Bream Bay United: Fifty Years of Football, Grit and Community

Today, Bream Bay United has over 300 members and is the largest sports club in the area - boasting over 10% of Whangarei's registered footballers. We are one of the oldest continuously operating clubs in Northland. Our history mirrors the  place itself - shaped by migration, hard work and self-reliance. Each generation of the club has built something for the next: a ground, a shed, a set of lights, a culture of turning up. The names change, the accents shift but the pattern stays the same. The club endures because people keep saying 'yes' when there’s a job to be done. 

The Beginning – 1970s

In 1974 there was a young boy named David Picketts who wanted to play football. His father, Tony Picketts, the local policeman, soon found there wasn’t a team in Bream Bay for him to join. Instead of giving up, he decided to start one. He rang George Crawley, who had recently moved from Liverpool and had both playing and coaching experience, to see if he’d be interested in helping. George agreed - and that is how our club began. 

George became the club’s first player-coach and treasurer. His wife, Joan Crawley, took on the fundraising and all the practical jobs that kept the club moving. Tony's wife, Anne Picketts, became secretary. A scion of the local community, Ivan Papich, was made the inaugural club president. There was just one problem: they had nowhere to play! No ground, no gear, no money - just a handful of people determined to make something out of nothing.

Help came from the Marsden Power Station, which occupied the site where NIWA sits today. The station’s manager, Roger Hall, offered the use of a patch of unused land, and the group set to work. They cleared, levelled and marked the field by hand. The nearby tennis pavilion became the clubroom - it housed one large room and a couple of bathrooms, no changing sheds and no showers - but the fledgling club had a base.

The first goals were welded from scaffolding poles, the crossbars joined with clamps. Uniforms were improvised: white Hallenstein T-shirts dyed maroon in buckets. Liverpool supporters had pushed for red, but Whangārei City already played in that colour. The Scots, loyal to Hearts, insisted on maroon. When it rained, the dye ran and the players turned pink - but the club had its colours which it retains to this day.

Money came from wherever it could be found. Joan Crawley organised an all-night 'soccerthon', bottle drives and performances in local gardens. Social nights in the power-station Village Hall sold beer for a small profit to help pay for balls and nets. Tony - the local policeman - was conveniently slow to notice!

By 1975 the club fielded three teams - a senior men’s side and two junior teams. The senior men wore proper uniforms at last, thanks to the first sponsor, Whangārei Engineering Company. Results were mixed, but there was football in Bream Bay - and that was the point.

Refinery Years and Early Success – 1980s

In 1979, New Zealand’s 'Think Big' programme expanded the Marsden Point refinery. Hundreds of new workers arrived in the district - many of them from the UK. Unsurprisingly, a significant proportion of them were footballers. This proved to be quite the stimulus package for the young club. The quality of play rose quickly. The senior men were now competitive with anyone in Northland, and the club’s size and confidence grew with the influx of refinery families. Matches became community events; the pavilion, however humble, was full on Saturday evenings.

The 1980s brought a run of success that people still talk about. The premier men’s team dominated local competitions, winning league titles and knockout cups. They lifted the wonderfully named 'Cock of the North' trophy and represented the area in the Chatham Cup, New Zealand’s national knockout competition. The peak came in 1984. That season the first team went unbeaten, sweeping the league, the knock-out and the David Wilson Cup. One of our club's current life members, Grant McCullum, was a member of that team - and was still playing competitively as recently as 2024.   

Women’s football was also taking hold. A women’s team, coached by Stephen Deacon, was formed and quickly became part of the club’s identity. It was at this time that the club also honoured its earliest builders with life memberships: George and Joan Crawley in 1982 and Ivan Papich in 1984. Those awards marked the end of the first era at Bream Bay United.

History Repeats – 1990s to 2000s

When the power station closed in 1990, the club lost its home - virtually overnight. For years, the club had depended on that field and the goodwill that came with it. Suddenly there was nothing - no pitch, no storage, no certainty the club would survive. That’s when Brian Challenor, the station manager at Electricorp, stepped in. He offered the club use of Electricorp Park (now Uranga Park), complete with changing rooms. It wasn’t glamorous, but it gave the club a base and time to breathe.

A few seasons later, when the Ruakākā Rugby Club folded, the footballers were invited to use its old ground at the Ruakākā Recreation Reserve. The lights were mounted on rotting wooden poles, the drainage was poor and the grass went ankle-deep after rain. But it was a ground, and for Bream Bay that was enough - and it has been our home ever since.

The 1990s were a second act of the 1970s - starting again from scratch, doing everything by hand. Tom Pow, a local farmer, brought his mole-plough twice a year to drain the fields. Others turned up with tractors and seed. Innes Gorrie welded new goalposts and built a line marker. Brian Challenor donated cables and poles; Allan Richards, an electrician, wired them up without charging a cent. Local businesses filled raffle tables: Gary Cullen, the butcher, sent over meat packs and the pharmacy added hampers.

Leadership through that decade fell to a handful of familiar names. Ian Crayton-Brown, a policeman new to the area in 1990, served as president and remains a life member. Alongside him were Warren Bunn and John 'H' Harnett, both of whom carried heavy committee loads and still managed to play. And then there was Brendan Rudman - coach, organiser, and the beating heart of the senior teams. His sons, Troy and Jordie, grew up with the smell of liniment and wet socks in their noses. Jordie’s 2010 season still stands in the books: 33 goals, including nine hat-tricks, as the side won both the First Division and the Knock-Out Cup.

By 2000, Mike James had taken over as president, followed later by Mike Swords. These years saw the club begin to modernise: applying for grants and replacing handwritten ledgers with early computer records. The club was growing again. Juniors filled the Saturday-morning pitches, seniors travelled long distances for games, and the same small group of volunteers still did the washing, registrations, raffles and coaching. When the two Mikes moved on, the club hit another rough patch. That’s when Andy Ahern, Selina Gordon and Kate Neil stepped up. They steadied the books, rebuilt the committee, and kept teams on the park. 

Modern Growth – 2010s to Today

By the 2010s, Mike and Robyn Davies were the faces of the club. Mike helped form Northland FC, the region’s joint venture for top-level football and then threw himself into securing new fields for Ruakākā - a campaign that took seven years of lobbying before the first goalpost went in. Robyn, meanwhile, ran the club from the inside. She professionalised the systems - registrations, grants, uniforms and communications. When a herd of pigs tore up the fields in 2018, it was Robyn who fronted the TV cameras, explaining what had happened while working out how to fix it. 

The club continues to have its stalwarts - the people whose names appear on every roster, minute and volunteer list. Today, that includes people like Steve 'Pirate' Pether, Stuart McDonald, Matt Rowe, Ken Andrews, Evan and Nadene Bucherer, Warren Greene, Shauna Byrne and many others. The club now looks little like it did when a handful of volunteers met in a tennis pavilion in 1974 - but it is still run on the same homemade energy that had always defined it. For all the growth, Bream Bay United has never lost its shape as a community project. More than fifty years on, the shirts are still maroon, the spirit still stubborn and the game still the same. C'mon Bream Bay!