He was dubbed Vlad by Kevin Sheedy. The benevolent dictator by Jeff Kennett. And plenty worse at times by fans convinced they had been done over by the all-powerful AFL.

But outgoing AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou was unrepentant on Monday, saying the vast majority of people involved in Australia’s most popular football code respected strong leadership.

That’s the public face.

The lesser-known side of Demetriou was also on show at a packed media conference at AFL House to announce his departure at the end of the 2014 season.

Seated in the front row were his second wife Symone – who he met in that very building 13 years ago – their four children and his 84-year-old father.

Demetriou and his three older brothers are the sons of Greek-Cypriot immigrants who were raised in a house behind a fish and chip shop in the working-class Melbourne suburb of Coburg.

The upbringing gave Demetriou a different take on the role Australia’s only homegrown football code could have on society as whole.

As AFL chief executive, he crunched the numbers, grew the business and expanded into new markets on the Gold Coast and western Sydney.

But he also championed multiculturalism, indigenous involvement and the role of women in the sport.

“Sport was the catalyst for acceptance and gave me a true sense of community, a sense of belonging,” Demetriou told a Migration Council function in 2013.

“It also gave me the sort of opportunities my parents could only dream of when they left Cyprus in the hope of giving their children and their children’s children a better life.”

Older brother Jimmy was the first Demetriou to make his way into the VFL/AFL, playing nine games for Essendon in the mid-1970s.

Andrew Demetriou’s playing career was a longer one, representing North Melbourne 103 times and playing three games for Hawthorn in the 1980s as a moustachioed wingman.

But after stints at university and in the dental import industry, it was in AFL administration that he really made his mark.

After cutting his teeth as AFL Players Association boss, he joined the sport’s governing body as football operations manager before succeeding Wayne Jackson as CEO in 2003.

An at-time emotional Demetriou paid tribute to many colleagues on Monday, also offering thanks to people as varied as media barons Rupert Murdoch and the Packers, his long-time personal assistant and AFL fans.

He spoke of the difficult time when he and colleagues Ben Buckley and Ian Anderson all lost their wives to breast cancer in quick succession.

“I can tell you that having three executives in the one place who had lost their spouses was very challenging,” he said.

“Shortly after that (broadcaster) Clinton Grybas lost his life, and then (AFL chairman) Ron Evans.

“And then my mother, then we lost a real good friend in (documentary maker) Rob Dickson, then the great Jill Lindsay (AFL ground operations manager) and of course the great Jim Stynes.

“All of these deaths had a profound effect on me because they were all taken way too early.

“But through those hard times comes so much light.”