The Perth Football Club and the West Coast Eagles have suffered many big losses in their time, but this one feels like one of the biggest.

Ian Miller, known throughout football as “Serge”, has died at 76, ending more than half a century of extraordinary service to our great game.

If you asked anyone who knew him to describe Serge in one word, you would struggle to get past “real good bloke”.

But even that doesn’t do him justice. Serge was kind. Compassionate. Funny. Generous. He cared about people.

In the political, competitive and heavily masculine world of football, Serge possessed a remarkable quality. He was never heard to say a bad word about anyone. Not once. He could meet Gordon Ramsay and come back with: “He’s actually not a bad bloke when you get to know him.”

That was Serge. Humour was his escape plan.

His football CV was outstanding. He played 276 games for Perth, Fitzroy and East Perth, won the Sandover Medal, represented WA and was an All-Australian.

He won two premierships, one with my beloved Perth Demons in 1968 and another with East Perth in 1978, when he also won the Simpson Medal.

He is in the WA Football and Perth Football Club halls of fame, our Team of the Century, and a life member of both the Eagles and the AFL.

But strangely, when people talk about Serge this week, they rarely start with the Sandover Medal or the 276 games.

They talk about the man.

Serge, along with his great mate Allan “Chubby” Stiles, brought me to WA from Canberra in 1983 to play football. That decision changed my life, and I wasn’t the only young footballer who could say that.

He made young men feel safe, welcome and valued, particularly those who had crossed the country as teenagers without their families.

Later, at West Coast, after working alongside Malthouse, Wiley and Nisbett through the Eagles’ golden era of the 90s, he became the club’s player services co-ordinator, looking after generations of Eagles.

He picked them up from the airport, found them host families and stayed in touch with their parents.

When Ben Cousins reached one of the toughest moments of his life, Serge didn’t walk away. He went with him to the United States when Ben went into rehab, alongside Ben’s dad Bryan.

That’s Serge. He didn’t just say he cared, he showed up.

Premiership Eagle Will Schofield described him as being “like a dad”.

One of my favourite Serge stories involves a famous footballer he and Chubby missed out on.

In 1982, two scruffy, hippie-looking Victorian brothers turned up at Perth looking for an opportunity. As the story goes, Serge and Chubby left them on the bench during a pre-season trial because the local boys deserved a run first.

The brothers were Gary and Geoff Ablett. Yes, that Gary Ablett, who would go on to become one of the greatest players the game has ever produced. Both are now in the Australian Football Hall of Fame.

Serge and Chubby sent them back to Melbourne. Fair to say they were reminded of that decision a few times over the years. But that’s Serge. Even a recruiting blunder became a funny story.

My deepest regret as president of the Perth Football Club is that I couldn’t give Serge another Demons premiership before he died. He deserved one.

It won’t happen now. And that hurts.

This Sunday, the WAFL grand final will be played at Optus Stadium, with Claremont taking on Peel Thunder. Whatever happens, the day will feel different, because Serge won’t be there. He should be wandering around, talking to everyone, checking that people are OK, making a joke.

That was his gift. He made football a better place simply by being in it. And perhaps that is the greatest measure of a football life. Not how many games you played or medals you won. It is how many people were better off because they knew you. By that measure, Serge Miller was a champion of the highest order.

He showed us that masculinity in football didn’t have to mean hardness or bravado. It could mean kindness, compassion and simply being there.

Thanks, Serge. For looking after so many of us. For showing us how to live a worthwhile life.

And, most of all, for being one of the very best people football ever gave us. You will never be forgotten.