Melai played fifty games with Geelong reserves in the Victorian Football League during the early 1960s,[5] and was part of Geelong's 1963 reserves premiership team, but he did not play a senior game for the club.[6] He was cleared to South Melbourne, and played seven senior matches there during the 1964 season.[3]
In 1965, Melai crossed to Dandenong in the Victorian Football Association without a clearance. It was a historic transfer, as he was the first player to make the switch from the VFL to the VFA without a clearance after the VFA had terminated its transfer agreement with the VFL in April that year – a consequence of the bitter deterioration in relations between the two competitions following North Melbourne's relocation to Coburg.[7]
Melai became the mainstay ruckman of the Dandenong team over the next decade, a successful time which saw Melai win premierships in 1967 – notably knocking umpire David Jackson unconscious in an accidental collision during the controversial Grand Final[8] – and 1971, and he played off in a further three Grand Finals in 1969, 1972 and 1975. Melai retired from the VFA in June 1976, after having played 202 games for the Redlegs.[9]
After retiring from playing with the club, he stayed on with Dandenong as a runner, and was suspended for six weeks after the 1976 Grand Final for using abusive language during the brawls for which that game became infamous.[10] Melai continued to play football at suburban level until 1979. In the early 1990s, he served as a runner and team manager for the St Kilda Football Club.[4]
Melai died at age 63 after suffering a stroke in April 2004.[4] Later that year he was named as the ruckman of Dandenong's Team of the Century.[11]