The Melbourne Football Club, nicknamed the Demons and commonly known as the Dees, is a professional Australian rules football club. The club competes in the Australian Football League (AFL), the highest level of Australian rules football and plays its home matches at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG).
Established in 1858, Melbourne is the oldest Australian rules football club and is widely recognised as the world's oldest professional club of any football code. The club played a central role in the development of Australian rules football: in May 1859, Melbourne members drafted the first laws of the game which layed the foundation for the modern game's rules. Melbourne was subsequently a foundation member of the Victorian Football Association (VFA) in 1877 and in 1896, the Victorian Football League (VFL) which was renamed the AFL in 1990.
Melbourne has won 13 VFL/AFL premierships, placing it among the more successful clubs in the competition's history. Its most succcessful period came between 1939 and 1964, during which it won ten premierships, including three consecutive flags from 1939 to 1941 and five premierships in six seansons between 1955 and 1960. After winning the 1964 premiership, the club endured a 57-year premiership drought before claiming its 13th flag in 2021.
Melbourne was a foundation member of the AFL Women's league (AFLW) in 2017, and won its first AFLW premiership in 2022 season 7.
The club has a longstanding association with the Melbourne Cricket Club (MCC) and the MCG, and again became a sporting section of the MCC in 2009.
History
1858: Foundations
In the winter and spring of 1858, a loosely organised football team known as 'Melbourne' played in a series of scratch matches in the parklands outside the Melbourne Cricket Ground. This team was captained by Tom Wills, a prominent athlete and captain of the Victoria cricket team, who, on 10 July that year, had a letter of his published by the Melbourne-based Bell's Life in Victoria and Sporting Chronicle, in which he called for the formation of a "foot-ball club" with a "code of laws" to keep cricketers fit during winter, or alternatively to form a rifle club.
Other figures associated with this embryonic Melbourne side included Melbourne Cricket Club members Jerry Bryant, William Hammersley and J. B. Thompson, and teacher Thomas H. Smith. Whereas, fresh contemporary evidence from Bell's Life confirms the prominent role Jerry Bryant played in formation of the Melbourne Football Club at his Parade Hotel on the 21st May 1859."Football," Bell's Life in Victoria and Sporting Chronicle Melbourne, Victoria, Australia". www.oldnews.com. July 31, 1858. Retrieved 2025-05-19."Football" Bell's Life in Victoria and Sporting Chronicle, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, May 21, 1859.
It is possible that the first game played in 1858 involving the Melbourne team took place on or adjacent to the Melbourne Cricket Ground on 14 August following Bryant's call for 'all good kicks' to take part with a subsequent match held among the Melbourne Cricket Club members on 30 August. On 25 September 1858, Melbourne was challenged to a match by the South Yarra FC featuring 26 players a side, with Melbourne winning the game.
Although the club had not yet been established as a formal entity, nor its unique football rules, the year 1858 has long been recognised as being the foundation year of the Melbourne Football Club.
1859–1876: establishment and early years With the cricket season finished The Argus reported in early May 1859 that the membership of the "Melbourne Football Club" was growing 'owing, probably, to its being no longer confined to members of the Melbourne Cricket Club'. On 14 May the club held its first match of the year in the Richmond Paddock with two sides captained by Smith and Bryant, with Bryant's side kicking two goals for victory. A subsequent meeting was held to elect a Secretary, Treasurer and committee of five to administer the affairs of the club and to draft its rules, whilst an application to the MCC was made for use of the MCG on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Although most Melbourne players and officials were associated with the MCC, the football club was not initially allowed to use its ground, so matches were played on the fields at Yarra Park.
On 17 and 21 May 1859, Wills, Hammersley, Thompson and Smith met near the MCG at the Parade Hotel, owned by Bryant, to draft "The Rules of the Melbourne Football Club". The resulting ten codified rules are the laws from which Australian rules football evolved.
In the early years of the club, football matches were conducted on a casual basis with no set fixture and teams often having to cancel engagements due to a lack of players. The first mention of an interclub match played under the new code was between Melbourne and South Yarra in July 1859, with Hammersley as Melbourne's inaugural captain. In 1860 Melbourne played its first match against the Geelong Football Club in Geelong with the match resulting in a draw.
In 1861, Melbourne participated in the Caledonian Society Challenge Cup, but lost the trophy to the Melbourne University Football Club. The club pushed for its rules to be the accepted rules, however many of the early suburban matches were played under compromised rules decided between the captains of the competing teams.
By 1866 several other clubs had also adopted an updated version of Melbourne's rules, drafted at a meeting chaired by Wills' cousin, H. C. A. Harrison. Harrison was a key figure in the early years of the club; he often served as captain and, in later years, as president. Due to his popular reputation and administrative efforts, he was officially named "Father of Australian Football" in 1908, the year of the sport's golden jubilee. In 1866 the Melbourne club issued a challenge to the newly founded Sydney Football Club in the New South Wales capital, however the negotiations on the visit stalled.
During the 1870s, Melbourne fielded teams in the Seven Twenties and South Yarra Cup competitions.
1877–1896: Victorian Football Association
In 1877, Melbourne became a founding member of the Victorian Football Association (VFA). During the same year the club took part in the first interstate football match involving a South Australian side, , defeating the home side 1–0."FOOTBALL.". The South Australian Advertiser (Adelaide) (National Library of Australia). 13 August 1877. p. 7. Retrieved 21 January 2015. Melbourne never won a VFA premiership, although they were consistently one of the stronger teams in the competition, finishing as runners-up four times, to Carlton in 1877, Geelong in 1878 and twice to Essendon in 1893 and 1894.
On 9 July 1881 Melbourne played East Sydney in the first football game, of any code, to be played at the Sydney Cricket Ground. Melbourne won the game 2.22 (34) to 0.1 (1). The crowd for the game numbered 2500.
In 1884 Melbourne's stand at the MCG which catered for 3,000 spectators burned down precipitating a series of financial constraints for the club. With mounting debts, club officials running up unauthorised accounts, poor on-field form and players leaving to join other clubs, Melbourne's future was in serious jeopardy by 1888. It was proposed that the MCC intervene to provide assistance given the closeness of the two clubs and the fact that football matches generated significant gate revenue for the MCC.
At the end of the 1889 season, the MFC and MCC committees met and agreed to amalgamation of the two. The football club would become a section of the cricket club with the MCC handling the MFC's immediate and ongoing financial concerns. Melbourne's on-field prospects soon lifted finishing fourth on the ladder in 1892 and vying the Premiership in 1893. This was to be the beginning of a long and fruitful partnership that produced 12 VFL Premierships between 1900 and 1964.
1897–1932: early years in the Victorian Football League
In 1897, Melbourne joined other VFA powerhouse clubs Essendon, Collingwood, Fitzroy, Geelong, and South Melbourne to form the breakaway Victorian Football League with Carlton and St Kilda also joining. In the first season of the new competition, Jack Leith was the league's leading goalscorer while Fred McGinis emerged as a champion player and league identity being judged Champion of the Colony for the season. In 1900, McGinis helped take Melbourne to its first VFL premiership, defeating Fitzroy in a Grand Final upset at the East Melbourne Cricket Ground; and, in 1904, Vin Coutie kicked 39 goals to be the League's leading goalkicker. But, despite this success, including playing in the finals again in 1902, Melbourne's first decade of the 20th century was poor on-field, with the club taking out the Wooden Spoon in 1905 and 1906.
In the 1910s the team had adopted the nickname 'Fuchsias' alongside the pre-existing Redlegs name and in 1912 the club adopted a club song to the tune of 'You're A Grand Old Flag". Harry Brereton was the VFL leading goalscorer in the 1911 and 1912 season. During this time the club took pride in its policy of amateurism and when World War I broke out, the club strongly petitioned for the league being suspended to prevent fit professional footballers from joining the war effort. In 1916 the club refused to take part in the competition for three seasons, returning in 1919. 14 Melbourne players lost their lives in the conflict, including Arthur Mueller 'Joe' Pearce, Clifford Burge, Jack Doubleday, Desmond McDonald, Ralph Robertson, Percy Rodriguez and Alfred Williamson.
Melbourne had little success in the immediate post-war years having not played a final since 1915, taking out another Wooden Spoon in 1919. However, finals form would return with the team defeating Geelong and later losing to Collingwood in 1925. In 1926 Albert Chadwick captain-coached the team to its second league Premiership defeating Collingwood in the Grand Final. Melbourne's greatest player at this time was Ivor Warne-Smith, who in the Premiership year won the club's first Brownlow Medal. Warne-Smith went on to win a second Brownlow in 1928, a year in which Melbourne would play finals again. Chadwick and Warne-Smith would both go on to have influential administrative roles in the club's most successful period in the 1950s.
1933–1964: dominant years The Great Depression took a financial toll on the club with poor on-field performances and some players having the pressure of having to search for employment. Melbourne's fortunes were lifted however for the 1933 season when it lured Richmond's premiership winning coach Frank "Checker" Hughes and Richmond's secretary Percy Page to the club.
Hughes was a tough and disciplined coach inspiring the changing of the club's nickname from the Fuchsias to the Demons.
Under Hughes' leadership, and with star players including captain Allan La Fontaine, rover Percy Beames, backman Jack Mueller and Norm Smith at full forward, the Demons played finals in 1936 and 1937, and became the third club after Carlton and Collingwood to win three successive premierships in 1939, 1940 and 1941.Taylor, Percy, "Melbourne are Proud of their Great War Record", The Australasian, (Saturday, 24 June 1944), p.23.
Tragedy would fall on the club soon after with 11 players giving their lives whilst serving in World War 2. These players included premiership players Keith 'Bluey' Truscott, Harold Ball, Syd Anderson and Ron Barassi Sr, all for whom club awards have been dedicated to, with the club's Best and Fairest award named in honour of Truscott.