Harold Ball Memorial Trophy
| Melbourne Football Club | ||
|---|---|---|
 |
||
| Names | ||
| Full name | Melbourne Football Club | |
| Nickname(s) | Demons, Dees | |
| Former nickname(s) | Redlegs, Fuchsias (prior to 1933) | |
| 2017 season | ||
| Home-and-away season | 9th | |
| Leading goalkicker | Jeff Garlett (42 goals) | |
| Club details | ||
| Founded | 1858 | |
| Colours | Red blue | |
| Competition | Australian Football League | |
| Chairman | Glen Bartlett | |
| CEO | Peter Jackson | |
| Coach | Simon Goodwin | |
| Captain(s) |
Nathan Jones Jack Viney |
|
| Premierships | VFL/AFL (12): 1900, 1926, 1939, 1940, 1941, 1948, 1955, 1956, 1957, 1959, 1960, 1964 | |
| Ground(s) | Melbourne Cricket Ground (capacity: 100,024) | |
| Former ground(s) | Motordrome (1932) | |
| Punt Road Oval (1942–1946) | ||
| (1942–1946) | ||
| Training ground(s) | AAMI Park | |
| Uniforms | ||
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| Other information | ||
| Official website | melbournefc.com.au | |
The Melbourne Football Club, nicknamed the Demons, is a professional Australian rules football club, playing in the Australian Football League (AFL). It is named after and based in the city of Melbourne, Victoria, and plays its home games at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG).
Melbourne is the world's oldest professional club of any football code. The club's origins can be traced to an 1858 letter in which Tom Wills, captain of the Victoria cricket team, calls for the formation of a "foot-ball club" with its own "code of laws". An informal Melbourne team played that winter and was officially formed in May 1859 when Wills and three other members codified "The Rules of the Melbourne Football Club"—the basis of Australian rules football. The club was a dominant force in the earliest Australian rules football competition, the Challenge Cup, and was also a foundation member of the Victorian Football Association (VFA) in 1877 and the Victorian Football League (VFL) in 1897, which later became the national Australian Football League. Melbourne has won 12 VFL/AFL premierships, the latest in 1964.
The club celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2008 by naming "150 Heroes" as well as creating a birthday logo which appeared on its official guernsey.
The football club has been a sporting section of the Melbourne Cricket Club (MCC) since 2009, having previously been associated with the MCC between 1889 and 1980.
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 of his published by the Melbourne-based Bell's Life in Victoria and Sporting Chronicle, in which he calls for the formation of a "foot-ball club" with a "code of laws" to keep cricketers fit during winter. Other figures associated with this embryonic Melbourne side include cricketers Jerry Bryant, William Hammersley and J. B. Thompson, and teacher Thomas H. Smith.
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