The media love a hero and a villain, and no more so than in the AFL. How often when a team is performing extremely poorly or extremely well do we hear praise or criticism concentrated on the captain or coach? Sometimes this is warranted. Other times, it speaks more about the unwillingness of the commentator to investigate the actual problems, or a lack of understanding about the complexity of modern day football clubs and just how many critical moving parts are needed to create successful environments.

I suspect there was a time in the AFL/VFL when a handful of top level senior players and a gun coach could get you close to success on field. Not so today. Modern day footy departments have around 80 full-time staff.

They're all important, but not equally so. What is vital to get right in the footy department are the key positions of influence.

The key roles in a football department are senior coach, captain, football manager, list manager, head of development, head of fitness and head of player welfare. If I were running an underperforming club, the first step I'd take would be to analyse whether any of those seven people had a different set of values to the club's. To put this in layman's terms, are any of them dickheads? If any are, even if they are elite performers, plans should be made to show them the door as soon as it's appropriate.