He'd have to ask Paul Couch or Billy Brownless who a bloke was and they would then have to tell him it was "so-and-so, who'd already played X amount of games."

Gary Senior was never a great trainer and, as the anecdote above suggests, he wasn't quite like other people. On those measures, you'd think he might not be the best fit for a footy team.

But talk to any of the people who played with him and there was nobody else they would rather have had on their side.

I bring this up because the jungle drums keep on beating about Nat Fyfe not being tremendously popular among the other Dockers and there seems to be a growing murmur among fans that Fremantle ought to consider some kind of straight trade for Jesse Hogan.

A couple of things here. The first is that the Dockers don't need one of Fyfe or Hogan. They need them both.

The other is that you don't have to like the blokes you are playing with - you have to respect them. And if there is any player at Fremantle that doesn't respect the way Nat Fyfe goes about it, then he should be seriously considering walking out the door himself.

I've seen first hand what happens when you have the opposite situation.

Warwick Capper was a very likeable guy. Nobody disliked him at the Bears. But by the time he got to Brisbane he was just about shot. He didn't want to leave the goal square to get the footy and he wanted to kick a goal every time he got it.

Warwick will tell you that we didn't want to kick the ball to him and were jealous of his pay packet. That's rubbish. What had actually happened was that we'd lost respect for him as a footballer.

Footy - and sport in general - is packed with tales of players who didn't always get along but co-existed because they could see the greater good. Tyson Edwards and Andrew McLeod famously didn't talk for years in Adelaide but found ways to work together.

Jason Akermanis wasn't always liked by his Fab Four brothers at the Lions. But they knew he was good for the team because there were things he could do that nobody else could.

In cricket, Shane Warne and Steve Waugh were diametrically opposed but professional enough to still get the job done together.

Michael Jordan was notoriously hard on his Chicago Bulls teammates - by some accounts near bullying - but his single-minded focus ultimately served to improve them (as he also softened).

The Dockers aren't the only club dealing with the like-respect conundrum right now.

I wrote last week that Alex Rance was sniffing a move out of Tigerland and now I hear he's at odds with some of Richmond's other senior players - partly around how late he gets to start his pre-season. They might not like him right now, but will they bail out on the competition's best big defender?

At Brisbane, I'm led to believe Tom Rockliff had a heated exchange with some of the Lions' younger players in recent weeks. Those young fellas might not invite Tom over for dinner any time soon but if they are serious about going forward as a club, they'll realise they respect him and get on with things.

You could say the example I started this column with wasn't the best one, because Geelong and Gary Ablett Senior never won a premiership (even if they did come damn close in 1989 and then have the misfortune of running into the Eagles at their peak).

But if the Dockers of 2016 want an example of teammates at personal odds who banded together for the ultimate success, they only need look down the road towards West Coast.

From a behavioural perspective, there could have been no side more diverse than the Eagles premiership team of 2006. From near teetotallers and Christians, to drug addicts and two teammates who actually came to blows at the club HQ.

But on grand final day they were triumphant. The blokes who punched on - Andrew Embley and Daniel Chick - became the Norm Smith medallist and the guy whose smother changed the game.

There is one answer for why it all worked: respect.

Hero of the week:
Straight out of left field and most definitely not sports-related, but Taylor Swift's work in giving the paparazzi the slip in Brisbane to spend four hours with sick kids in hospital was absolutely first class.

Goat of the week:
Tongue in cheek but to Aaron Wood - if you're going to try to land a flying high-five or jump on your mates to celebrate a State of Origin victory, it's pretty important that you hit the mark!

Things that make you go hmmmmmmm:
With the talk about Tom Mitchell perhaps heading to Hawthorn, word is that Sydney is keen on Jaegar O'Meara as a replacement. It's worth noting that, although they wouldn't play on the same side, he's very good friends with another Sydney resident, Stephen Coniglio. Also buzzing on the grapevine is that Simon Black has had enough in Brisbane. He might want a year out but I think there would be plenty of teams willing to entertain the Brownlow medallist as an assistant coach.

Brad Hardie pens a weekly AFL column for WAtoday. You can also hear him on Radio 6PR Sports Today with Karl Langdon on weeknights from 6pm to 8pm