While the Melbourne Football Club looks seriously on the verge of something special, this lifelong supporter is watching the progress with a knot in the pit of his stomach.

And the reason is this: just why the %*@!! is the oldest football club in the world playing in another club's colours?

When one of the joys of being a bloke - parking your backside on the couch in front of the box to watch your team play - is ruined by having your just-turned five-year-old son asking: "Dad, which ones are the Demons?" it's time to do ''a Peter Finch'' and declare I'm mad as hell and not going to take it anymore!

The Demons' "alternative strip" is red, blue and white and Footscray/Western Bulldogs have been wearing that combination since they entered the then VFL in 1925.

No other club is so acquiescent to the governing body and so blasé towards its own history that it is prepared to wear another club's colours while discarding its own in official AFL matches when wearing a so-called "away" strip.

As the theme song famously refers to ''the team of the red and the blue'', Melbourne has been playing in those colours since it entered the competition as a foundation member in 1897. How can those paid and charged with administering the club decide it is OK to add another colour to the mix?

Sorry, but "The AFL wants it" is a p***weak reason. The AFL wanted a reduction in Victorian teams two decades ago and a decade later changed its mind. The AFL decided to end the grand final lap of retiring champions in 2007 and then realized it was a crap idea after it happened.

Something that strikes at the heart of what a football club actually is should be decided by that football club.

The West Coast Eagles can run out in a jumper resembling vomit - and they have - while still representing Western Australia, but the Melbourne Football Club only represents the Melbourne Football Club.

How can the colours that were worn in 12 premierships now be considered negotiable?

The two colours (only) that were worn in all games played for the club by both fallen war hero Ron Barassi Snr & his son and official AFL legend Ron Barassi Jnr, as well as AFL Hall of Fame members Alan La Fontaine, Albert Chadwick, Percy Beams, Carl Ditterich, Robbie Flower, Gerard Healy, Jack Mueller, Norm Smith, Brian Dixon, Stuart Spencer, Ivor Warne-Smith and, yes, Jim Stynes?

Every single game-day photo or piece of vision involving any of those greats of the club, as well as other heroes and champions such as dual premiership captains Noel McMahen and John Beckwith, and the likes of Keith "Bluey" Truscott, Garry Lyon, Todd Viney, Stan Alves, Greg Wells, Gary Hardeman, David Schwarz, Brian Wilson, Shane Woewodin and Jeff Farmer shows those players wearing just two colours.

Red and Blue.

Now the fact that the club is not only surviving but thriving probably starts and ends with the Herculean job that started in 2008, when Stynes had his own "Peter Finch" moment while seeing his club rapidly go down the toilet in just about every area.

As has been well documented, he brought in his own team and worked with the same ridiculous fervor that has seen him succeed both on and off-field (establishing youth-charity Reach, for example) by placing himself front and centre, and set about wiping out millions of dollars of crippling debt.

This week it will be declared that the debt has gone and all of us pray to whatever God we have that the next significant announcement is that Stynes's battle with cancer is another challenge he's able to stare down and defeat sooner rather than later.

I should say my gripe about the jumper used in Saturday night's match against Brisbane is not directed towards any one individual, and certainly not Jimmy.

It's easy to forget that prior to Stynes and his off-field team's impact in 2008, the individual who single-handedly ensured the competition still had a "Red and Blue Melbourne Demons" in it was another on-field hero who had a gutful of what was happening to the team that he had served so well.

But this former ruckman played in brown and gold rather than red and blue.

When Don Scott stepped up to an anti-merger rally to urge the Hawthorn fans to vote against a merger with the Melbourne Football Club in 1996, he held up a Melbourne jumper with a Velcro-backed Hawk logo stuck on it.

The famous turning point was him ripping off the Hawk and saying all that was left was a Melbourne jumper.

Well, rip the Demons logo off the jumper that the player's wore when defeating the Lions on Saturday night, and all that's left is an anonymous, meaningless and soulless generic white top.

We are the Melbourne Football Club and we wear red and blue.

("Racetrack" Ralphy Horowitz is a full-time racing analyst for private clients and media commentator for Sport 927. He is a former producer at 3AW, SEN, The Footy Show, & Sunday Footy Show.)