NOBODY envisaged this.
Nobody had Melbourne Football Club, off consecutive 14th-placed ladder finishes, equal fourth after round 19. Few would have given it a chance of beating reigning premier Brisbane and even less would have predicted not just one but two wins against premiership aspirant Hawthorn.
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Nobody, after the very calculated off-season exiting of a combined nine All-Australians, six best-and-fairests, one Norm Smith Medal and two Brownlow Medal podium placings in the form of Clayton Oliver, Christian Petracca and Steven May, expected the club to get better let alone boast the most watchable brand of football while achieving all of that.
And now the man overseeing this most remarkable recovery project gets to lead his Demons into a Friday night lights MCG match as a heavy favourite against another flag hope.
For Steven King, this game looms as another challenge into the exciting unknowns of 2026, and yet it also one in which will see him walking back into his own history.
Geelong is where it all started for King, as a 17-year-old ruckman 30 years ago. His last of 193 matches for the Cats was the 2007 Grand Final. The last two of his 15 years serving as an assistant coach in the AFL system were with Geelong.
So for King, this is not merely another game. Geelong gave him his football identity, shaped his football life. It taught him many forms of resilience, including dealing with being omitted from the senior team in the lead-in to that 2007 premiership, and then three weeks later being traded to St Kilda, where he played in a Grand Final against the Cats in 2009. It exposed him to being a leader, gave him the honour of captaining all-time greats in Gary Ablett, Jimmy Bartel, Steve Johnson and Matthew Scarlett, for 2003-06.
King will seek to ensure emotional detachment on Friday night as he seeks to add another win to the 12 already compiled by the Demons this year. An unthinkable top-four ladder finish remains possible. The Demons are sixth, four premiership points and 16 per cent clear of seventh-placed Western Bulldogs, with the Cats to be followed by games against Gold Coast, Fremantle, Port Adelaide and the Dogs.
On head-to-head coaching assignments for King in his first season, there will be none more difficult than Friday night against Chris Scott. Last year, King was Scott’s midfield coach as the Cats made their way to another Grand Final.
In 2011, the year after King retired, after three seasons and 47 matches with the Saints, Scott took Geelong to a premiership in his first year as coach. The Cats had come off a preliminary final in 2010, as well as the Grand Finals of 2009, 2008 and 2007; not consecutive 14th-placed finishes like King’s 2026 Demons.
A fairer comparison for King would be Craig McRae of 2022, where Collingwood, off a 17th-placed finish in 2021, went all the way to a one-point preliminary final loss.
Nobody predicted McRae would reach a preliminary final in year one and win a Grand Final in year two, just as nobody predicted King to drag the Demons to the brink of securing a finals berth with five matches remaining in 2026.
King has played for and against Geelong in a Grand Final at the MCG, and Friday night won’t change him or his outlook on this extraordinary season. But it will take him to places he's never been as he continues to lead Melbourne in the most unlikely of premiership campaigns.