Melbourne's 2021 premiership exorcised a lot of demons (pardon the pun) for a once-iconic football club, which had gone from winning six premiership in 10 seasons during the 1950s and '60s, to not winning another for the next 56 years.
The flag also came 10 years after what was arguably the lowest point in the club's entire history, a monumental belting which, given the lower scores in AFL football over the last 20-odd years, still seems quite remarkable.
It was Round 19 of 2011 when Dean Bailey's Demons headed to Geelong to take on the Cats, who were flying in second spot on the ladder under first-year coach Chris Scott. Melbourne was up and down but still only one game outside the top eight, and not without some hopes of engineering an upset.
What would only emerge later, however, was the extent to which in-fighting at Melbourne between Bailey, football manager Chris Connolly and chief executive Cameron Schwab had impacted on the Demons.
Meetings between acting president Don McLardy, ill president and football director Jim Stynes and the Demons' on-field leadership group took place just two days before the game, with Schwab seemingly destined for the exit door. Instead, however, it would be the coach who ended up getting the chop the evening after the debacle.
The writing was on the wall from the very beginning. Jimmy Bartel kicked Geelong's first goal after a minute. Joel Corey and Cam Mooney made it three within six minutes. Travis Varcoe and Andrew Mackie added two more, then Brad Ottens, Tom Hawkins and Mooney again made it eight goals to nothing for the quarter.
But that proved merely an entrée, the Cats running rampant with 12 goals to one in the second quarter. They booted six in the first 15 minutes of the term, and another burst of six in the final 10 minutes.
As the two teams walked off at half-time, the scoreboard was barely believable. It read: Geelong 20.4 (124) to Melbourne 1.4 (10). But even then, the Cats' bloodlust wasn't satisfied.
The third term saw the Demons kick four of their eventual seven goals for the afternoon. But Geelong added another eight. And then it was another nine goals to two in the final term, the Cats practically walking the ball from end to end unobstructed by the finish.
Even Geelong players were feeling sorry for their opponents by the end. "I remember 'Chip' (James) Frawley was playing at full back, I played a bit of time on him," Mooney told Triple M radio in 2018.
"He probably would have had 10 goals kicked on him, and you could just see the look in his eye. A couple of times I just put the arm around him and said 'mate, don't worry, there's not much you can do today'."
The final scoreboard said everything about the carnage which had just taken place. It was a statisticians' wet dream, Geelong 37.11 (233) defeating Melbourne 7.5 (47), a victory by 186 points.
The 37 goals were the equal most ever kicked in a VFL/AFL game, Geelong equaling their own record set against the Brisbane Bears in 1992, and posting the fourth-highest score and second-highest margin in football history.
The Cats, who go on to win the premiership, beating Collingwood on grand final day, became the first side ever to score more than 50 points in every quarter of a game, and clocked up a staggering 510 disposals. Steve Johnson booted seven goals, as many as Melbourne, and Hawkins and Mooney five each, while skipper Joel Selwood racked up 43 disposals.
The game was Saturday afternoon. Bailey was gone by Sunday evening, while Schwab, who had seemed destined for an exit only a day or so earlier, was instead given a one-year contract extension.
It was ugly stuff for a whole club, not just its football team, and things didn't get better quickly, either, with the next coach, Mark Neeld, lasting only a season-and-a-half before he, too, got the chop in favour of the experienced Paul Roos, who began to lead the Dees back to some form of respectability before Simon Goodwin took over in 2017.
And while the Demons have fortunately known happier times since, the scars are still carried by some. Notably, Melbourne's skipper at the time Brad Green, who spoke about the nightmare experience in 2020.
Green said he still felt "sick and ashamed" by the loss and the impact it had on the late Bailey, who worked again as an assistant with Adelaide, but was suspended for 16 games in 2013 over the Melbourne "tanking scandal", and who died in 2014 from lung cancer.
Green said the Demons had sacked the wrong man. "Any business or organisation when you're doing those things, you've got to stick to your guns," Green told SEN.
"At the time when you've got a playing group totally united behind Dean Bailey and you're fighting tooth and nail - and people would say we didn't fight tooth and nail in that Geelong game and I've got no comeback for that because the scoreboard is the scoreboard.
"I'm still ashamed of the game today. We, and I, definitely took full responsibility for Dean getting sacked and the way the club went down was something that still doesn't sit right with me to this day. I feel sick about it, really. It cut deep."
The upside? Perhaps it's knowing lows as gut-wrenching as Melbourne's 2011 thrashing makes the highs, when they do arrive, even more euphoric. Because anyone at Melbourne involved with this debacle knows something about just how painful football can be.
You can read more of Rohan Connolly's work at FOOTYOLOGY.