Nearly a decade ago, when Melbourne sacked coach Mark Neeld midway through the 2013 season, then newly appointed CEO Peter Jackson declared the club “an impediment to the industry”.

The Dees were at rock bottom both on and off the field, having been at the centre of a tanking investigation in which they were found not guilty and also having been rocked by the death of inspirational president Jim Stynes.

On the field the club was being beaten heavily on a regular basis, the nadir of which was a 148-point loss to Essendon in Round 2, after which the players were given a savaging by its supporters as they left the field.

Featuring in the Melbourne side on that horror night at the MCG was an 18-year-old named Jack Viney, who was playing just his second AFL game and was a week short of turning 19, and 23-gamer Tom McDonald.

Nearly 200 games and two full-time coaches later, both became premiership players, as did current captain Max Gawn – who did not play in that said game but was given his AFL debut by the late Dean Bailey against the Bombers two years earlier – under Simon Goodwin’s watch.

Leading the game’s oldest club was a responsibility Jack Trengove and Jack Grimes should never have been bestowed with from the start, but Neeld declared at the start of his coaching tenure that they were the best two players to lead the club forward.

In the weeks following that Bombers debacle, Cameron Schwab and Don McLardy were removed from their respective posts as CEO and president, replaced by Peter Jackson and Glen Bartlett, before Neeld was given his marching orders in June 2013.

The AFL granted the struggling club the funds they required to reshape the board and footballing department on the strict condition that the detailed plan they provided the league would be adhered to, including removing key personnel from the Jim Stynes administration.

And so began the total rebuild of the Melbourne Football Club, with legendary premiership coach Paul Roos brought in to resuscitate the club’s on-field fortunes and set a path for the players to future success.

The Dees had beaten the Brisbane Lions to Roos’ signature, the former Sydney Swans mentor having worked in the media since stepping away from the coaching caper at the end of the 2010 season.

One of Roos’ first acts as coach was to appoint Nathan Jones, who had been the heart and soul of the club through its darkest days, as co-captain alongside Jack Grimes before assuming the sole captaincy for the remainder of Roos’ time at the club.

Slowly but surely the right people were starting to be brought in, with Simon Goodwin later appointed senior assistant coach and three-time Hawthorn premiership player Jordan Lewis joining the club at the twilight of his playing career, and results started to be produced again.

Despite copping the worst defeat of his coaching career in his final game in charge in 2016 – a 111-point loss to the Geelong Cats at Kardinia Park – Roos left the club in a much better state than he found it, with Goodwin taking over as part of a succession plan.

CEO Peter Jackson continued to work hard behind the scenes, overseeing a return to stability on and off the field as well as a long-awaited return to finals football, before departing his post at the end of the 2018 season.

Three years later, Goodwin and captain Max Gawn would lead the club back to the promised land, smashing a 57-year premiership drought and completing their journey from a basket case to a true powerhouse.

This year the Dees have continued to go from strength to strength and will again feature at the business end of the season as they attempt to win another flag, this time in front of its supporters after COVID-19 saw them win last year’s premiership behind WA’s hard borders.

The club’s rise from the ashes is the perfect modern example of how a club can fully rebuild itself from the bottom up, or from the top down, to the point where they have regained the respect and trust of the AFL community.

Where Melbourne were a decade ago is where North Melbourne find themselves now – in a mess on and off the field, with the playing side regularly copping heavy defeats and coach David Noble finding himself under the pump, as Mark Neeld was back then.

The Kangaroos have not played finals since 2016, at the end of which then-coach Brad Scott made some brutal decisions to its playing list, including the controversial delistings of Nick Dal Santo as well as club legend Brent Harvey.

The club had won its first nine games of that season but faltered in the second half to finish eighth, eventually bowing out after a ten-goal elimination-final loss to the Adelaide Crows at the Oval.

The following year the club faltered to finish 15th on the ladder, only avoiding the wooden spoon when they defeated the Brisbane Lions at the Gabba in the final round of the season.

Scott stood aside as coach midway through the 2019 season, replaced by Sydney Swans premiership defender Rhyce Shaw, who did well to lead the club to a 12th-place finish at year’s end.

But after winning the gig full-time and winning their first two games of the COVID-19 affected 2020 season, the Kangaroos faltered thereafter to finish second-last on the ladder, their only other win coming in Round 9 against the Adelaide Crows.

Despite their poor season on the field, the Roos posted the highest score by any side that season in the match – which, as with all matches that year, were played to 80 per cent of normal game time – against the Crows, kicking 19.5 (119) against the eventual wooden spooners.

Shaw resigned at season’s end due to mental health issues, with David Noble appointed as the club’s newest head coach in November 2020.

Upon his appointment as Kangaroos coach, Noble expected the club would be top-four contenders by 2023, and it was hoped that his experience in rebuilding the Brisbane Lions playing list would hold him in good stead at Arden Street.

But just 38 games into his coaching career the situation at the club has deteriorated, with the club losing its past 11 matches by at least 47 points, a new and unwanted VFL/AFL record.

His return of five wins and a draw so far is a slightly better record than what Neeld had in his ill-fated 33-game stint as Melbourne coach between 2012 and 2013.

Neeld had famously declared upon his appointment as Dees coach in September 2011 that the club would be “the hardest to play against”.

But under his watch the Dees became awfully easy to play against, with their only wins in that period coming against the then-fledgling GWS Giants (three wins), the Gold Coast Suns and Essendon (once each).

It was therefore no surprise that he was ultimately dismissed midway through the 2013 season as part of the Melbourne Football Club’s total rebuild the AFL had committed to.

Back to the present, and the Kangaroos remain on track to record their worst season of the modern era, the club currently sitting dead last on the ladder with just one win from 15 matches and a percentage of 49.5 per cent.

Their only win so far came against a West Coast Eagles side paralysed by COVID-19 protocols and injuries at Marvel Stadium in Round 2.

They have also been simply uncompetitive in most, if not all, of their matches, as illustrated by two defeats by more than 100 points against powerhouse clubs the Brisbane Lions and Geelong Cats in Rounds 3 and 16 respectively.

It emerged in May that coach David Noble was forced to apologise for a furious post-match spray he delivered to the players following the loss to the Lions, which he described as “embarrassing”.

There has also been some drama surrounding its top draft pick Jason Horne-Francis, with the rumour mill going around that he will seek a trade out of Arden Street Oval at season’s end.

Fuelling the speculation was that he flew home to Adelaide after the club’s Round 9 loss to Port Adelaide in Hobart without the club’s knowledge, for which he received a caution from club officials.

It has been reported by Caroline Wilson on Channel Nine’s Footy Classified this week that the AFL are set to intervene and overhaul the North Melbourne Football Club in the same manner that they did at Melbourne nearly a decade ago.

Like Melbourne were a decade ago, the Kangaroos are currently dragging down the AFL, and it has left the league’s powerbrokers unimpressed at the state in which former chairman Ben Buckley left the club.

A potential full-scale overhaul at Arden Street Oval is set to be one of outgoing CEO Gillon McLachlan’s priorities before he vacates his post at the end of this year, with his replacement still to be discussed.

Long-time AFL administrator Geoff Walsh has been appointed as a consultant in a desperate bid to turn around the club’s woeful form, which has them on track to claim a second consecutive wooden spoon this year.

Last year he was part of the external panel that reviewed Carlton’s football department, the result of which saw David Teague and Cain Liddle dismissed as their coach and CEO respectively, so coach David Noble should have every reason to be nervous.

There is growing speculation that Noble will be sacked at or before season’s end, leaving the Kangaroos and GWS Giants – whose coach, Leon Cameron, resigned after Round 9 – on the lookout for new coaches ahead of the 2023 season.

Club legend Wayne Carey said on Triple M recently that there was no way he would survive what the club has endured and that his messaging to the players had started to become confusing.

This will leave us with a situation similar to 2013, when Melbourne and the Brisbane Lions ended the season with interim coaches in charge. Apart from the well-documented Neeld saga, the Lions sacked coach Michael Voss out of fear they would miss out on Paul Roos’ services.

At the time, discussions between Roos and then-Dees CEO Peter Jackson were well advanced, and the ex-Swans premiership mentor eventually accepted the challenge of rebuilding the Melbourne Football Club.

If the Kangaroos do sack Noble as expected, it would see them enter the race for Alastair Clarkson’s signature, the four-time Hawthorn premiership mentor currently taking a break from coaching after leaving the Hawks at the end of last season.

It comes as the GWS Giants started holding official talks with the 54-year-old, who remains the hot favourite to take over the post currently filled in the interim by Mark McVeigh, who himself is a contender for the full-time gig at the club.

Any chances of North Melbourne legends Adam Simpson or John Longmire leaving their respective posts at the West Coast Eagles and Sydney Swans to return to Arden Street and help the club in need are also shot.

The club would not want to take the risk of appointing an untried coach, though if they were to head down that path, the likes of Adam Kingsley, Adem Yze and Scott Burns would be among some of the names to be considered.

The latter two have experienced AFL coaching this season, filling in for Simon Goodwin and Matthew Nicks at Melbourne and the Adelaide Crows respectively after both senior coaches were sidelined due to COVID-19 protocols.

Of the former senior coaches now in assistant capacities at other clubs, the likes of Justin Leppitsch, Don Pyke and David Teague would be keen for a second crack at it, with Pyke the most successful of the trio having led the Adelaide Crows to a grand final in 2017.

The senior coaching role will be one of the important key positions to be discussed, as will several others, as the club look set to undergo a significant rebuild and bring themselves back to relevance.

They only need to look as far back as the transformation of the Melbourne Football Club, which brought in the right people for the right positions, the result of which was last year’s drought-breaking premiership under Simon Goodwin.

That flag was the culmination of a decade’s hard work undertaken by CEO Peter Jackson, president Glen Bartlett, coach Paul Roos and their respective successors in those positions, Gary Pert, Kate Roffey and Goodwin.

It was also the second successful coaching handover orchestrated by Roos, after he passed control of the Sydney Swans to John Longmire in 2010 and watched his successor lead them to a flag just two years later.

In the short term it’s extremely unlikely the Kangaroos will be contending for a flag any time soon, but let’s hope that however they choose to rebuild the club, the right people and systems will be in place by the time they become a powerhouse once again.

When that is, is anyone’s guess.