In 2008, then Melbourne CEO Cameron Schwab invited me into the club and said all doors were open to me. It was a smart thing to do, putting a story-teller inside a club whose only stories to otherwise reach the public were about debt and crisis. And it wasn't as if they didn't have stories to tell.

Ron Barassi, their No.1 ticket holder, is one of the mythological characters in the history of the game – like Achilles in the Iliad. Jimmy Stynes was president. Irish culture is full of ancient stories with heroes like Jimmy. Then there was Liam Jurrah who will be remembered alongside Robert Tudawali, the first Aboriginal film star, and Albert Namatjira, the first Aboriginal artist to impact white Australia. Liam Jurrah is the first person from a traditional Aboriginal community to play AFL (and take the 2010 AFL mark of the year).

But, out on the field, the Dees were unconvincing and the club had multiple problems off it. Jimmy Stynes got them out of debt, labouring away even as he was consumed by cancer. The tanking saga that followed was a huge protracted low. Coach Dean Bailey taught the players a form of attack which the team was too flighty to deliver on any consistent basis. Worse was to come when Bailey's successor, Mark Neeld, tried to remedy a perceived lack of hardness in the players and ended up with a wrecked rabble on the field led by two inexperienced youngsters.

During those years, some of the Dees' performances were so miserable, I occasionally wondered why anyone went to watch them. I am well aware that the Dees have not entirely abandoned their old ways – they are, after all, the only team to have lost this year to the hapless Bombers – but on Sunday, watching them against Adelaide, I almost got emotional.

It was a moment that started with Jack Watts. Watts is a fascinating player – he has always been an immensely gifted footballer but not an entirely natural one. He has progressed to become a good player, a regular contributor, while giving tantalising glimpses of becoming something much better, a player who can influence games for whole matches or critical parts thereof and not for just 10 minutes or a quarter.

He is also, at 196 cms, remarkably fleet of foot and the moment I wish to describe began half-way through the third quarter when he roved the ball off a pack deep in defence, ran and kicked it, got it back, then passed it off the side of his boot – a bold act in defence, but his skills were equal to it. The Dees then had six connections by hand and foot, players running at full tilt making space and passing the ball accurately, all ending with – guess who? – captain Nathan Jones. Nathan Jones is as significant a figure in the recent history of the club as Garry Lyon. The skipper goaled, of course.

The reason Melbourne impressed me last Sunday is because I rate Adelaide as a genuine premiership contender. On their forward line they have three athletic giants and darting around and between them is a player who could well evoke memories of Darren Jarman if the Crows make the grand final. I speak, of course, of that superlative small forward, Eddie Betts.

In the third term, as good teams do, Adelaide went up a gear. I thought , "Game over". Over the years, I have likened the Dees to a fridge with a faulty light – sometimes when you open the fridge door, the light's on; other times you open it and the light's off. You know from the start. Then there are matches when the game simply leaves them. The Dees grind away, but they lose their ability to create and become dull and predictable.

Last Sunday, the Dees produced their best goal just at the moment when Adelaide looked to be taking the game away from them. It was a goal demanding audacity and courage, a prolonged act of inspiration involving nearly half the side. At a point where Melbourne might have been expected to close down, they opened up.

There is a solidity about Melbourne now, a platform of reliable players with a tenacious core personified by Jack Viney, but what the team has also developed this year is the capacity and willingness to attack. In this respect, it is necessary to mention young backman Jayden Hunt. Slim and fearless with a head of blond curls, he comes out of defence like an arrow fired at a target behind the goals.

The Dees lost to Adelaide by 22 points, but I couldn't help but see how far they've come and think credit to Paul Roos. He has performed the task he was employed to do – create a football team worthy of a place in the AFL competition. But the person I credit with bringing balance and real purpose to the Melbourne Football Club is CEO Peter Jackson.

In the past, if I had written something like this, the Dees would respond by notching up some ignominious defeat – like losing to lowly Freo in Darwin on Saturday. Right about now, that also has to change.