At times, the actual match played on the holiday Monday between Melbourne and Collingwood has seemed pretty secondary to the slide of various celebrities into icy water.

Not this year, though.

Two things have conspired to make this particular clash between the Demons and Pies a very appetising affair.

One is the unexpected rise of a Collingwood outfit under new coach Craig McCrae, the Pies having now won three in a row and playing some exciting football.

But the other, until a couple of weeks ago, even more unexpected happening, is Melbourne's having run into a bit of bother, both on and off the field.

After 17 consecutive victories across the end of 2021 and the first 10 rounds of this season, the Demons are suddenly looking a lot more mortal, beaten by first Fremantle then Sydney, on both occasions having let handy leads slip.

And it's interesting the extent to which those two results have rewritten many people's assessments of just where Melbourne is at.

It's certainly worth noting that just one of the Demons' first 10 games was against a side currently in the top eight, and that their two defeats have been against teams currently third and sixth.

As efficiently as they've handled much of this season, rarely have the Dees played at anything like the stratospheric levels they reached last September, struggling to put away the lesser likes of Gold Coast, Essendon and Hawthorn along the way.

Is that a good or bad sign?

The former interpretation relies on the view that a good team can get the job done even when well below its best, and is more than likely conserving energy for bigger battles ahead.

The more pessimistic take is that it is just hanging on to its advantage and will be found out by those greater challenges.

Fremantle and Sydney's victories over the Demons will certainly give Melbourne's other likely finals rivals hope. But there's no great mystery about what happened.

Both the Dockers and Swans were able to out-pressure Melbourne in key departments, contested ball in Freo's case, and in Sydney's, on the tackle count.

Clearly, the loss of key defender Steven May to concussion has had a flow-on effect for several keys to Melbourne's structure, and the absence last week of wingman Ed Langdon and a rare quiet game from Christian Petracca didn't help.

Against the Swans, the failure of key forwards Ben and Mitch Brown to fire a shot hurt.

It goes without saying, then, that the timing of May's internally-imposed one-game suspension on Tuesday for a public altercation with teammate Jake Melksham couldn't have been worse.

Not only is the Demon defence again robbed of its most important part, but the misdemeanour allows more ammunition to those who'd love to keep pushing the "Melbourne in trouble" narrative.

And by that, yes, we're talking media.

Of course, a good thing turning pear-shaped is going to make for a "sexier" storyline than the continuation of a golden run. Sadly, that appears the case even when the club in the midst of that run hadn't, until last season, seen premiership success for 57 years.

On that score, Melbourne might want to get ahead of the curve and study the example of Richmond just two years ago.

The Tigers were doing it tough for a while in 2020, grappling with hub life, not overly impressive in victory, and then beset by a couple of off-field incidents, which enabled the easy story that Richmond was a victim of its own hubris.

Rather than break them, however, the difficulties ultimately served only to galvanise the Tigers, whom even after losing a qualifying final to Brisbane, were able to recover to win their third premiership in four seasons.

In the six-month slog that is an AFL season, no team can realistically expect to be at its best for the entire duration. It is the capacity to still produce results when below that best, and not to fracture as a cohesive unit when challenges are coming from unlikely sources (and not just on the field) that sees the good teams become great ones.

That's Melbourne's challenge now. The Demons clearly have the talent, and should have the motivation after being in the wilderness as a club for so long.

And on Monday, in the big Queen's Birthday clash against a Collingwood whose fans never need much encouragement to start dreaming big, and now have it again, the Demons certainly have the occasion to begin the fightback.

It's their story to write, and the ball is very much in their court. How they answer the challenge is going to be fascinating to watch.