Born in Plymouth, Devon, Walters first came to attention in 1984 when he won a competition at Butlin's Minehead for which the prize was the opportunity to train with Manchester United, and was then spotted by the coach Barry Bennell.
[1] He was a member of The Football Association's centre of excellence at Lilleshall Hall in the same class as future England internationals Andy Cole and Ian Walker, and chose to start his career at Crewe Alexandra due to their reputation for developing young talent.
[4] Through the early part of the 1990s he built up 173 appearances for the club over all competitions, scoring eleven goals, and appeared in the 1993 Football League Third Division play-off final, which Crewe lost on penalties to York City, though they gained automatic promotion a year later.
[11] On 16 November 2016, former Crewe defender Andy Woodward revealed that he had been a victim of child sexual abuse by former football coach Barry Bennell (convicted as a paedophile in 1998) at the club in the 1980s.
[17] In early 2017, Walters (who now runs a cleaning company) repeatedly bemoaned the lack of support expressed by current professional players to abuse victims, describing it as a "deafening silence" and "shocking and hurtful".
[1] On 28 February 2019, Steve Walters accused Crewe of showing "no humanity" and "victim blaming" in a bid to avoid compensation payouts, and of claiming he had waited too long to report abuse.