page_title: Melbourne Football Club
section_title: 1877–1896: Founders of the VFA
hierarchical_section_title: Melbourne Football Club / History / 1877–1896: Founders of the VFA
caption_attribution_description: English: Early photo of a Melbourne FC team.
context_page_description: The Melbourne Football Club, nicknamed the Demons, is a professional Australian rules football club, playing in the Australian Football League. It is named after and based in Melbourne, Victoria, and plays its home games at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
  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 early years of Australian rules football competition, and was also a foundation member of the Victorian Football Association in 1877 and the Victorian Football League in 1896, which later became the national Australian Football League. Melbourne has won 12 VFL/AFL premierships, the latest in 1964. Melbourne was a foundation team of the AFL Women's league, entering the competition in the inaugural year 2017.
context_section_description: In 1877, the club 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, Victorian, defeating the home side 1–0. During this time, the club was known as the "Fuchsias". Melbourne never won a VFA premiership, although they were consistently one of the stronger teams in the competition, finishing runner-up four times, to Carlton in 1877 (the inaugural year of the VFA), to Geelong in 1878 and twice to Essendon in 1893 and 1894.
  In 1889, the MFC was reincorporated into the MCC, and for many years the two organisations remained unhappily linked. The MFC's close association with the MCC allowed it to claim the MCG as its home ground and gave it access to a wealthy membership base, but Melbourne's reputation as an "establishment" club was not always an advantage. MCC members have the automatic right to attend all events at the ground, including MFC football games. This meant many potential members had a reduced incentive to join the football club, and Melbourne's membership remained one of the lowest in the competition.
caption: Early Melbourne team of 1879
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