Richmond club historian Rhett Bartlett, son of club legend Kevin, is fast gaining internet notoriety for discovering and digitising previously buried football footage of the 20th century and 2000s.
This week, in tandem with veteran football journalist Rohan Connolly, Bartlett delivered a compelling one-hour compilation of the fateful night that was September 16, 1996.
It's compelling viewing not only for those old enough to remember the tumultuous 1996 season that also saw the death of the Fitzroy Football Club, but for AFL fans keen to delve into a bit of dramatic history.
'Footy Feedback', a weekly Monday night panel program hosted by Tim Lane and featuring both Connolly and Leigh Matthews as regular guests on the ill-fated C7 Sports pay TV network, broadcasted live footage of the concurrent extraordinary general meetings in which thousands of Hawthorn and Melbourne club members voted on the AFL's proposal to merge the two clubs.
As part of the AFL's nationalisation agenda and efforts to reduce the number of unviable Victorian sides, Ross Oakley offered the Melbourne and Hawthorn clubs a combined $6m to clear their collective debts, a guaranteed ten home games per year at the MCG to soothe the concerns of Demons fans who didn't want their club to move to Waverley Park, and a generous playing list of 44 players in 1997 consisting of the best of both teams.
At a superficial level, the amalgamation made complete sense: the Melbourne Demons were swimming in money but had no on-field success nor a site that housed both their administrative headquarters and training base to show for it, whilst the Hawks were facing mounting debts into the millions of dollars despite being the dominant club of the previous ten years.
The 'Melbourne Hawks' were to be based at Glenferrie Oval, would wear the Demons' red and blue guernsey with a brown and yellow hawk on the chest, and would have an audibly abhorrent 'mish-mash' of the two club songs
Club legend Don Scott and Melbourne businessman and future Hawthorn chairman Ian Dicker spearheaded the resistance on the Hawthorn side of the fence, launching a successful 'Operation Payback' that was inspired by Footscray's 1989 'Fightback' fundraising campaign to save their club from a forced merger with Fitzroy.
Scott's address at the Camberwell Civic Centre remains a part of football folklore because of the defiant gesture in which he ripped a velcro Hawks logo off the front of the proposed Melbourne Hawks guernsey to leave nothing but Melbourne blue and red colours, making a statement about the imbalanced identity he believed the merged club would have carried forward.
Melbourne's meeting at the Dallas Brooks Hall in Carlton carried the merger proposal by a slim majority, albeit with thousands of supporters unable to make it into the overcrowded venue to cast their votes, whilst Hawks members scuppered it by an almost two-thirds majority despite chairman Richard Loveridge and legendary coach Allan Jeans pleading for a 'yes' vote to guarantee the club's survival.
Sports broadcasters Andy Maher and the late Rob Gaylard had a tough time of it conducting live interviews in front of a background of angry (and sometimes vulgar) anti-merger chants at both venues, but it certainly made for some brilliant live television!