In many respects, fans consider Dick to be a football pioneer in the Bay.
This month, the Scotsman presented the Bill Dick Cup to the Promotem Napier City Rovers team at Park Island after their victory over Napier Marist.
Son Alan, who is Marist club captain and on the committee, didn't have a clue the trophy was going to be dedicated to his father who is a life member.
The silverware will now always be up for grabs for the two sides in the Pacific Premiership.
Dick arrived in Wellington as a 20-year-old after two years of national service with the Hong Kong army.
His brother, the late George Dick, had earlier settled in the capital as a post office technician before Bill Dick worked in its accounts department.
George, for the record, went on to deputise for the late Charlie Dempsey at Oceania Football.
With their father, Bill Snr, killed in World War II in Italy the boys, including Ian, 82, of Napier, and Eric, 76, of Whangarei, had no qualms about emigrating to New Zealand.
They saved enough money to eventually bring over their mother, the late Jean, who was in ill health.
Bill Dick soon worked for Northern Insurance in Wellington but he and George played for Western Suburbs who were then called "Hospital", because they were based at the mental health unit operating from Porirua where they had a football field.
In 1956, Dick moved to Napier following a transfer with the insurance firm and Napier Rovers beckoned.
"When I first came here all football, including the juniors, was played at Nelson Park," he says of the prime cricket venue that offered two soccer fields.
It took him sometime to warm up to the social nature of the sport here, as opposed to the competitive one he was accustomed to in Wellington.
"It took me a couple of years to make a team out of them."
That mindset led to the formation of the Hawke's Bay senior men's representative team with Dick at the helm as captain.
It entailed travelling to Palmerston North, Wanganui, Taranaki and Gisborne to compete at their own expense.
"Kevin Fallon was a real tough customer in those days," he reveals of the former Gisborne City and All Whites player/coach.
Ken Armstrong (England), Jock Aird (Scotland) and Ian Gillies (Scotland) were instrumental in helping grow the game in the Bay.
"Ken played for New Zealand and coached so he did more to lift amateur football than anyone else," he says of the former English international and Chelsea captain, who included him as one of the best players he had seen in New Zealand in 1957, while captaining Eastern Union in Gisborne.
Few teams existed in the Bay, including Napier City (which merged with Napier Rovers in 1973 to become Napier City Rovers), West End and Taradale while Hastings United and Hastings City flew the flag at the other city.
But a more daunting task awaited him at schools where football didn't have a footing.
Son Alan attended the former primary/intermediate Marist School (now St Patrick's) so Dick's work was cut out.
"In those days kids used to listen."
The man who has coached Marist club teams was also partial to mentoring youngsters, eventually honing the skills of his granddaughters and their team at Marewa Club.
"It was incredibly difficult at schools. People don't realise how hard it was to get St John's College to play football there.
"They [pupils] were coached there but they weren't allowed to play at St John's because of rugby," he says, revealing teams called themselves Shamrock or Leopard.
"It was like a glass wall and we couldn't get past it although eventually we did.
"That was the normal thing in New Zealand and it was happening everywhere," says Dick but taking a sense of satisfaction in seeing the code eventually eclipse rugby in terms of numbers.
A "football nutter", Mike Carroll got behind the pupils and soon John McCarthy picked up the baton to form Hibernian St John's.
"All the boys stuck together," says Dick, who coached them for five years.
"I sat down and made myself very unpopular because I pushed football so hard."
In taking stock, he reflects on the enormity of starting a football revolution at a Roman Catholic high school that championed rugby and was conservative.
However, most of the youngsters were Dick's proteges, travelling from Napier to Hastings to train twice a week, so Steve Toohey mooted the idea of forming a Napier Marist club in 1987 which now boasts five senior teams and 25 junior ones.
"Steve did a hell of a lot. He was the sort of guy who would do anything for the Marist club."
In Dick's heyday, he took the Napier Rovers team to the North Island leg of the Chatham Cup semifinals - the first Bay team to achieve that goal.
It wasn't until 1985, under chairman John McMillan, that the amalgamated Napier City Rovers found Chatham Cup glory but also had to come to terms with their relegation from the then National League.
With Alan's sons, Mitchell, 23, and Taylor, 21, in the premier Marist team, Dick remains a sideline fixture on Saturday afternoons during their games.
To the uninitiated he's just another spectator, but an unassuming Dick is a pivotal reason for helping lay down the platform for the green-and-white brigade to thrive.
