When Stephen Milne and Leigh Montagna were accused of sexual assault in 2004 and then league chief Andrew Demetriou set about creating the first respect and responsibility policy,Peek was the executive who oversaw that complex thicket. And handled the follow-through when Demetriou called on any woman with a grievance against the game to step forward.

The following year,when Sydney won their first flag,Peek never publicly held the cup but there are plenty of Swans directors and officials who believe his fingerprints helped emboss it. He was not born a South Melbourne supporter but – again by osmosis – fell in love with the club and the story of its challenges,the promise of its quest and ultimately frontier conquering triumph.

Says Richard Colless,who chaired the club for two decades:"He had a vision I don't think his senior colleagues had and he has never been driven by the kind of ambition that drives a lot of people. Not to say he has no ambition but Tony has been truly driven by his love of the game and his belief in it and that has fulfilled him.

"There are two people in my view who understand the game from Cairns to the Riverina better than anyone and they are Andrew Ireland and Tony Peek and I'm not sure it's in that order."

West Coast chief executive Trevor Nisbett,who joined the Eagles as football boss in 1989,the same year Peek joined the then VFL,counts Peek as a close friend,a sounding board,confidant and credits him with insight into the draft,recruiting and player talent identification rarely mentioned elsewhere. Nisbett said Peek's ability to think outside the square has led to innovations also rarely credited to his name.

Over the years it has been Peek whose historic retention has been called upon to explain to his various bosses why struggling clubs have found themselves once again in the mire. Who understood the depth of despair being suffered by the families of the Essendon footballers in 2013 and despaired himself and who became at some point at the start of the millennium a funnel between clubs and the AFL.

One AFL colleague affectionately described Peek as"the softest grumpy bloke I've ever worked with". It is true according to long-serving administrators that he can blow off colleagues in a heartbeat if he suspects they are motivated only by money or power. But with Peek that changes once he identifies work ethic combined with a passion for the game.

Peek has reportedly struggled over the years with some of the cowboyish tendencies of his fellow executives but he has saved them on countless occasions from implementing ambitious commercial or marketing initiatives which would have compromised the leadership of Demetriou or Gillon McLachlan.

Seemingly small but important oversights from head office over the past two years can be directly correlated to the times he has been forced to take sick leave.

When no senior AFL employee attended the funeral of Joan Hamilton,the beloved wife of the game's former boss Jack Hamilton earlier this year,I knew immediately that Peek must have been absent from the game's headquarters. On countless occasions over the past two years have AFL staffers lamented his enforced absence when things have gone wrong,clubs have been somehow offended or the lines of communication broken down.

Since 2003 Peek's title has been the somewhat understated"assistant to the CEO". Neither Demetriou nor McLachlan seriously envisaged that position without Peek in the role and while he has never actually written their speeches he has made his subtle mark on so many of their significant public performances.

On paper Peek's so-called corporate memory dates back three decades,when Gary Ablett senior was still in his 20s and Ross Oakley had entered his fourth year at the helm. It was three years before the David Crawford findings would hand unprecedented power to the reconstructed AFL Commission.

Impossible to imagine given the labyrinth the game's media machine has become today but Peek joined the VFL as its lone media spokesman.

Equally impossible to imagine the blunt and occasionally abrupt Peek dealing with today's football mouthpieces on a daily basis.

Equally impossible to imagine AFL headquarters without Tony Peek walking through them wearing his impeccable suits as constantly as his purposeful stride – sometimes irascible,sometimes sardonic,equally often good humoured but always concerned. Nor at all those football venues across Australia which Peek has punctuated with devotion over 30 winters in his smart woollen coats and suede shoes,at least in his official role as the game's caretaker.

Those venues have been radically and reconstructed and multiplied over Peek's football journey and he will come the full circle in a sense when Nisbett's West Coast hosts him later this month at Perth's new Optus Stadium for the Essendon game.

Peek was never the number cruncher,the financial controller,the political conduit nor the deal-maker for any of the AFL's state-of-the-art stadia landmarks which have symbolised the changing fortunes of the game. But around the continent a piece of his football heart lies in all of them.