Cast your mind back to July 25, 2010, Round 17 of the AFL season, a spectacular sunny Sunday afternoon at the MCG and a resurgent Melbourne had just pulverised the Sydney Swans with the most exquisite performance.
The Dean Bailey coached Demons, a young team looking to rise back up the ladder, were breath-taking that day as they inflicted an inspiring 73 point thrashing over the defensively-orientated Swans.
The performance breathed hope into the Melbourne faithful, who had stuck with the embattled club through the hard times and finally, light appeared at the end of the wretched tunnel.
AFL commentators and football observers left that day convinced they had just witnessed the AFL’s next superpower, in the same vein as the Brisbane Lions 2001-04 and Geelong 2007-11.
Nearly three years on and the two teams that faced off that day are polar opposites.
The Swans are reigning premiers, the envy of the football brethren who exude a culture the rest of the competition only dreams of recreating or emulating. The Demons are the laughing stock of the code, slumping to the lowest of lows with not an ounce of pride or passion left in the red and the blue.
If culture were to be represented as a metal on the stock market, the Sydney Swans would be equivalent to gold, while Melbourne would meekly be recognised as imitation-brand copper.
It is hard to fathom how the oldest football club in Victoria can verge on the border of irrelevancy. How does it get to this point, for a team who holds claim to the most inspiring identity in the game?
Former Melbourne Football Club president Jim Stynes rescued the franchise from obscurity five years ago when he took over proceedings and eradicated the club of nearly $5 million in debt.
His awe-inspiring tale of battling cancer is remarkable, all the while he continued presiding over the Demons. You’d think such a courageous fight would ignite passion and determination in the team.
Dialect depicted in Stynes’ biography titled ‘My Journey’ reveals little if any change between Melbourne of 2008 and the current edition.
“I went to see the AFL’s chief executive, Andrew Demetriou, who suggested the role would be more demanding than I expected.
“‘I think the club has lost its way, Jim,’ he told me. ‘It’s damaged. It doesn’t stand for anything. It’s a monumental task to take on the presidency…we’ll help you, but it’s not going to be without pain.’”
The club still stands for nothing, at least nothing clearly apparent following the debacle that was their match against Essendon last weekend, where they were pantsed and shoved into the mud to the tune of 148 points.
The so-called footballers at MFC could do themselves a favour by picking up Stynes’ book. Obviously football is monumentally inferior to life and death, but if the current playing group fought with an ounce of the vigour with what Jim heroically battled cancer, at least they could say they tried.
More than they’re doing presently.
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