skills Coaching).
But his CV runs deep. He’d earned his full English badge by the time he was 22, after a playing career (Luton Town) was cut short by injury, and came to NZ in 1975. (Today he has a UEFA A Licence and a FIFA diploma in coaching, is also a trained PE assessor and has an Oxford University teaching diploma.)
Roger coached Seatoun for two seasons then took Napier City Rovers from provincial oblivion to the national league and initiated the Napier Youth Tournament that continues today.
He has also held national league coaching posts with Waikato United, Auckland City and Waikato FC in the national league, while he also served as national director of coaching in 2003.
But Waikato United was his major legacy at club level.
Roger was not only the founding coach but the chief architect of a composite club, formed at short notice to contest the national league in December 1987.
Roger first came to the Waikato in 1985 (in his late 30s) and duly became one of the first full time coaches at club level in New Zealand when he took up a role with Claudelands Rovers.
At the time you could almost see tumbleweed blowing through Waikato football, but Wilkinson inspired Rovers’ rise from the northern league second division to the top of the northern premier league – and ultimately bobbed and weaved through the most turbulent period in Waikato football history to bring national league back to the province.
Rovers rise inevitably set up direct competition and an earnest power struggle with Hamilton AFC and as Claudelands Rovers underwent their own contortions, rebranding their northern league team as AFC Waikato then leasing their northern league berth to a private company (Waikato FC) as they rose up the ranks, Roger parted company with them in mid-1987 after a dispute over the manner in which the club was being run.
To the surprise of most he then immediately threw in his lot with rivals Hamilton AFC, who then joined with Rovers in applying for a national league berth which was initially rejected but ultimately accepted, with Waikato United being formed at very short notice in December 1987.
Many clubs go their entire history and never make a Chatham Cup semifinal. But in their very first entry, Waikato United won the cup in 1998 and finished fifth in the league.
While silverware was otherwise elusive – league runners-up in 1992 and 1995, and beaten cup finalists in 1992 – in the 1990s Waikato were never out of the top four under his watch and he built a team with a fearsome reputation. In 1992 he was named NZ coach of the year and that season also assisted Allan Jones with the New Zealand U20s.
In the New Zealand environment football coaches are larger than life. They determine a club’s ambition, style and personality. The coach is the mirror where a club looks itself in the face.
Most coaches have a burning passion. At his peak Wilkinson was the epitome of all that and more, with the added dimensions of dynamism, with a dash of ruthlessness.
Roger probably did more to shape the game in the Waikato in the modern era than anyone, not just from a coaching perspective, but in terms of administration, fundraising (pre-pokies), sponsorship and profile.
It helped that he had “the vision thing”. He saw situations not as they were, but as what they could be. He was the ultimate battler, often doing the most with the least.
Roger’s Waikato legacy is one of many highs, occasional lows, a smattering of controversies and an era that was never dull.
He was the major driving force in Waikato football, from his arrival in the mid-80s, through to the mid-90s.
Away from football he could be affable and eloquent. He was a master salesman, great speaker and an influential voice in administrative matters.
But anywhere near a coaching dugout and he was invariably agitated, an excitable cursing firebrand, focused on his team and the game he loves.
Even when he was between jobs, Wilkinson was a restless, driven soul. The ultimate football junkie.
You could find him at parks giving unsolicited advice to youngsters, talking shop with adults or cracking madcap jokes.
In 1993 Roger told me: “If you are not fully committed the game will wear you down and NZ 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 had not foreseen, not prepared for. Your team has got to stand for something, have a style, of play it imposes.”
The lessons he learned as a player coloured his approach as a coach.
“I remember stepping up from the Luton youth team for a reserve team fixture against Arsenal. I felt I was more skilful but physically I couldn’t cope. That left a lasting impression on the importance of fitness.
“At Luton I once had the job of marking Rodney Marsh. I couldn’t get near him. It taught me the most important thing in football is skill.
“Playing for Glossop against Matlock we lost 5-0 but were as good as, if not better than them. They scored from free kicks and corners. It taught me the value of organisation.”
Wilkinson had his fair share of critics. His forthright manner and tendency to speak his mind, especially when handed a microphone, always grated with administrators, and he was particularly feisty in his younger days.
“Committees can’t operate as well as I do,” he said in the early 1990s. “I used to be scathing towards them but now I try to help. I remember my dad’s advice to be nice to people on your way up because you’ll meet them again on the way down.”
In summary, Roger was Waikato's "Mr Football" for a generation, though in retrospect, if he had an Achilles Heel it was that he was unable to take enough football people with him in search of greatness.
NB: In 1993 Roger nominated the following Waikato Dream Squad for the period 1984-1993:
Billy Wright, Paul Nixon, Steve Tate, David King, Darren Melville, Declan Edge, Billy Clark, Brian Hayes, David Coleman, Darren Fellowes, Darren Powell, Gary Dillistone, Dave Merritt, Laurence Fitzpatrick, Paul Gemmell.
# His final season with Waikato was the first summer league in 1995. (He was overseas for the 1994 season.)
After 18 successive seasons of club coaching in NZ, he resigned at the end of 1993, and went overseas, though returned in 1995 and guided Waikato to the final of the Superclub Champiponship (national league substitute).
Back in New Zealand he had a brief spell with Auckland City and from 2006-08 coached Waikato FC in the NZ Football Championship.
In 2002, Roger co-founded a private coaching consultancy, Premier Skills, with former Crystal Palace First Team Coach, John Cartwright and worked as the Under 21 Development Coach for West Bromwich Albion.
