Unfortunately it's often in a negative context, such as when a player gets caught drink-driving, or in extreme circumstances, gets sacked by his club.
But how many people also make a direct link between club culture and winning games?
Ray McLean does.
McLean is in the business of developing a positive club culture, and at the AFL Coaches Association this weekend he's running a workshop devoted to that topic.
McLean, through his business Leading Teams, is a leadership consultant to AFL, NRL, NBL and Rugby Union Super 14 teams, business and academic organisations.
Sydney Swans premiership coach Paul Roos was impressed enough endorse McLean's 2007 book, Any Given Team, with the following comment: "The culture at our football club is one we are all proud of and one we have worked very hard to achieve ... it would not have been achieved without Ray McLean's direction and guidance."
But what is the nebulous thing we call 'club culture'?
"I think the most important thing for me is that if you develop a strong club culture, one of the things that we think you can do is also increase your leadership capacity," McLean said on Wednesday.
"The culture at a club is the behaviour that is accepted or not, and if you have people clear about that culture, you can then empower people to take charge of the culture.
"But if they don't know what the accepted standards are, then they can't do anything – they just wonder why people are late for training, or why we accept that people don't train, or whatever the circumstance may be.
"It's really that link between accepted behaviour and leadership capacity, and then, obviously, the greater increase in leadership capacity the greater increase in performance.
"So it's also about winning games."
McLean said there really wasn't much difference between the younger and older groups in a club when it came to developing culture.
"The level of guidance a coach might give might change a bit, but I've found that youth teams are capable of having a reasonable stake in the culture of their team.
"We'll be exploring ways to set it up, how to have players own it, and how to have players drive it.
"It's really about getting all stakeholders involved in taking responsibility for the culture, not just making it the coaches' responsibility or the administrators' responsibility.
"It's a way of engaging all stakeholders – players, coaches, administrators – in the driving of the culture."
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The AFL 2009 National Coaching Conference runs from Friday, January 30 to Sunday, February 1 at the MCG in Melbourne. It provides footy coaches with access to the most up-to-date Australian football coaching methods and practices. Find out more.
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