The Melbourne Football Club, nicknamed the Demons, is a professional Australian rules football club that competes in the Australian Football League (AFL), the sport's elite competition. It is based in 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. Its 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 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 early years of the game and a foundation member of the Victorian Football Association (VFA) in 1877 and the Victorian Football League (VFL) in 1896, now the national AFL. Melbourne has won 13 VFL/AFL premierships, the latest in 2021. The club was a foundation team of the AFL Women's league (AFLW), and won its first AFLW premiership in 2022 (Season 7). 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.
