• Andrew Demetriou will stand down as AFL CEO at the end of 2014
• AFL to begin 2-3 month search for a replacement
• Deputy CEO Gillon McLachlan among leading candidates for top job
• Demetriou denies AFL could have done more to prevent Essendon supplements crisis
WHEN you are the chief executive of the AFL you carry a big stick and you walk the corridors of power.
Prime ministers past and present, John Howard, Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott, were thanked for their support of the game.
Media moguls Rupert Murdoch, Kerry Stokes and both James and the late Kerry Packer were acknowledged for the billions of dollars they have given football, money that has largely underpinned the growth of the game.
But family, both football and personal, is what moved Demetriou to the point of tears during the media conference.
Demetriou's time as a football administrator, which started in 1998 when he became chief executive of the AFL Players Association, has been rocked by a series of untimely deaths, starting with his first wife Jan Bassett, who died after a long illness in 1999.
Within the next few years senior AFL executives Ben Buckley and Ian Anderson both lost their wives to illness.
"I can tell you having three executives at the one place who have lost their wives was very challenging," he said.
In the meantime, the game also prematurely lost commission chairman Ron Evans, ground operations manager Jill Lindsay, Melbourne champion and saviour Jim Stynes, broadcaster Clinton Grybas and filmmaker (and Demetriou's former teammate) Rob Dickson.
Demetriou's mother passed away in 2006.
These events shaped him tremendously and when he spoke on Monday of the football family, they weren't just glib statements.
He met his second wife, Symone, then a corporate sales executive at the AFL in 2001 and they married a few years later. They now have four children, Alexandra, Francesca, Mattea and Sacha and they were at the media conference with Symone as well as other family members.
"Little did I know in 1998 when I joined the AFLPA that I would experience the highs and low of what life would bring," Demetriou said.
"My children and Symone have been with me every step of the way during my time as CEO. It's been remarkable."
Demetriou has lived the family mantra in his time at the AFL. Despite the demands of the job, he is known for making it home for dinner and family time several evenings a week.
It helps explain why he was able to achieve great things with the AFL and be arguably its most influential ever executive, while not being consumed by the job (amid much criticism, he missed seven weeks of the 2012 season to take his family to Europe).
"Symone and I agreed when I was first appointed that we would leave the game the way we entered it, not affected by the role or the position and to stay true to our values.
"The game consumes you but you can't help but fall in love with it," he added. "It's a great game."
Demetriou will always have his critics. As he recognised on Monday, it comes with the territory of a high-profile public position.
But at 52 years of age and after 10 years as a player and another 16 as an administrator, he more than qualifies as a football person and one who, for all the trappings, understood his role in the game.
Citing the advice of his mentor and former chairman Evans, he said, "Weare but custodians of the game, (we) have a lend of it for a while andhand it over in better shape to the next person.
"He was talking about legacy, of course, and I hope we have done that."
Below: Andrew Demetriou and son Sacha at AFL House on Monday. Picture: Michael Willson.
