Melbourne Hawks
The Melbourne Hawks was a planned Australian Football League (AFL) team that would have consisted of the merger between the Melbourne Football Club and Hawthorn Football Club clubs at the end of the 1996 season. Out of all the proposed merger combinations in the 1990s, it appeared to be the most ideal— Hawthorn had a football team which had success (eight premierships in the previous 25 years) but were in a dire financial situation, while Melbourne had sound financial base but had not won a premiership for over 30 years.